Slaying Dusty Boxes

Between the time I stopped working on my Slaine project I decided to start many more projects, and even finished a few of them.  Bear with me as I give a long story to explain painting my Slaine miniatures

Every Christmas, I exchange gifts with a group of friends.  Most of the time the gift giving is an attempt to get other members of the group into new addictions…err, I meant to say table top games.  I received Goliath Necromunda minis from a friend and thought they’d be a great project to learn how to use Contrast paints.

I joined a Contrast Paint Facebook Group and began learning about the paints and checking out all the projects people posted.  One day a post caught my eye where someone shared a tip how they would get better shading results from their minis.  This was before “Slap Chop” became popular, or at least before I ever heard of it.  Also, the tip had nothing to do with “Slap Chop”.

I decided to try this process out on my new Goliath Gang, the Chemcanal Studs, that I wanted to get finished for an upcoming store campaign.  The process is pretty simple.  You start by priming your minis with Wraithbone Spray.  Then you make a mix of 50/50 Basilicanum Grey/Contrast Medium and shade the entire mini.  It creates a nicely shaded, but somewhat darker base.  The last step to prep the minis is to do a drybrush of a lighter color.  I used the wraithbone paint from the pot.  I was very happy with the results for my first Contrast painted army.

Many months later a little company called Army Painter came out with Speedpaints 2.0. I was lucky enough to get the Most Wanted set during last year’s Christmas Season.

I wanted to try these paints out and was able to get a few miniatures primed that I’ve had sitting untouched.  The minis I decided to use come from a Ukrainian company and are sold by the Plastic Models Store.  They are super tiny zombies from the Dark Alliance Zombie Set 1. I use these unpainted minis for my old Zombies!!! board game from Twighlight Creations to add some variety to the zombies that came in the box.

It was a lot of fun painting up these little figures after Christmas and I like some of the paints better than the Contrast paints I used for my Goliath Gang and Enforcers.

Now we’ve finally arrived to my project.  Getting those Slaine minis out of the box and slapping some paint on them.

I used the same process to prep my Slaine minis that I used on my Goliath gang.  All of the miniatures were primed using Wraithbone spray.  The two miniatures in the photo are examples of the prep process before using Contrast or Speedpaints.  Slough Throt only has the 50/50 mix of Basilicanum Grey/Contrast Medium.  The Skull Sword has a dry brushing of Wraithbone paint from the pot.  I think it helps create a smooth shading on the miniatures where the “Slap Chop” technique makes a miniature look rough or chalky with the colors.

You’ve successfully survived reading through my long winded story about how I learned to use contrast and speed paints, details about a few of my random projects, and how I prepped my Slaine minis.

Next up, I’ll share my painting progress.