“Our Blades Are Sharp” – ASOIAF House Bolton

Painted throughout December this project was an interesting change from the usual Warhammer and Infinity the Game commissions. The House Bolton was my very first confrontation with miniatures by CoolMiniOrNot and I must admit that the sculpts are just amazing – full of character and very well themed.

The main theme of the army is a mix of box art and unit cards art spiced with my personal preferences. I felt that gritty, dark and bloodied was the best direction to represent the grim character of the House Bolton.

The project started as usual with all miniatures getting unpacked, counted and checked for any issues. Fortunately all arrived in perfect condition allowing me to move directly to the painting process…

As usual with a projects on such a scale I started with a “test batch”. I prefer to show a small sample of finished miniatures to my customers before committing to painting the entire collection. This is a perfect moment to introduce any last minute adjustments like changing the paint job level or some key color scheme directives…

With the Test Batch accepted I was ready to begin the bulk painting process of the remining collection. This is something I specialize in and that I really enjoy doing. Due to repetition and focus, painting one layer at a time on the whole collection is a very cathartic experience.

With a few exceptions, most miniatures followed a coherent color scheme and all had a few common layers. This allowed me to bring all of them to a certain moment within the painting process, before grouping them into a few slightly divergent groups, get less repetitive colors done and pull all the miniatures back into the main bulk for the finishing touches.

After about three weeks of painting the House Bolton project was finalized. All miniatures painted and photographed got presented to the customer and won their approval. What’s left now is to thoroughly package all the miniatures for shipping and say farewells.

It is great to see how even on this basic paint job level the army presents itself really well by the merit of coherent color scheme and a common theme. But that is my own opinion – do you agree? Let me know in the comments 😉

Also, if you feel like taking a deeper look under the skin of this project (hehe you see what I did there?) be sure to check out this gallery for more pictures, including some bloody close-ups.