Painting Shadespire Bloodreavers

I've written up a step-by-step guide to how I painted the Bloodreavers in the Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire core set. These were the first Bloodreavers I've painted, and the first Khorne models of any kind really. I took pictures along the way, though they didn't turn out great. Hopefully you get the idea. Unless specified, all of the paints are out of production Citadel/Games Workshop paints from their previous (and now replaced) range.

The method I came up with ends up being pretty fast, and I think it would be good for painting up a bunch of models in large batches. There are a lot of steps, but most of them are easy and don't require careful painting, so they go quickly. The washes at the end really help obscure any mistakes. As you can see from the pictures, I don't worry too much as I go along about making mistakes or getting good coverage, especially on the early steps, because it will get fixed later. Each picture is the result of the several steps listed above. Have a look at my process below and let me know what you think of the results.

Kingdom Death Screaming Antelope Armor Survivors

I have now finished magnetizing and painting the Antelope Armor Survivors from the Kingdom Death: Monster core game. This was an easy and straight-forward kit to magnetize. Everything fit together well. There aren't a lot of antelope weapons, so I included some of the White Lion weapons in these pictures. As for the painting, I just painted most of it the same way as I painted the fur on my Screaming Antelope. I suppose there isn't much else to say about them. Have a look at the pictures below and let me know what you think.

Kingdom Death White Lion Armor Survivors

I've finished magnetizing and painting the Lion armor kit from the Kingdom Death: Monster core game. This set presented some interesting challenges when it came to the magnetizing. The first was the inclusion of a bow. I used some of the empty hands to hold the quiver and the two different kinds of arrows for use with the bows, rather than attach the quiver to a body. I think this works pretty well, though not all of the arm positions are really suited for a bow wielder.

Another issue I had is that the big collars make it impossible to fit many of the heads on these bodies. The major issue, however, is those little claws at the wrists of all the arms. They make it very difficult to fit some of the weapons, and this is compounded by some of the weapon hands being awkwardly positioned and difficult to make look natural to begin with (such as the cat fang knife and the katars). In retrospect, I should have just cut those little claws off at least half the models so I would have at least one male and one female who could hold pretty much any weapon without them getting in the way. Honestly, I may eventually go back and cut them off (maybe all of them) and just touch up the paint job. It would probably be worth it.

The painting on these was pretty straight forward. I just tried to paint them pretty much how I painted my White Lion. I tried to make sure there was enough difference between the flesh color of the survivors and the color of the lion skin so that they stood out from each other. I gave the one head orange hair because I thought he looked like Lion-O from Thundercats.

Unlike the other armor kits, this one came with five sets of body/legs. Two of the pairs of female legs were identical, so one of them I posed leaning way forward to make look different from the other one. The problem with that is that her head is facing down and she's not looking where she's running. I wish I had thought of that before hand and put the magnet in at a different angle to have her looking straight ahead.

Kingdom Death Phoenix

I have finally tackled painting the Phoenix for Kingdom Death: Monster. I wanted it to look more colorful than in the official artwork, and more colorful than the other monsters I've painted. I went with a red/orange/yellow look to the feathers, which also goes well with the name of the monster. I did a really simple paint job on the feathers. I base coated the whole thing white, then painted bands of red, orange, and yellow ink, with some overlap in between. It worked pretty well, but in retrospect I should have done some dry-brushing or stippling where the colors meet, especially the orange and yellow, to get it to blend together better. Obviously it could have looked better if I had painted the feathers individually, but I wasn't going to spend that much time on it. For something quick I think this looks decent, and maybe I'll go back and blend it together better sometime in the future.

After I finished the feathers, the rest was pretty straight forward. Most of the rest is painted a fleshy color, with the little sores or whatever they are in a pinker shade. I don't think I've ever painted something this big that wasn't terrain, so it was interesting trying to paint the huge areas of flesh. But I just painted them the same way I would paint any area of skin, including a wash at the end, and it worked fine. I don't know where to get a 100 mm diameter clear acrylic base, so for now it is temporarily on a plain black base. I think the branch he is standing on is supposed to be up in a tree anyway, so I think it would look a little strange no matter what kind of base he was on.

Have a look at the pictures below and let me know what you think.

Warhammer Quest Centaurs (Reaper Miniatures)

I've finished painting six Reaper Miniatures centaurs for use in Warhammer Quest. Games Workshop doesn't have centaur miniatures, so this is what we went with way back when we were first playing Warhammer Quest. I tried out several different horse colors to give some variation to the identical miniatures. I haven't painted many horses so I was experimenting, but I think these turned out pretty well.

Have a look below and let me know what you think of the results.

Painting Winter War Soviets

I have finalized my process for painting my Winter War Soviet infantry. There are a lot of steps, but most of them go very quickly and don't require careful painting or much skill, so I was able to get my infantry painted relatively quickly using this process. The paints I used are mostly out of print Citadel paint colors, but hopefully by looking at the pictures below for each stage you can figure out an equivalent color to use, if you want to follow a similar process.

Here is the full list of steps. Further down I have close up pictures showing the results of applying each step. The order can be changed around on some of the steps, and they are actually in a slightly different order in the pictures. I primed some of the models white and some grey, and it didn't seem to make much difference, so either is fine.

1. Codex Grey - basecoat greatcoats, equipment, M27 caps, bases
2. Adeptus Battlegrey - basecoat black boots and rifle metal
3. Fortress Grey - wet brush greatcoats, M27 caps, and equipment
4. Fortress Grey - highlight boots, rifle metal
5. Skull White - dry brush greatcoats, M27 caps
6. Mechrite Red - paint collar diamond patches and cap patches
7. Nuln Oil - wash coat, cap, rifle metal, black boots, and bases
8. Calthan Brown - basecoat belt, ammo pouches, rifle wood, blanket roll, gloves, entrenching tool handle, brown ankle boots, khaki pants/puttees/helmets, and NCO fleece cap (this is the hardest step, and I actually broke it up into multiple steps when painting up 30 of these guys at a time)
9. Desert Yellow - edge highlight rifle wood, wet brush gloves, blanket roll, brown ankle boots, khaki
10. Bleached Bone - paint rifle straps, dry brush khaki and cap fur
11. Devlan Mud - wash blanket roll, gloves, rifle wood, belts, ammo pouches, and brown ankle boots
12. Sea green (don't know the actual name of this paint) - wet brush backpack, gas mask case and straps, bottle cover, and entrenching tool cover (don't forget the straps around the blanket roll)
13. Athonian Camoshade - wash backpack, gas mask case and straps, bottle cover, entrenching tool cover, and khaki
14. Tallarn Flesh - basecoat faces
15. Elf Flesh - wet brush faces
16. Dwarf Flesh - paint lower lips
17. Chainmail - paint cup, rifle bolts, and belt buckles
18. White - paint eyes
19. Black - dot eyes

Painting Winter War Finns

I have finalized my process for painting my Winter War Finnish infantry. There are a lot of steps, but most of them go very quickly and don't require careful painting or much skill, so I was able to get my infantry painted relatively quickly using this process. There are also some steps (like numbers 14 and 20-24) that could be left out without making too much difference from a distance, but I thought they added enough to the overall look to be worth the little time they took. The paints I used are mostly out of print Citadel paint colors, but hopefully by looking at the pictures below for each stage you can figure out an equivalent color to use, if you want to follow a similar process.

Here is the full list of steps. Further down I have close up pictures showing the results of applying each step.

1. Chaos Black - undercoat/basecoat everywhere
2. Adeptus BattleGrey - paint winter camouflage coat/pants and helmets, hats, gloves, black boots, bases, and NCO pants, leaving black in recesses
3. Fortress Grey - wet brush winter camouflage coat/pants, leaving some Astronomicon Grey at edges (AVOID boots, bases, gloves, hats, and NCO pants)
4. Fortress Grey - edge highlight black boots
5.  Codex Grey - dry brush NCO pants, black gloves, and cloth hats
6. Codex Grey - edge highlight cloth hats
7. Skull White - lightly wet brush winter camouflage coat/pants, leaving some grey at edges
8. Catachan Green - basecoat bread bags and straps
9. Salamander Green - paint helmets, paint wide stripe on NCO pants
10. Tallarn Flesh - basecoat faces
11. Gretchin Green - wet brush bread bags and their straps
12. Badab Black - wash black boots, bases, black gloves, helmets
13. Elf Flesh - highlight/wet brush faces
14. Dwarf Flesh - paint lower lips
15. Calthan Brown - basecoat rifle wood, brown leather boots, belts, mittens, and rifle straps
16. Calthan Brown - wet brush ammo pouches, beards, hair, and cap fur
17. Desert Yellow - wet brush/highlight rifle wood, brown leather boots, leather pouches, mittens
18. Bleached Bone - highlight/dry brush mittens, wet brush rifle straps, beards, and cap fur
19. Ogryn Flesh - wash rifle wood, brown leather boots, ammo pouches
20. Adeptus BattleGrey - highlight gun metal and bayonets, paint helmet straps
21. Chainmail - paint cap buttons, edges of bayonets, rifle bolts
22. Skull White - paint cap badges and eyes
23. Sky Blue - dot center of cap badges
24. Chaos Black - dot eyeballs

First Winter War Finns

I started painting my first batch of Winter War Finns. These are the Baker Company models from their Winter War Kickstarter. I'm still working out a paint scheme for them. I have a lot of them to paint, so I'm trying to come up with something quick that still gives decent results with plausible colors for the uniforms and equipment. Have a look below for some pictures of my initial attempt.

Warhammer Quest Skaven Stormvermin

It has been a while since I've made any progress on the Warhammer Quest monsters, but I've finally completed a group of 12 Skaven Stormvermin. The paint job was pretty straightforward and similar to my previous Warhammer Quest Skaven, but for some reason it took a long time to get these finished. I suppose because I had other projects being worked on at the same time that I had more motivation to make progress on.

With these completed, I'm now very close to having the entire level 1 monster table painted, which you'd think would motivate me to work faster to reach that milestone. However, looking over the level 2 monster list and seeing how huge an undertaking that will be is somewhat discouraging. But I suppose I've just got to keep plugging away at it. Getting all the monsters painted for Warhammer Quest was always going to be a huge undertaking. Certainly a marathon, not a sprint, so I'll have to accept that there will be periods of relative inactivity. In any case, have a look at the Stormvermin below and let me know what you think.

Kingdom Death Leather Armor Survivors

I've finished another magnetized set of Kingdom Death survivors. This time it was the Leather Armor set. I painted a mix of dark brown, light brown, and black leather to add some variety. Otherwise the painting was pretty basic. This kit did present some new challenges when it came to magnetizing them, which you will be able to see in the pictures below.

First, I had a hard time attaching a hand to the leather shield in a way that would allow it to fit on any arm, but still look like a natural way to hold a shield. So that didn't turn out very well. Hopefully someday I'll get around to making some new shield holding hands that look a little better but will still fit on at least most of the arms.

Second, it's almost impossible to get the hand holding the coiled whip to look good. Because a section of the whip hangs down, it needs to be aligned perfectly correctly, with the end of the whip hanging exactly vertically, or it looks wrong, like it's defying gravity. Very few arms will happen to be in exactly the right position to make this work, so I'll mostly have to use the hand with the uncoiled whip in mid swing.

Finally, there were a couple of really big weapons, with one being so top-heavy that the magnets wouldn't hold it upright. From now on I will use longer rod magnets in the forearms to give a stronger hold on these heavier weapons, but that revelation came too late to help with this armor set. Instead I added some weight to the bottom of the Counter-weighted Axe (which is actually not counter-weighted at all by default). That helps it balance better at just about any angle, and as a bonus it makes the name much more appropriate.

Kingdom Death Intimacy Survivors

Here are a couple of the special, non-modular, survivor models that came with Kingdom Death: Monster. I'm not sure they will be of much practical use in the game. I'm sure by the time I have a weapon that good, I will have enough armor for everyone to have some. So fielding someone with a fancy metal sword (I don't know what it's called, as I haven't encountered it yet) but no armor probably won't happen. Even so, they were quick to assemble and I figured I'd give them a quick paint job and get them done. I still haven't gotten the hang of painting the white cloth, but I didn't want to spend a ton of time on it smoothing it out. Though a bit rough, it looks fine at a distance so I suppose it's good enough. Have a look and let me know what you think.

Kingdom Death Butcher

I've painted the next monster for my Kingdom Death campaign, the Butcher. I again wasn't quite sure how he was supposed to look, and just went with something pretty straightforward. I painted his cape the same colors as I did the Screaming Antelope fur, and the skirt and fur sleeves the same as the White Lion fur, supposing he got his garments from hunting those monsters. The rest is mostly armor, with some leather straps here and there and lots of lanterns. I did paint the mask a different color than the rest of the metal, which makes it stand out more. I had no idea what the loin cloth like things hanging down from his waist are supposed to be. One I painted like teeth (maybe Screaming Antelope teeth strung together). The other I just made a brown leather color, though in retrospect I should have painted it like the scales of a giant snake or something like that. Have a look below and let me know what you think.

Warhammer Quest Custom Warrior Priest - Martel

I've completed my first converted customized character for my Warhammer Quest parties. I had always intended to get specific miniatues for the characters in these Warhammer Quest parties once I had been using them for a while, and had a good idea what equipment they would be using and what their personalities would be like. I hadn't thought much about specifics, since I had been focusing on getting more of the monsters painted up. Then, I placed an order with Reaper for some Bones miniatures I needed for some of the monsters. Because of a promotion they were having, they sent me a couple free Bones models. One was called Barnabus Frost, Pirate Captain. Trying to think of something to do with this guy, I decided that with some conversion, he might make a good stand in for my warrior priest character, who has acquired a Hammer of Sigmar.

Painting Tips for the Rest of Us

I'm not a great painter. I'm never going to win any awards or see pictures of my painted miniatures in magazines, but I think I get decent results. My goal is just to get things finished to a decent standard, and keep making progress against the backlog for whatever project I'm working on. In the course of trying to improve in that area, I've discovered some tips that have helped me, and may help other average painters, to make better progress. Hopefully these tips will be helpful for you as well, but if you are one of those exceptional painters trying to win awards and accolades, then they probably won't be for you. These are for us mediocre painters just trying to get our figures ready for the gaming table.

1. Use good quality tools, and replace them when they start to fail
This is a good tip in all areas of life. Quality tools are almost always worth the extra expense. So buy good paints and brushes and take good care of them. I use a brush cleaner (specifically General Pencil Company The Masters Brush Cleaner & Preserver) to keep my brushes clean and lasting a long time. But once they start to fray, replace them immediately. It costs a little more, but not that much because you won't need to replace them often if you keep them clean. In any case, the time and frustration you save by not using a worn out brush will be worth much more than the expense.

2. Paint at least a little bit every day
You want to make painting into a habit, which makes it much easier to stay motivated. If you practice doing it every day until it has become habit, it will become easier to sit down and start painting, and eventually almost automatic. You may think you just don't have time to paint every day, but you really don't need much time. Even just five minutes of painting is better than nothing, and don't worry if you don't "finish" anything. Let's say you have to paint the buttons on 20 figures. It's okay to only finish five of them. In fact, it might even be better...

3. Always make sure you leave something easy to start with next time
This will help motivate you to start painting tomorrow. And getting started is the hard part. Once you're painting, it's easy to keep going. If the next thing to do is paint 300 buttons, you might find it hard to motivate yourself to go paint with such a task awaiting you. But if you had left one figure that still needed his turnbacks painted, it's a much more inviting prospect to go finish up that last figure's turnbacks, and after that you're already painting, so it won't be so hard to launch into those buttons. "But it'll bother me to have that step left unfinished", you interject? Well, good! Then you'll really want to make time to go get that finished.

4. When batch painting, plan your steps so that you have as many "easy" ones as possible
When I say "easy", I mean ones that don't require being careful or skillful. For example, the first big base coat is easy. Even though you are applying a lot of paint, you don't have to be careful where you put it. Applying a wash over a big area is also pretty easy, or applying a base coat to any area where you haven't already painted the area next to it. So try to do big areas first, so you have a little as possible to paint that requires being careful. This will reduce your mental fatigue while painting and allow you to paint loger without getting burned out, and is generally also faster (though it does require a little planning ahead)

5. Use the biggest brush you can get away with
This is true even if most of the model is already painted and you're worried about paint getting onto an already painted area. I used to start with a small brush and paint around the edges of the area I was painting, then change brushes to paint the middle. This is a waste of time, and you end up spending much more time painting carefully than you need to. Your brushes are in good shape (see item 1) and should come to a nice point, which should be good for getting the edges and little areas. However, using the bigger brush will allow you to get the big areas much faster. If you really can't get a small area, switch to a smaller brush only afterward when you've determined that it is absolutely necessary. Often I'll do base coats of dark colors everywhere, then apply a main coat of a lighter color. In this case I don't need to worry about painting right up to the edge, because leaving that darker color near the edge will actually help add depth and shading, so I only need to paint the middle of each area.

6. Don't fix your mistakes right away
This will probably take some practice, but stop worrying about the mistakes you make. Leave them for the next painting session. You're probably thinking that if you do that you might forget where you made the mistake, and that would be the point. If you don't notice it next time, it's not a mistake that you need to fix. If it's still noticable toward the end, (or when you're using the color you need for fixing it) then go ahead and fix it. If you need to pick the figure up and hold it upside-down a few inches from your face to see the mistake, then you'd never notice it on the table. So stop doing that. Keep reminding yourself that perfect is the enemy of good.

7. Paint quicker than you think you can
I think it's very hard to practice painting carefully until you can do it really quickly. It is easier to start out painting quickly and with practice end up getting better results with your quick painting. You tend to do what you practice. So if you're always going slow to get really nice results, you may improve your results, but probably not your speed. If you always go fast, you can more easily get better at painting fast and get decent results. Just try it. Go a little quicker than you'd like and keep at it. At first you'll get worse results than you're used to if you've always painted slowly, but you'll get things done. You may make more "mistakes", but you'll make them much faster. Just tell yourself that even a quick paint job looks a lot better than on the table than bare plastic does in the closet. And besides, pretty soon you'll find yourself getting better at the quick painting, learning new techniques and motions that will have your results becoming just as good, but in a fraction of the painting time. It just takes some practicing going fast.

8. Display your results
I bought some display cabinets so I could move my painted miniatures out from the carry cases in my closet to somewhere I could actually see them. I think this has helped a lot with my motivation to paint new things. It's nice to be able to enjoy those previous accomplishments, and see how my painting has improved over time. Since I don't get to play often, this is a good way to enjoy and appreciate all the stuff I've finished painting, and appreciate how much better it is for a figure to have even a basic paint job than none at all.

9. Document your process
If you come up with a great (and quick) technique and combination of paints for something generic (like say leather boots), write it down! That way next time you need to paint that thing, you won't be starting from scratch. You'll already know that the leather parts will be done with base coat of paint A, dry brush paint B, wash with C. You can build up a repertoire of methods for common materials and colors that will get you started more quickly if, like me, you aren't great at picturing what color combinations will work for what you are trying to achieve.

10. Allow for some variety
I often have two units in progress and on the painting table at a given time. That way if I'm just not feeling into one of them, I can work on the other one. Or if there's a really difficult step next for one, and an easy step for the other one, I can start out with the easier step, which makes it easier to motivate me to get started painting. Then I can move back to the other unit when I'm ready. It can especially help to have two fairly different projects, if one of them involves painting a lot of models very similar to each other. If you've spent weeks painting horses, just having a break to paint something very different might help recharge before getting back to the rest of those horses.

11. Paint in smaller batches
If you have to paint 50 of the same figures for a unit, it might be best to paint at most about 10 at a time. Paint in stages, but try to keep each stage small. Everything that's the same color doesn't have to be done in the same stage. For example, you may have to paint all the cuffs, collars, and turnbacks the same color on all 10 figures. Paint the cuffs on all the figures first, then go back and do all the collars, then turnbacks. It may sound counter-productive, but having small steps means you complete a step more often, which makes it feel like you are making progress more often, which helps keep you motivated to keep going.

12. Make sure your painting setup is ready to go at all times
If you only have a little time to paint, you don't want to spend half of it getting all your supplies and materials out and getting ready to paint. You want to be able to jump right in, so have things ready to go. In particular, it helps a lot to pre-thin your paints. If you always end up adding water to your paint to thin it out, instead add water to the paint pot until you achieve the consistency you normally want, and then keep it that way. That way it's always ready to go, and you don't have to waste time thinning whenever you switch colors, or worry about getting inconsistent consistencies.

So, who am I to give out painting advice? Am I a great painter? No, I am not. But am I a fast painter? Well, no, not really. But I am better and faster than I used to be, so that's something. These methods have helped me, a painter of average at best skill, to get better results and also increase the speed of my output. I'm sure they'd be of no use to any truly talented painter, but hopefully they'll prove useful to some of you other average painters out there, trying to paint to a decent standard but still get your armies off your painting table and onto your gaming table.

Kingdom Death Screaming Antelope

Painting these Kingdom Death monsters has been interesting, because they don't seem to have an official color scheme. There is some artwork of the monsters in the rulebook and on some of the cards, but I don't look through all of them because I don't want to spoil anything before fighting the monsters. And even so, the artwork seems to vary, especially with regards to colors. So I'm left to come up with my own ideas on how to paint them, which can be a bit of a struggle for me as someone without much artistic aptitude.

To me, the screaming antelope miniature appears to be sculpted as it if has exposed muscles on its lower half. None of the artwork I saw of the screaming antelope supported this interpretation, but I went with it anyway. The model just seems to have been done that way intentionally, even if the artwork doesn't match. And it could explain why the antelope is screaming so much. I would be screaming too if I was missing most of my skin. Have a look below for some pictures and a description of how I painted my screaming antelope.

Warhammer Quest Beastmen

I've completed another entry on the level 1 monster table in Wahammer Quest. This time it was 8 Beastmen with spears. The models are extremely old single-piece plastics. They also have halberds instead of spears, but close enough for my use. The painting was pretty simple. I gave them each a different color of cloth to give some variety. I also gave some of them brown leather and the rest black, and some white metal emblems and the rest yellow metal. Hopefully this helps them look a little less homogeneous even though they are all the same model. I didn't vary the skin or fur colors at all. I'm sure that would have helped, but I didn't want to spend a the extra time on it. I had some trouble getting the hooves to look convincing at first, but I'm pretty happy with how they turned out in the end.

Kingdom Death Cloth and Rawhide Armor Survivors

I've finished painting the bodies, heads, and weapons for my magnetized cloth and rawhide survivors. It was a pain trying to paint the individual heads and weapons, but having every option available to me going forward will be worth the effort I put into it. I magnetized at least two of each weapon, one right handed and one left handed. I also painted all of the heads from the cloth and rawhide armor sprues, so I can make a huge variety of unique survivors with these.

The painting was pretty basic. I did have to make sure all the skin tones turned out very consistent across all the different bodies and heads. I also needed to come up with a lot of different hair colors. I only took pictures with a small number of the available heads. There are many more, and I didn't want them all to have the same hair color, so painting the hair was pretty time consuming. Especially because the highlights mostly had to be manually painted, since the details were too shallow for a drybrush or wash to pick them out effectively.

Warhammer Quest Goblin Netters and Clubbers

This checks off another entry on the Warhammer Quest level 1 monster table. I painted up 3 netters and 3 clubbers to represent the entry for 6 goblin netters. Well, one of the clubbers was actually painted by a friend of mine a long time ago. They are mostly black cloth and green skin, and were pretty quick to paint with my normal basic techniques. Nothing too fancy, but I'm now one step closer to completing the level 1 monster table.

Warhammer Quest Goblin Shaman and Wild Cave Squigs

Here are some wild cave squigs and a night goblin shaman I've painted up or Warhammer Quest. These are on the level one monster table. I don't have much else to say about them, really. If you're interested in seeing the pictures, have a look below.

Warhammer Quest Lair of the Orc Lord miniatures

After many years, I've finally painted the miniatures from the Warhammer Quest Lair of the Orc Lord expansion. Half of them (the three Big'Uns and the snotling) were painted years ago when I was first playing Warhammer Quest. I did some touch ups on them, and added shield decals, but didn't bother to repaint them. The orc lord, shaman, squig hound, and goblin jester I painted recently. Hopefully I've improved a bit over the years. Have a look below and let me know what you think.