Mantic Frost Giant

When I was asked to paint the frost giant, I was really pleased. I’ve been eyeing it up for a while, but I already have a Trident Realms army that I need to finish, so I’d been holding off buying any project pieces lately. They wanted the frost giant on the cover of Vollo’s Guide to Monsters book as reference, and I was more than happy to go with the blue tinged skin/white beard combo in all its Alpha Papa Smurf glory. I made a start on him today.

I always use a grey undercoat, as close in colour to the original plastic/resin as possible. For me, I find this colour lets me see all the detail on the model a lot more clearly than, say, black. It also gives a nice, fresh finish to my colours, and I do like my colours.

• First step was getting a nice blue base coat on his skin. I know a lot of people do skin/faces last, but I’ve always done them first. I used Citadel Hoeth Blue, and got a nice even coat of that down.
• I decided I wanted to use as little ink wash on this model as possible, to challenge myself to develop my skills in layering/glazes etc, but I did use a light wash of Army Painter blue shade on his skin here.
• Next up I mixed a glaze from Vallejo Sky Blue, and the Hoeth Blue and picked out the large flat areas of muscle. There were quite a lot. Frost Giant does not skip leg day.
• Now, I added some MSP Bones Undead Flesh to the glaze and did another pass, applying to a smaller area this time.
• Once more, with slightly more Undead Flesh, on a slightly smaller area.
• I finished off with the tiniest drybrush of pure white just on the absolute most raised areas. You can barely see it, but I know it’s there.