Crazyredcoat’s Crazy Compendium of Collected Creativity

So a friend and I have a bit of a running joke with Warhammer II Total War. We accidentally created a character (who’s full name shall not be uttered here), Cosmic. Long story short, Cosmic now appears in every campaign I play in that game. Last time, she was a Dark Elf Supreme Sorceress and their in-game portrait has purple hair.

And I decided; ‘I can do that no problem!’ And here follows the story of my attempt…

First things first, I knew I wanted the roots to be far darker than the tips of the hair. I could have done this with lots of washes (and that may have been faster), but I decided I could do it with Contrast Black Templar. Only problem there is that Contrast needs a brighter base to go over, so I decided that Pink Horror should do… It kind of worked.

Next came the contrast. I’m not sure how much more this added that successive layers of shade wouldn’t have achieved, but this was an experiment after all.

Then I tried to darken down the pink with Druchii Violet.

So I guess there’s an item limit on posts? I got to 12 then couldn’t add any more to the last entry… Ah well… The continuation begins!

Next came more drybrushing moving ever closer to the tips of the hair with ever brighter colours (there was two, I make this sound like a 30 hour marathon paint session…).

And that was that. Worked out nicely, but maybe could have skipped a few steps in the process. Below are some final pics including a painted feather in the hair for a spot of contrast in the work. Only real problem now is that the rest of the mini will be a pain in the proverbials to paint…

A long time ago (well maybe a year or two), I started painting some of my British Bolt Action chaps. Being the uniform buff that I am, I looked into all sorts of stuff and came to the conclusion that the webbing would have been beige in colour…so I painted a whole bunch of my guys like that. Then I read about the blanco they would put on to protect the material from the elements, and that turned the beige webbing into a green colour. A boo-boo had been made. I’ve done a few experiments in the past to fix this, but they were using the stock I had on hand and it just wasn’t the right kind of green. So what to do?

The first test was on my 6pdr gun. Now when I painted this originally, the crew were not attched to the base and pulling them off would have been problematic, so I was looking for a simple way to change the colour with little effort. Previous experiments had shown that shades of light colours can do a lot to change a colour quickly, so that was my first test.

The next idea was repainting. For obvious reasons, this is not the most endearing of ideas, but my mini of Maj. James Rutherford-Lumley was fairly well posed to make getting to the webbing not too hard. I do like the colour I got here. In many ways it is a closer uniform colour than the darker green I have here, but I’m going to invoke the ‘colour variation is ok’ from above and also the rule on contrast. There needs to be some difference between the two items to make them stand out. This is subtle here, but would be much less so if I went to 100% accurate colours all round. Imagine the tunics and such are wet.

While the colour is better on the repainted webbing, I do not want to try and redo all my webbing on 15 or so minis, so I will use the shading method to redo (eventually) and stick to the slower method for all new projects, the first of which should be coming soon with a NW Europe theatre Rupert coming shortly! I also really quite like that green for a camo colour, too, so maybe a Panzer IV may make an appearance soon…

So I did say I’d be working on a Rupert, but the mini is actually more of a Sergeant, so we’re going to go with that and I’ve found another mini that I shall get at some point that will be my Rupert. Eventually. I’ve put a lot of time into getting a close colour match for British WW2 uniforms (or WW1 for that matter as the colour was the same or very similar) using the GW range. That is a little trickier than with other ranges because of the names, but Steel Legion Drab is the colour to go with, I find.

As a final aside here, the main reason this chap is a Sergeant more than an officer is his pack. Officers, in my research, were not issued with packs, though I am sure many of them on prolonged engagements were happy to lug around some extra stuff where the need was there, plus it would have helped them blend into their men (which helps with being shot first). Just an interesting tit-bit I thought I’d throw in.

The finished piece. This chap has been primed for years just sitting on a shelf, so I’m glad he’s finally done. Very pleased with how he turned out and the only odd thing is the eyes being REALLY deep, but that was the sculpt more than anything.

The next mini I’m working on is something that it a little more personal for me, in a weird way. I don’t recall where this mini came from as he was given to me by my brother a year or so ago. However, Nordic Mythology, and Scandinavia in general, are rather dear to me, so I really wanted to make a good job of the Lord of Valhalla.

Odin is now finished! I am very happy with how he turned out. Just a few more reference ideas before I get to the finished piece. Muninn and Huginn were a little difficult to achieve as looking ‘real’ while not just looking like black blobs on his shoulders. I ended up looking at raven photos online and found that the sun can give them a brown tint, which I think I’ve achieved.

The other tell-tale sign that this is the Allfather is that of Gungnir, Odin’s spear. Using some of the other references images for Viking Spears I just decided to go with a dark wood of an old spear. Many of the images show Odin as more of a Gandalf figure, which I wanted to avoid. I really wanted him to look like a normal old man wandering the fjyørds of Norway, which I think I’ve achieved quite nicely.

And now the Lord of the Æsir, husband of Frigg, in all his humble glory!

Next up is a Luftwaffe Officer! I have rather a lot of German Officer models lying around here and there so I thought I may as well experiment with different branches and colours (you may see a Sturmgeschutz Officer appear at some point…). Of course when dealing with historicals it never hurts to do a bit of research (see ‘The Blanco Problem’ below…) and so a bit of research was done!

Some final notes before we get to the mini himself, starting with the helmet. Normally, the Luftwaffe would wear helmets in the same blue-grey as their uniforms, or they would camouflage the helmets like the Heer. For some reason, I decided that I wanted an un-camoed (I swear it’s a technical term) helmet then discovered that I didn’t have the right badge for the side…so I decided that this chap accidentally forgot his helmet when he showed up to the front, so the local quartermaster just gave him an old helmet from the stores. It probably happened once, right?

Secondly is the brown leather. As the artwork of the OR above shows the belting in the black leather it might seem odd, but he is a member of the Luftwaffe Feld Divisions which we, later in the war, equipped by the Heer and so had a lot of the same kit. However, a lot of images of Luftwaffe Officers show brown leather, that I wanted to replicate for a bit of contrast and to add just that bit more to the idea that this poor chap arrived at the front thinking he would be in a plane only to be told that there’s not enough of them and he has to use this MP40.

Anyways…ON TO THE MINI!

The next mini I am working on will take up a few posts and is a King’s German Legion Hussar from Perry Miniatures (I actually know where this one comes from! Magical!). Thought I’d start with the horse, because it has been quite some time since I painted one. First things first, as this is a historical mini, I need to consider the types of horses used, so I went to artworks of the KGL Hussars.

The horse pictured resembles the colouration of Bay horses near perfectly so I went looking into that with one thought from my brother; ‘it should have socks!’ So I found some images as references including markings, though I never ended up using face markings, I decided to put the image here for others, if they want to do it.

All that’s left is the final (well not final, but final) product! I will do the accoutrements and cloth as a separate post before moving on the Hussar Officer himself.

Carrying on from the last post, we have the non-horse bits of the Perry Miniatures Napoleonic British Hussars plastic officer. That’s a lot of words, but with the range Perry has for Napoleonics it’s a good idea to be accurate! On to the researchy bit again! I know it might sound boring, but I like it, so there!

So…yeah… That’s a next to useless image… I was mainly using an image of another painter with his 2nd KGL Hussars, but due to the problems of not knowing how to get permission to share, the best I will give is a link to the image.

http://rogerspaintworks.blogspot.com/2015/07/2nd-kgl-hussars.html

Want to make sure the credit goes where it is meant to be!

There was also a written source that I looked for regarding the 2nd KGL Hussars and found this webpage here ( http://www.napolun.com/mirror/napoleonistyka.atspace.com/British_cavalry.htm#britishlightcavalry ) that gives a whole whack of information on British Cavalry but also uniform differences. Long story short, the lace for the 2nd KGL Hussars was yellow. As was the rule in the army at the time, if the lace was yellow, officers wore gold instead (if white it was silver). Are you all asleep, yet? Probably. Let’s just get to a mini, shall we?

So the tack on the horse is something of a slight improvisation as I couldn’t find specific information about the tack on officer’s horses, but I like the look. You’l also notice the base is not exactly inspiring, but it’s not done yet. A nice flat colour makes it look clean, but until the rider is finished, the horse gets no grass! Speaking of which, here is a picture with the very grey officer on the horse just to show where the model will be covered by the officer’s legs.

And I think that about wraps up the Spring Clean Challenge for this project; though I will continue on after this, have no doubt. Hopefully I’ll still be adding to this when the next one comes along!

It took me a lot longer than I would care to admit to come up with that title. Just not enough good trouser jokes… Such is life…

Anyhoo… I promised a rider for the horse, and work has begun! Because a lot of my uniform research is probably rather boring I thought I’d do posts on individual parts so that I don’t spam-post a lot of boring details. Or to be more accurate, I’m not that productive and the trousers were all I managed to do over an entire weekend. So going out of a limb, here, I’m going to assume you have all heard of this chap:

Now Mr. Sharpe is not known for riding horses. In the novels he is not very good at riding them. Read the books. They’re great. However, he wears Rifle Officer trousers here (though again in the books he knicked a pair of a dead Colonel of the Imperial Guard). The thing about Rifle Officers (and actually the first 2 Light Infantry Regiments (43rd Monmouthshire and 52nd Oxford), if I remember correctly*) is that they wore light cavalry pattern uniforms, but in green. The important part about all this, is the leather inserts to the inside leg and cuffs of the trousers. These are to prevent wear on the wool or canvas of the trousers. Long story short, it is going to chafe something awful if you had to ride a horse for a while with the crotch of your trousers worn away… Here’s some actual Troopers and officers showing the various designs that you should be able to make out the leather patches that Perry sculpt into the minis.

*As a small edit, I did further research and found that the 52nd (Oxford) Light Infantry officers wore regular pattern uniforms, whereas the 43rd (Monmouthshire) Light Infantry officers wore regular pattern uniforms, but added a red pellise and slightly different headgear. The Perry twins do an excellent 43rd command!

The trousers themselves can be canvas or wool, with the canvas being white and the wool being a grey colour. The white trousers were worn earlier in the war, but were also usually breeches with high riding boots rather than the grey wool trousers. Cavalry had a stripe running down the legs that coincided with their cording colour (yellow in the case of the 2nd KGL Hussars) which would be metallic for officers. The grey I went for is actually shown on the box art for the Perry Hussars, shown here:

And here, finally, is the finished piece. Or at least the trousers… Due to the problem of grey on grey, I did basecoat the dolman jacket and pelisse just to make the trousers easier to spot.

Also, as a question to those out there, do you find my reference research a bit daunting/annoying, and would you prefer some more painting tutorial focused posts? I can try and do some sort of middle ground, though Napoleonic British uniforms are something I can just go on and on about for days…

Just a short* update today. Long story short, there’s a stereotype that men never read the instructions…though experience has taught me that this is just true; we don’t. Turns out that Perry have a guide in the box for how to paint the riders and saddles and also turns out I made some mistakes. Luckily, a bit of careful painting allowed me to rectify them fairly quickly as most were simple colour changes. The most important part of this was a part of the research that I forgot about with British Cavalry; Campaign vs. Parade.

The first, glaring, mistake this shows is the shabraque** which I originally painted with a solid gold band as I assumed it would have been in the same colour of the cording on his jacket, this was wrong on both the service (campaign) example and the parade one…and there was no way I was painting the dags along all the folds. So campaign it is.*** The roll on the back of the saddle was also something I had mistakenly got the colours wrong on. I went for a grey-blue that a lot of British equipment like water canteens and gun carriages were painted in, but it is clearly meant to be the same blue as the uniform. These were both easy enough fixes on the horse and I’ve done that already.

He looks a little less flashy now, but he looks accurate! Or as good as I can manage with what I have. The stripe on the leg of the rider was also an incorrect colour as I, again, assumed they were in cording colours, but alas they are in facing colours**** which, for the 2nd KGL, are white though I did them in silver to be a bit more flashy again. As I’m still working on an entry for the jackets, I will save those images for later, but I thought it’d be a good idea to show where research can sometimes lead you astray…and to check the boxes for some hints…

*Or as short as I get…

**The technical name for the cloth under the officer’s saddle, I knew it had one…

***I do intend to use these chaps on a battlefield one day, after all.

****The colour of the cuffs and collars which denoted regiments in the army at the time.

When last we saw our hero, he was but a trousered man with a vaguely blue jacket, now he is completed. The previous research all sort of adds up to this chap, so I won’t go too deep into it here. The important thing I will add to anyone wanting to paint their own Napoleonic units (of any kind) is to be wary of regimental intricacies. To take the British Hussars, for example, they all have white cording…except the KGL who have yellow…but then again except the 3rd KGL who are back to white. It rapidly becomes a rabbit hole, but there are always sources to help. I would always recommend the Osprey books on various units, nations, campaigns, ect. They are a great resource and have some damn good artwork. Besides, who doesn’t love books?

Hopefully tomorrow I can have the horse all based up and our friend here glued in place, so expect one last outing of this chap when he’s finally reunited with his horse.

And now horse and rider are reunited! Ready to take to the fields of Spain to teach the British Cavalry how professionals do the job.* Very glad with how he turned out and quite fun to delve into an old love of mine with uniform research. Shame I neglected British Cavalry of the period; I’ve always been better at the infantry… I may actually use the British Infantry that I have lying around to create a library of sorts of British Infantry regiments. It’ll be fun to put together, I think.

*British cavalry at the time had a reputation for chasing off after the first Frenchman to show up rather that wait for the best opportunity to charge.

The next project that I’ll be working through is a Highlander during the Crimean War. Following a bit of advice from @scribbs, I’m going to divide these posts up a little bit with this first post focusing on background research and such and the other posts dealing with the more hobby-like things like paint choices and such like. So this chap may take centre stage here for a few posts much like the Hussar before him.

The Crimean War is something a little special when working with models. It is, as far as I know, the first war in which we have photographs of soldiers in their uniforms. They’re mostly black a white, and a lot were taken after the war when they returned home to Britain, but we have them. There is only one slight problem with this, though, which is easiest to show with some photographs, so let’s do that quick.

On the left we have a photograph of soldiers in the field, whereas the one of the right is a (fantastically) colourised photo from one of the many photoshoots after the war. The jackets here are not at all similar, and that is because of a change in British uniforms that occurred during the war. Long story short, the British Army has a history of learning it’s mistakes during wars and adapts accordingly. Here it was a simple matter of the tight-fitted jackets with tails was just not as efficient as the tunics that, with a few noticeable changes, are not that different from dress uniforms today. Comparing these uniforms to the uniforms of our chap, it’s obvious that he is wearing the earlier pattern of uniform which means we have to rely more on artwork that using the photos taken after the war. These lads also don’t show any highlanders at all, so let’s move onto some specific details there.

Firstly, for anyone interested, the ‘regular’ soldiers here are both wearing Napoleonic style crossbelts, so if anyone wonders why their Crimean War minis don’t have all the belts, have no fear. The two highlanders, though, have some differences that I want to address and have also dictated some choices in painting. First up the facings are different colours, which nicely and quickly tells us these are two different regiments, in fact the kilts tell us that the leftmost highlander is a soldier of the 93rd (Sutherland) Highlanders, and the other is a member of the 42nd, the famous Black Watch. There is also an important detail on the jacket that meant that I couldn’t paint my highlander as a Black Watch man, and that is the taping. Usually at a wargaming scale this part is near inconsequential and shouldn’t affect most hobbyists, but as this mini is going to be a display mini for me I wanted to get as much accuracy as possible, and the taping on my Highland lad is that of the 93rd. Remember, though, that this was a personal choice and any personal choices you may make are up to you. So don’t let anyone tell you how to do your own hobby.

Again, the addition of a beltplate here on the crossbelt may be incorrect, as it does not appear in the photographs, but may also have been reserved for parades. I am not entirely sure, but I could look into it…I may even have a book somewhere… I love books. So this gives us all the basics that we need to paint the uniform of our chap, however he does have a magnificent beard, so that will need some attention. As a Scotsman, I have every intention of painting is in a blazing orange as befits a man of his stature and there is only one place I feel I needed to go for visual reference for that!

The only thing that hasn’t really been touched upon now if the rifle (and it is a rifle and not a musket, though sometimes called a Rifled Musket) but as the P53 Enfield is just a simple stock with some brass and steel fittings the only thing to look into is whether or not the metal was blued/browned or ‘in the white’, and that will take no time at all to cover when we get to painting it!

So that about covers it! Stay tuned for more work on the man himself in future updates. I will probably do an entire post on tartan when I get to that…but it mildly scares me, so I may do the jacket first… More is on the way!

In the first installment we have started with the most obvious part of the model that is NOT tartan. All colours here were chosen to match the colours and designs of the previous post with the painting steps given here. Nothing too fancy with techniques used here, mostly simple layering and shading. Let’s get down to the steps starting with the red part of the Thin Red Line.

Simple layering transition here beginning with a Mephiston Red basecoated and shaded with Agrax Earthshade (I will get every last damn drop out of that pot!) before brightening up with a layer of Mephiston Red again followed by some edge highlights of Evil Suns Scarlet (which is not doing too well as paints go).

Next up is the taping and white details of the uniform. I also did some of the belting across the chest, but not all of it. This is mainly because it uses the same colour, so I may as well.

Just simple layering here. First coat was Celestra Grey with a simple layer of Ulthuan Grey. Were this mini a bit larger of a scale then I’d do more detail, but with the rifle held at the charge like this makes is rather difficult to do much more. At some point I also dotted in the buttons that were visible.

Next is the universal regiment indicator; facings!

Again, simple layering. The difficult part to reach is the collar, but that is rather difficult to see in the mini. Averland Sunset as a base with Yriel Yellow layered on top. Provided your basecoat is smooth and strong (two thin coats, ect.) the Yriel Yellow shows up very easily in subsequent layers.

And that is the coatee done! Honestly, the tunics would be much nicer to paint, but this has come out quite nicely. Here’s a final shot, complete with Lloyd shot!

Next up we’ll do the tartan, because if I finish much more of the mini it’ll be even worse to paint… Wish me luck!

Hopefully most of you get that reference. If not, watch Spaceballs. Herein lies the tale of the tartan. So if you look back to the research post, there were several examples of the tartan used by the Sutherlands and it actually looks more green than blue, so I naturally started with a blue basecoat. There is a very good reason the this; painting a grid is a lot easier than painting a square. That may sound strange, but it is true. So let’s get started with the blue!

And at this scale you can’t see anything else so we’re done here with the kilt!

Okay, so that’s bollocks. Next we’re going to add the green. Basically, we’re going to be drawing a grid. You can do this in one go, but here I chose to do the up and down stripes first to set the distances before adding in the lateral ones. We’re I being smart, I would have actually have let the paint stay a little transparent to have a nice easy buildup of colour where the lateral and vertical bands meet. I was not smart. Loren Green was the colour I chose here, but something with a touch more yellow in it may have been a closer match.

Now we need the detail work, and this is the tricky part. It takes a steady hand…something mine quite often isn’t. First thing to do is to outline the squares with the grey that is shown in the previous visual references. If I’m honest, I was not totally happy with the contrast here and it may be difficult to see in this light. I’m hoping it looks better in the morning with natural light. I followed the same policy of vertical lines first, but this time we only wanted to outline, but a fairly thick one. Hopefully you guys can see it in this image…

Then the final fine black lines. I actually did alright with these. Again going one way than the other worked very well here.

Next was time for some shade paints…but a from-the-pot nuln oil would have overpowered the pattern, I thought, so I made a 2:1 mix of Lahmian Medium to Nuln Oil. It’s subtle, but added enough that I chose not to attempt highlights. My hands are just not that stable most days. Forgive me.

All that was left was the sporran, which was mainly Black Templar Contrast with gold and white details picked out. I’m rather happy with the final product and I think I can now safely move on to the accoutrements with all the other parts out of the way.

Stranglely enough, that describes the chap and is the name of one of the marches of the 93rd! When we last saw our intrepid hero, he didn’t look like this.

So most of the in-between stuff was fairly simple base/shade/highlight with various colours and that is why I chose not to show and not because I got carried away and forgot to take progress pictures. Not at all. It’s not that I’m an idiot. I meant to do it… Help?

So the interesting parts would be the rifle, which I decided to ‘brown’ slightly with Agrax Earthshade simply because the colourised image shows a wearing away of a finish where the socket bayonet was taken on and off the muzzle, but the colours were simple enough. Another part was the socks. They have an interesting almost faded red pattern that I was originally not going to attempt, but then I accidentally thinned some red too thin and thought ‘let’s just try it’. Just some simple lines were painted in in the same pattern as the references. It’s not perfect, but it gets the idea across. The small white symbol on the water canteen in a broadhead arrow that I attempted to draw as this was the mark of the Board of Ordinance and showed government ownership over things; this would also be stamped into the bayonet, rifle, and various other things in the soldier kit.

While some of the black material was painted the traditional way, I did paint the hat using a Contrast method, and the skin was done in Contrast as well. All that’s left is the magnificent beard!

The most important thing here was colour choice. I had to stay clear of braight oranges because that would just make our man look like some sort of anime character with a fake beard. I went for slightly muted colours and make sure that I used Agrax Earthshade to add in the browner base tone to the hair. After that a very gentle overbrush of the Tau Light Ochre was used to just hit the lower beard a hint of brightness. I’m rather please with how it came out and just added that perfect final touch to the burly Scotsman.

Finally I painted the base in a flat brown just to tidy up paint spillage. As it stands, this chap it not planned to be part of any army, but that may change in the far future so I wanted to leave the base neat, but not based…just in case. And here is the man of the hour!

And to think, I managed all these posts and never once made a Crimea river joke! DAMMIT!

That title will almost certainly give the game away as to what is up next. And if you don’t recognise that line then read the books. The TV show is all well and good, but the books contain so much more intrigue and characters that it’s well worth your time. I don’t have a picture of the primed mini…yet…because he’s not due to arrive until tomorrow, but I’m getting antsy about wait for my new toys that I just had to start this ‘research’ post before I burst…

With that in mind, my next project will be Grey Wind from CMON’s A Song of Ice and Fire Miniatures Game.* Been a while since I attempted this much fur on a mini and I’m really looking forward to it. As the basis of CMON’s game is the books rather than the TV series I will be focusing heavily on those descriptions and imagery. Luckily, Grey Wind in the series isn’t too far off how he is described in the book. In fact, shall we compare?

Robb looks very different, though, eh? More on that later. The artwork here was taken from the Wiki of Ice and Fire article for Grey Wind that I am including a link for in the spirit of openness and intellectual property. The other was a basic google search, so I think you could all find that easily enough. The depictions here are very similar to the colourations of Grey Wolves (Canis lupus if we’re being technical) which I am taking as my ‘real life’ influence and because of some interesting colours found in the fur. Here’s a photo from a quick google image search for Eurasian grey wolves that should show what I mean.

The brown tones in the fur are something that I do want to try, but as Grey Wind is described as having ‘smoke grey’ fur, I think I will have some darker greys along the top fur, and maybe a little less of the brown, but he should be a very interesting project and I’m looking forward to it. I really hope the parcel comes tomorrow…

So after a week-long delay due to postage issues, progress on Grey Wind can start/finish! I was so excited to finally get him done that I finished him in one night. Almost finished his movement tray, too! More on that later.

Next process was to block in certain colours. I was going for a slightly darker grey on top than is maybe usual in ‘real life’, so I began with a strip of Eshin Grey along the upper portions of the wolf, including the head and tail. After that I was going to use the primer colour for the next ‘band’ so I painted a brown band using Tallarn Sand. After that I needed the brighter undercarriage of the wolf so I switched to Adminstratum Grey for that part. With both the Tallarn Sand and the Administratum Grey I used a single coat of paint to allow some grey to show through. I also use and older brush and applied the paint with a stabbing motion to give the patches a more random look.

Next I needed to tie the colours together and the fastest way to get that started is with shade paints. Normally for greys you would use a black shade, but I first used Agrax Earthshade as the slight brown hues in the recesses looks a little more like natural fur, though once this first coat was dried I did apply some Nuln Oil along the top to darken it down further and into some deeper recesses to emphasise them.

Now onto some highlights! I chose drybrushing for this part due to the ease and randomness that it gives the finish. It also helps that the sculpting on the fur of the mini is very welcoming to the technique. Starting with Mechanicus Standard Grey, again, I focused it on to the darker grey fur on the top but allowed it to slip onto the brown ‘line’ to give it an even more random and natural feel to it. I added no drybrush to the brown so that it sat more in the recesses than bright to make it look like less of a line. After that the lower portions were dryburshed with Dawnstone (with a touch of this going up into the darker greys) and then a lighter highlight of Administratum Grey on the lower portions and a touch on some sharper upper edges, though just a touch.

After the fur, a few minor details were done such as the tongue, teeth, eyes and nose were done. The eyes were filled with yellow with a black dot added. Originally it looked very off, so I added a shade of Nuln Oil to tidy up the whole thing; it worked ok, I think. The tongue was painted with Screamer Pink, shaded with Nuln Oil and then highlighted with some Pink Horror while the teeth were picked out in Tallarn Sand and highlighted with Screaming Skull. Finally the nose was picked out in black, highlighted with Eshin Grey, then given a coat of ‘Ardcoat Gloss Varnish to give it a little shine. After all that, he looked like this.

First thing would be to ‘clean up’ the rock with Mechanicus Standard Grey. It was a bit patchy, but that worked fine. As a Geology student, I know that rocks are not always uniform in colour. After that we needed to pick out the moss. Any green would do here, I chose Loren Forest. Next the rock was shaded with Agrax Earthshade, Athonian Camoshade, and Nuln Oil in patches that were allowed to mix freely. This helped give a natural feel, though the Nuln Oil may have been too strong and overpowering in places. After that, the texture paint was added (Stirland Battlemire in this case) as the drybrush highlight for it and the rock were the same. That drybrush Screaming Skull and the edge of the base was trimmed in Rhinox Hide to finish it off.