My Attempt At Painting: Warhammer Underworlds Shadespire - The Tabletop Hub

Hey everyone, Sam here from the Tabletop Hub and today I’m back with another painting tutorial where I try my hand at painting the Farstriders from Warhammer Underworlds Shadespire. For those of you who are new to the series, I’m not a professional painter but I’m on a journey and I’m getting better and always learning new things, my hope is that through these painting tutorials you’ll also pick up a few new ideas and equally be inspired to pick up a paintbrush and go paint some mini’s.

First off I gave all three miniatures a zenithal undercoat just so I could pick out the highlights and shadows more easily when painting the miniature, we’re going to be focusing on the paint job of one miniature in this video but I’ll touch upon the different finishing touches I added to all three at the end.

To begin I mixed some of Army Painter’s Gunmetal and applied this to all of the shadowed areas of the armour on the miniature.

Once this was done I took Army Painters Plate Mail Metal and applied this to the highlighted and mid-tone areas of the armour, don’t worry if some areas need more than one coating, we aren’t in any rush and it’s better to add a few thin coats that layer on a couple of thick coatings and cover up some of the more intricate details of the miniature. At the areas where the shadowed layer and the highlighted area met, I just blended the two layers together as best as I can, for this I find that just having little to no more paint left on your brush is best. Personally I didn’t want to wet the brush to do this just because I felt it might be too much but just a blend did the trick.

Next I got some Army Painter Oak Brown and added some Matt Black to the paint to give it a really rich dark look, as you’ll see I had painted on some Leather Brown previously but it just wasn’t dark enough and I wanted my paint scheme for the Farstriders to be more of an aged and rugged medieval look with hints of regality. This darker tone really worked well when offset by the gold and metal that we’ll see later on.

I used this same brown mixture to paint onto the shadowed ares of the Farstriders cloak both on the fur at the back and the lining on the inside. For the highlighted areas of the fur and cloak I instead took some Army Painter Leather Brown and added a dash of Matt Black for the same effect and just to bring down the lightness of the brown by a shade or two. Again much with the armour, I blended the two layers of brown together to make them fade between one another and I think it gave it a really nice look with a very simple technique.

Next I took some Army Painter Greedy Gold and painted the decorative parts of the armour, now I actually applied a lot more gold to this first miniature which I think in the end was too much, for the other two Farstriders I actually stripped it back a little bit which you’ll see. I think when it comes to the gold less is definitely more, but the main chest piece, the little lightning bolts on the knees, cloak lining and shoulder as well as some of the feature of the helmet and belt buckle all look really great when painted.

For the plume of the helmet I took some Army Painter Deep Blue and accented this on the highlights with Army Painters Crystal Blue. Again you may find that they need a couple of coatings but don’t worry, just leave it to dry and come back for another coat until you get an even finish.

I actually used these two colours to paint the sword and melee weapons of the Farstriders using the same technique of Deep Blue on the shadowed or darker areas, Crystal Blue on the highlights.

For this soldier I used Greedy Gold and Oak Brown for the crossbow however I switched this up and used Gunmetal and Oak Brown for the other Farstriders which in the end I actually preferred, again it was all about balancing out the amount of gold used for me in the end and I felt like using Gunmetal here instead of Greedy Gold just complimented the warriors better.

Then we were onto the base, for the broken tree stumps I used the same technique and mixture we used for the Farstriders cloak, Oak Brown and Matt Black for the shadows, Leather Brown and Matt Black for the highlights and went over the stump and the roots with these two paints making sure to blend them together where possible, this just gives a really nice effect when it’s dried and the way the colours faded into each other was really nice.

For the slabs I used Army Painters Dungeon Grey for the slabs in shadow and Ash Grey for the slabs in the highlighted areas, now if you use the same paints the Ash Grey may look quite bright but once we add an ink at the end remember that that’ll bring it down a tone or two. This is always something to remember when you’re painting, especially if you are using Army Painters quick shade or a dark ink that although it may look a little bright now, what you add later will bring it down a shade or two so you’ve always got to be thinking ahead to the final product.

For the dirt I gave it a base coat of Leather Brown just to fill in the colour then to add some texture to the bases I got some of Vallejo’s mud-in-a-tub as I like to call it and added Brown Earth texture to these dirt areas, one thing I will say is that this dries quickly so if you make any mistakes you’ve got to act fast to get them wiped away. As you can see I used quite a wide dry brush to apply this so make sure to give your brushes a good clean afterwards as you will have little bits of grit in it. I would equally recommend you change your water after cleaning you mud brush as you don’t want that grit getting into your brushes and affecting the rest of your painting. Once this was all done though I ran my thumb around the base edge and just rubbed or picked off any excess mud.

Once this was complete I took some of Citadel’s Nuln Oil and applied this Ink generously to the entire miniature, this just seeped into all of the little cracks in the miniature and really added a nice punch to the overall look of the Farstriders that I was really impressed with.

With regards to the other warriors, for the Farstriders champion I used Army Painters Electric Blue to colour in his little orb attached at his waist.

For the eagle or hawk he has on his shoulder, I painted the shadows of the eagle Oak Brown, the highlights Leather Brown and the breast Bonewhite from Vallejo. I wasn’t overly pleased with my paintwork for the eagle but it was the first time I’d painted an animal like this so I had to cut myself a little slack.

But folks that is it, that was my paint choices and techniques for painting the Farstriders from Warhammer Underworlds Shadespire, what do you think?