Hello Everyone! Little Gotham Donovan here with a new article that I’m hoping to continue as I try and get everything painted this year! Its a crazy goal and I probably wont make it but I figured it might keep me motivated and help some of you readers out along the way!
So, what is this series which I have so cleverly named From Start to Finish. It will basically be me documenting my process for painting my own collection, from priming to basing. I will break each crew down to different parts so it will be easy to follow. The first part is prep, priming and pre-shading. Each following article will be a specific model and/or group of similar henchmen.Now I do use an airbrush, but that doesn’t mean you have to have one to achieve these effects. You can use light drybrushing and follow along to get a similar look, or use rattle cans. If you go that route I would only use 2 or at most 3 coats for preshading since rattlecan paint tends to be thicker than most other painting. I use a $20 airbrush for ALL of my work. You don’t have to spend a lot to get really nice effects. Here is a link to my setup that you can get on amazon.
Finally always remember the words of the late great Bob Ross, there are no mistakes, only happy accidents. It sounds corny but once you just let yourself really experiment and not worry about if you are painting the “right” way, it makes the process much more enjoyable and makes you a much better paint. Anyway lets get to the good stuff!
My first crew that I will be documenting will be my brand new League of Assassins! Anyway lets get into a little into about the crew and what I am thinking for a general color scheme.
So here is the picture of everything before priming. There is a couple free agents in the background but don”t worry about them (maybe at a later date). Forgive the bad pictures, that is also something I will be trying to improve with these articles. So as you can see I have the league batbox, Ras starter, Damien and Malcolm. It is every standard legal model (except re released Mauser Talia, totally forgot about her…like everyone else).
First thing first we are gonna use our black stynylrez, then spray the model from a 45 degree angle with GW Rhinox Hide. We are using a brown basecoat because first its a solid shade color and also because of the overall scheme of each model in the crew, which I should probably mention now. I love the look of the new Hassassins and Heretic. The cream robes, with red accents look amazing so we are going to make everything fit with that scheme. Now the free agents and leaders/ Sidekicks all have green as a major color, so we will be painting those mostly stock. They will stand out on the tabletop, and because of the neutral cream and red, they will look compliment each other when displayed together.
So at this point we are going to let the airbrush do a lot of work for us and use it to paint the robes and clothing. At this point we will separate the models that will be majority cream from the others. After a 50/50 mix of GW Rhinox Hide and GW Baneblade Brown we get our first look at the models with some color. Now this again will be sprayed at a 45 degree angle but not as heavy as the rhinox hide.
Alright, so now we will spray straight Baneblade Brown from almost directly above the model, again leave some previous color behind so we have a nice transition.
Alright final color and the models are already coming to life! I gave a straight coat of GW Rakarth Flesh over all the models, including those we put aside earlier. Not only does that give us a good contrast between the original rhinox hide and the rakarth flesh, it will make the other colors have a slightly earthier tone since we are not using straight black and white. A little tip, whenever you are going to use white or black either replace them or mix in/with some kind of color. It will make all of your colors richer and more interesting.
So our robes are pretty much done and everything is preshaded! Now we can get to the fun parts starting with our 4 Hassassins! I hope you enjoyed and got something out of this article and if there is anything you want to see more of or have any questions or feedback let me know. I have never tried to do a tutorial this in depth before so there is always room for improvement. Happy Gaming!
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