Subedai's Fantastical Fighting Forces
The Ringwraiths Gather
I’ve been carrying on with painting some individual models for The Lord of The Rings, currently concentrating on the forces of Mordor. The models are from the Citadel Miniatures and Mithril Miniatures ranges.
Edit: Adding a description of the painting process and paints used that I wrote up in reply to a comment.
Starting with a black base coat, I used three greys (GW’s Skavenblight Dinge, Eshin Grey, Mechanicus Standard Grey) for successive highlighting, all thinned down a bit to be somewhat transluscent and applied to raised areas. With the first two paints I would apply more than a single layer in places where I want to work the highlight up so it becomes more solidly grey. Then I put a wash of Nuln Oil over the top, applying it several times where I wanted to darken down the grey highlights more.
I pretty much always work up from a black base coat rather than shade down if I want to portray black. I often use dark blues up to blueish greys as highlights, but for the Nazgûl I didn’t want that impression of colour.
I do find such pure black to be a really tough challenge. I was painting a miniature with a black dress, and I’ve tried going from essentially a medium blue-grey and working it down successively darker, wasn’t too happy with the result. So I tried again this time going the other way, starting with more or less pure black and layering successively lighter greys and finally a slightly blue-tinged highlight, overall I think it worked better. Can I ask what process you used here?
Starting with a black base coat, I used three greys (Skavenblight Dinge, Eshin Grey, Mechanicus Standard Grey) for successive highlighting, all thinned down a bit to be somewhat transluscent and applied to raised areas. With the first two paints I would apply more than a single layer in places where I want to work the highlight up so it becomes more solidly grey. Then I put a wash of Nuln Oil over the top, applying it several times where I wanted to darken down the grey highlights more. I pretty much always work up from a black base coat rather… Read more »
Yeah, I was really surprised just how dark Eshin Grey ends up, I used it on some Skorza with the intent of dark grey, and ended up having to do a lot of successive lighter grey passes. In the end, it probably worked out better though, by forcing me to put the effort into so many layers!
I know what you mean about the blue tinge, it can end up a bit too strong very easily. Also, I love Nuln oil, I use it whenever I can!