Quick and Simple General Grievous

Once the miniatures had been assembled I used some double sided tape to fix them to a pice of foam board. I first sprayed them with a Khaki primer. Once this had dried I masked up the bases with some tape and sprayed the figures again, this time using a bright white.

This picture below shows the result. This step is only necessary for me to pre colour my bases to match the rest of my legion models. 

One thing I really enjoy about painting Star Wars miniatures is researching their colour schemes. While looking through lots of images of General Grievous, I noticed that he was often depicted in a clean white, even though the movie version tended to have a pale ivory or bone like colouration. The difference can be seen in the images below.

As I had two versions of the General Grievous model, I thought it might be fun to try out both colour schemes.

I’m intending to paint these two in just three steps (this being the first). The first and longest part of applying the block colours, was painting in all of the grey areas. For this I used Flames of War Green Grey.

The little bit of flesh around Grievous eyes was painted Kislev Flesh before Averland Sunset was used to pick out the eye balls themselves. The lightsaber handles were painted Lead Belcher. At this point I was having difficulties colouring beneath the cape and so I decided to remove it. Using a blunt knife I gently loosened the bond between the cape and the torso section until the two parts were separated. I also had to remove the head in order to lift the cape away!

For the inner lining of the cape, Contrast Blood Angels Red was used directly over the white. The back of the cape was painted Abbadon Black.

I decided my four armed General Grievous would get the bone colouration seen in the movie stills. This was achieved by using the Contrast Paint Skeleton Hoard, thinned down with a little water. I only used the contrast on the white areas and was careful not to get too much on the grey.

For the two armed version of Grievous, I went with the cleaner, blue white appearance. The Contrast paint Apothecary White gives the perfect effect for this look and was used here over all the white armoured areas.

I used Nuln oil over the grey parts of both figures as well as over the red of the cape lining. To add some highlights to the back of the cape I mixed equal parts of Kantor Blue and Abaddon Black and applied it to the most raised areas. For both figures I used a wash of Ogryn Flesh in and around the eyes.

The Contrast Skeleton Hoard had left Grievous a little darker than I would’ve liked, so I used Skull White to pick out the most raised areas of plate, applying it almost as a dry brush.

The lightsabers for both figures were painted with the Contrast paints, Warp Lightning and Talassar Blue, respectively. I found the best way to achieve a glow effect was by using a few thin washes of the paint mixed with water and medium. It takes a bit of patience but by leaving each layer to dry fully before applying the next, a more translucent effect could be achieved. I also went back over the eyes with Averland Sunset to brighten them up.

I was happy with the Apothecary White finish so no further work was required to the two armed version. I experimented by applying a little of the Warp Lightning and Talassar Blue to either side of the front knee, as well as the forearms. This was a simple way of creating a glow effect from the lightsabers.

Once the cape and head were reattached both figures were finished!