So month 1 is wrapped up, and I’m going to come out with the honest truth, I didn’t get started on this project. Now this isn’t to say I didn’t hobby, lord knows I put 2-4 hours a day on getting my elves ready for Siege of Augusta, with 15 hour paint sessions over the weekends.
However I had a pretty negative experience, where my centerpiece dragon was stolen at the end of siege, and my desire to hobby has been at an all time low. So, the last week I had scheduled for hobbying the salamanders, was spent on reading and gaming. Rather than have this 1 paragraph article though, I wanted to go over some of what I did get done this month.
I’ve been holding onto a Mantic elf army for a year roughly, and when Clash of Kings at Adepticon was announced to have a prize for 90% Mantic, now seemed like the right time to pull them out, and get a painted Mantic army. I started with the idea of using techniques that I wasn’t going to be willing to do with new brushes, and instead use pretty destructive blending techniques, to come up with something simple, but unique looking on the board.
The first big paint weekend was knocking this horde out, a big draw for me with these models was how easy they are to paint. Most of the model is just the armor color, which for me was 1 coat metal, 1 coat of Scale Color’s Peridot Alchemy Glaze, 1 coat of Nuln Oil and done.
Quick, simple, and a very consistent effect. The shields were the destructive technique I mentioned, these were done by 2 brush blending. Basically you put the blue or the green down, then with a 2nd brush very quickly apply the other color, and your swapping brushes, as you blend on the model itself. Very often you’ll be using the base of the bristles, to literally just push the paint together, rather than painting with the tips of the brush, so I wouldn’t suggest trying it with brushes you actually want to use later.
Next up is this regiment of metal Mantic Stormwind Cavalry.
I carried the blending technique over from just the shields onto the cloth feature for the horses as well, which was an interesting experience, getting the texture to show with the blending, while not using any sort of highlight or wash with that technique.
Also, I noticed while doing these, that different manufacturers paints would finish or be mostly dry at different times. Scalecolor paints lasted maybe a minute on metal, while Vallejo would tend to stay workable for a couple minutes, so if you wanted to do that sort of blending on metal, I would advise adding a fair amount of retardant. It can be hard to see in the photo, but I added a purple metal to the army mix, using Scalecolor Amethyst alchemy glaze, along with the peridot, to make sure that the purple capes had another purple tone on the model.
The last model I worked on this month was my centerpiece dragon. He is missing a leg in the photo due to Creature Caster messing up his shipment, but I did get the part before siege so he was completed by then. This was a 20 hour project that I finished the weekend before the GT, and he was an absolute blast to paint.
If no one has seen or worked with a Creature Caster resin model, they’re beautiful oversized behemoths with a lot of easy to paint detail, while still being technical monsters, if you want them to be. I didn’t include the blending technique here, and instead went for a progressive drybrush technique, with 4 total highlights over the model. 1 before I washed it, then 3 progressively lighter drybrush highlights, where it felt right for the light to hit it. Unfortunately, this is also the model that got lifted and I don’t have it anymore. (Editor: A real shame, saw this in person and it was really cool)
Here’s the finished product before Siege! I started the display board this month too, as well as painting the castle, and all the extra temple bits spread around the board. The road is a product of green stuff world’s brick texture roller. I would definitely suggest their products to anyone wanted to play around with texturing their bases.
The castle is painted in my preferred way to paint rocks, which is to undercoat with a medium grey, and then wash it with every wash in my collection. After that you put a final Nuln Oil wash over the whole thing, then overbrush with a light grey coat or 2, to tie all the colors together. I’m a huge fan of how that turns out, over just doing grey drybrushes, even if its a tad bit unrealistic, just to get color in there, especially on larger pieces like castles.
Goals for February:
2nd verse is the same as the first
Since I didn’t get to really start on the project much this month, outside of priming and assembling some snakemen, I don’t think I’m going to change my goals from last month.
I still need to test out my basing scheme for the army; however, I won’t be 40 models and a board away from finishing another project this time, and can devote my full attention to getting everything done. I hope you guys accept my apology, for not getting my goals done, for January; and enjoyed getting to see what did get pumped out of the Greek workshop.
Can’t wait to see what you knock out for February!