Sláine: Kiss My Paintbrush!

I was lucky and spotted a couple of pre-release Sláine models on eBay and they arrived last week.  There was a Skull Sword Drune Warrior and Ukko, both from the starter set.  There was a bit of a Zanzibari backlog on the painting table but I got to them this week.

Having just got the full Speedpaint set from Army Painter I decided to follow the painting guide from Warlord.  They do a Speedpaint only and Speedpaint + (highlights and metalics) and I mostly follows the Speedpaint only version.

Warlord Tutorial

First step was a zenith undercoat that was applied with an airbrush (Stynylrez White zenithed over Stynylrez Black).

I did bolster the colours a bit with some additional highlights in areas where my zenith was a bit dark. You can see that this first coat of Crusader Skin is a bit dark on the lower half of the front of both models.

With the Skull Sword leaning forward he was shielded from quite a lot of the zenith highlight and this was remedied with some manual highlights across the skin areas usinf Vallejo Beige Red and then a blend of Dwarf Flesh and Beige Red for the top highlight that was very gently drybrushed on.

Other colours were as per the painting guide although I did tweak a couple of the colours here and there with a bit of mixing of Speedpaints to get a paler colour, especially the yellow under the gold on the shieldwhere I cut the suggested Zealot Yellow (which is quite orange) with some Pale Sand.

There were also some final tweaks and highlights as follows:

The sword was a blend of Runic Grey (rather than Gravelord Grey) and Highlord Blue, thinned with water, 3:1:2.  This has given a very blue-steel look which I think fits well with the brighter comic asthetic look that I’m after.

Shield studs and edge highlights and some very subtle highlights on the helmet were in Vallejo Cold Grey.

The horns has a bone white highlight with pure white at the very ends.

I was tempted by a NMM approach with just the Speedpaints but went for a bit of added bling in the end.  The sword hilt and gold work on the shield got a highlight of Vallejo Metal Color Gold after the Matt Varnish layer was applied the the whole model.  This ensures the metalic isn’t dulled unnecessarily by the varnish.

Ukko was painted in the Simon Bisley colour scheme from The Horned God: