Crazyredcoat's Crazy Compendium of Collected Creativity

The Young Wolf is done! I didn’t do too many step-by-step pictures again because a lot of the colours are similar or identical to many of the other previous posts, but as I did go on a bit about certain colours I will go over them now.

While this set is primarily to show of the hair, it does lean a little into some details that I thought I’d go over. First off, I think the colour is a good match for auburn hair and was a simple base/shade/drybrush, so simple enough and quick. I will save this method for the other Tully coloured Starks. As you may have noticed, though, there are two shade paints in the picture. I did the padded trousers in the same base colour as the hair (Mournfang Brown in this case), but wanted to try and give a different tone to each. My hope was to manage this with two different shades, so I used Agrax Earthshade for the clothing and Riekland Fleshshade for the hair. The difference is subtle…so subtle it may not even show up in the ‘good lighting’ pictures, but I like the overall effect. In order to put more of a red colour to the hair I could have tried Carroburg Crimson, but I thought that might be too red…I still wanted it to look natural after all. Long story short, if you want to replicate this colour I don’t think it matters too much which of the shades you use.

The next important thing to cover is the white. Painting white can be quite tricky; took me years to get used to it. However, there is one very simple rule that can be stuck to; start with an grey. That’s what I did here with Celestra Grey. Smooth coats are your friend here, so thin the paints and apply multiple thin coats (and praise St. Duncan of the Thin Coats) and take your time. After applying the Celestra Grey, I decided to shade it using a 2:1 mix of Lahmian Medium to Nuln Oil. This makes it much more subtle while still remaining bright. There are many shades and colours you can use here, in the past I have made my own shade from very thin The Fang for a slight blue tint, but you can also use some thinned brown shades for a dirtier look. After the shades I layered some Ulthuan Grey, again thinned, smooth coats, then finally edge highlighted with White Scar, but any pure white will do there.

I must say that I have learned quite a lot in painting these minis so far. First off is having to work around no ability to do sub-assemblies…as that is how I usually deal with difficult to reach parts. The biggest issue with this now is mould lines in those places so I’m getting used to recognising when something is just invisible and what I can and can’t get away with. With this mini, in particular, I think the alternate sculpt with the sword raised would be a little easier to paint, but I think I’ve done well enough here.

Here are some final shots before I head off and try and work out what to do next…