chemicalcaveman's WiP

[chemicalcaveman]

Well the empire swordsmen have been put on the back burner for a little bit, as I got some brand new mini's last week that I just had to start. These guys are absolutely beautiful, and were well worth the large amount of cash I had to stumb up. Forgeworld really outdone themselves with these Death Riders.

So this is going to be a WiP/tutorial sort of thread for a while. I'm going to update it fairly regularly with WiP pictures and give an outline of the paint mixtures/techniques I am using. This is going to have two benifits I hope. Firstly it might be a help to some painters out there who might not be familar with some of the techniques I use, and secondly it will give people who are better painters than me to give me some constructive critisim about the way I use the techniques.

Right on to the nitty gritty. I'm only going to paint the first guy up initially as a test run. The last thing I want to do is wreak such an expensive unit. At least this way I'll only wreak one if worst comes to worst. First picture is what you get in one Death Rider packet.



Right the photo might be a little blurry but you can clearly make out the rider, the base, the horse's front and back right legs, the brass rod for the lance and the accessory spruce containing the horse's gas mask, air cylindar, shovel, the rider's arm, the lance tip and the lance flag. All of these were cleaned up, the mold lines removed and the model glued together with superglue. The fits were suprisingly snug so I didn't feel like I needed greenstuff. The model was finally washed in warm soapy water to get rid of any greasy residues. That finished up the preparation of the model.







I then moved on and undercoated the whole model with GW Chaos Black Spray and left it to dry. So for the initial basecoat I decided to go for the new GW Foundation Paints. I find that with a little water and one or two coats this give an amazing coverage that starts the model off wonderfully. So the initial basecoat was two brushworths of Calthan Brown to a drop of water. One or two coats later the whole thing is nicely basecoated.



I then set about creating some shading for the horses skin. I did this by glazing. This is a technique that I have only started using seriously quite recently and I'm at the stage where I find it almost indispensable, to the stage where I rarely use inks anymore. I still may not have the more advanced glazing techniques down, but that will come with time I hope. So for the first glazing step, I used VGC Dark Fleshtone and VGC Glaze medium. The Dark Fleshtone has a hint of a reddy/chestnut colour to it which I hope to bring through in the horse's flesh.



This glaze was mixed as so, 1 drop Dark Fleshtone to 1 drop Glaze Medium to 3 drops of water. The horse was given a wash, aollowed to dry and given a second wash. The glaze will tint the brown, while not overpowering the base colour, which I will be building up from in the next couple of steps anyway. The end result of the glazing was this. The paint was not quite dry when I took the picture though, so it looks a lot more shiney in the photo than in real life.



Now a lot of people like to finish one area of a model before going onto the next, but I tend to jump around a little bit. So before going onto the highlighting of the horses skin, a colour caught my eye with I thought would be perfect for the gas masks and the horses riding blanket. Its VGC Yellow Olive. 1 drop of yellow olive was mixed with 1 drop of water and a couple of coats were applied to get a nice smooth finish. I really think this type of drab green will complement the greys of the rider quite well.



So thats it for the moment. I am planning to finish off the horses skin next which I hope I will be able to pull off. Hopefully the next update will be late this week or early next.

[Tim C]

Nice start mate, I will be watching this with keen interest, I am planning on getting some Death riders myself and will need the inspiration.

[chemicalcaveman]

Wow that was a quick reply Tim! Hopefully things will go as planned. I'm working this guy in around my competion entry and painting one of the mini's I got in the swap.

[roguetrader]

great start mate, nice mini's those death riders, cant wait to see it progress, i'll definately watch this one with interest ;D

[mminiatures]

Nice start, I'll certainly be watching this one. Death Korps Riders are among the finest minis ever produced IMO and I'd love too see them painted up good!

[mousekiller]

Those look really nice, and very detailed. Too bad they are futuristic, or I may even dip my hat in the pool and buy a few.

Great work so far on the horse, and thanks for the tutorial.

[dansemacabre]

didn't know about the existence of those minis! very interesting stuff and a great start .

[mutantpotato]

A great start mate. I like the horse skin. Looking forward to see more Keep it up.

[chemicalcaveman]

Right onto part two. Finishing off the horse's coat. Just to save you guys going back I had left the coat with just a basecoat and a couple of glazes of VGC Tanned Flesh. From there I had a good look at the colours available to me. I knew I want the horse to be a chestnut type of colour, so I ended up picking VGC Parasite Brown (GW Vermin Brown) and VGC Bronzed Fleshtone.



By mixing these two colours I can build up the colour that I want. So the first step was to get my pallet and add one drop of Parasite Brown to one drop of water. Using this mixture I went over the muscle tone of the horse. The previous glaze step helps in this step as it shows muscle tone that you might not have picked up. When you are finished you should have something that looks a little like this.



The next step was to add another drop of Parasite Brown to the mix, as well as one drop of Bronzed Fleshtone. If you feel like you need it you can also add some water to this mixture to keep things nice and smooth. This will give a 75%-25% Parasite Brown-Bronzed Fleshtone mix. By my calculations anyways! Then paint this onto the already predefined muscles, making sure you leave some of the previous layer visible. Hopefully the picture will be good enough for you to see what I mean.



Once you are happy with this, its time to take it a little bit further. Adding another drop of Bronzed Fleshtone to the mix (and water if you feel like you need it) to give a 50%-50% Parasite Brown to Bronzed Fleshtone mix. Once again paint this onto the muscles leaving the previous layers visible. I think the picture might be a bit dark, but hopefully you can see this layer.



Once again another drop of Bronzed Fleshtone was added swinging the ratio in its favour 25%-75% Parasite Brown to Bronzed Fleshtone. The highlights are getting quite small now and should only be touching the top 10% of the muscle definition. Here comes the worst picture of the lot.



For the final highlight one more drop of Bronzed Fleshtone was added, making it 100% Bronzed Fleshtone. In real life the mixture is not quite as bright as that. This is only painted on the very tops of muscles and the veins visible on the horses body.



Now onto the "magic marker" step. By adding another glaze step here one can bring all the above highlight steps together. Smoothing out the transiations between the different steps. This is the beauty of glazes over inks. Inks tend to pool in the reccesses of models, while a glaze stays on even the higher parts of the model, tinting but not overpowering everything below it.



So as you can see I went back to the colour I orginally used, as its a colour I really like because it has that chestnuty tint about it. One of the most important things about glazes is to keep them watery. You can always add more layers of paint, but you cannot take them off! So for this glaze mixture I added one drop of VGC glaze medium to one drop of VGC Dark Fleshtone to seven drops of water. This gives a nice watery mixture. No one can tell you exactly when to stop adding water, its something you only learn by trial or error. I paint my mixture up the sides of the well of my pallet to see what sort of "flow" and "transprency" it has. Its just one of these things that you have to practice. So I painted two coats of glaze onto the coat of the horse. Leaving the first to dry before adding the second. I could have painted more or less, depending on the darkness of the coat you are going for. This was the end result.



So at this stage I feel like the horse's coat is done. I would be more than pleased if people ran a critical eye over what I have done so far in relation to my techniques and the finished product, and let me know what they think. On the other hand if you have learnt something new thats good too. Feedback of all types is appreciated.

The next step is the green riding blanket and gasmasks as well as the basecoating of the greycoat and metals.

Expect updates when they arrive!

[roguetrader]

its looking great and the tutorial is very good aswell, the only thing i would like to see, is where the tubes go into the horses neck, some red/purple bruising/soreness around the hole maybe??? great stuff ;D ;D

[razhburz]

looking very nice mate good tut so far

I think the horse could use of another, lighter, glaze to Smooth out the transiations even more?

though it looks great still

btw do they sell the medium glaze at the sam place as the paints?

Cheers,

Andre

[chemicalcaveman]

Good idea rogue! I hadn't thought of that. Consider it done.

I bought the the large VGC 80 paints in a box thingy Raz, so I'm not sure. I would be surprised if they didn't to be honest. I was actually thinking about doing one more glaze, for good measure! I wonder what everyone else thinks?

[mousekiller]

Well, chemical caveman, you have taught me something mate. As I don't really do glazing that much (and really I thought that glazing and inking were about the same, just that glazing was with paints and inks were with inks), you have taught me a whole new technique that I have never really explored. I am going to have to get my hands on some of that glazing medium and give it a try soon.

Painting wise, this is coming along well. I really like the idea of bruising, but don't over do it or these guys will look more undead/chaotic than mechanical half breeds.

[chemicalcaveman]

Im delighted mousekiller! Its good to know that a tutorial is working. Glazes are only something I have been using myself for a couple of months and are relatively new to me, but they seem like a really useful technique.

You've made my day.

[jabberwocky]

This is a great tutorial, CC! I like the step by step process. I will also be adding some glazing medium to my cart next time I get to the game store. I am looking forward to seeing this one progress. I like the colors you have chosen thus far.

[menace]

WoW... another glaze fan! I couldn't live without my glaze medium now when i'm do a display standard, sometimes on difficult transitions i'll do glazes between each colour change... Great work and a healthy appetite for the pedantic

[chemicalcaveman]

Pedantic: overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, esp. in teaching.

Ahh, good old dictionaries! I suppose so, seems like I might have a lot of photo's on this thread by the end. I always enjoyed and learned more from topics with a lot of photo's, so I decided to take plenty.

On another forum, that I posted this in, they have made reference to the transistation between the darker shading and the highlights, saying that it is too stark. I tend to agree with them. I think I might have to go back and blend them up from the Dark Fleshtone. Either that or try a mid shade glaze. Anyone with any idea's?

[dogfacedboyuk1]

Hi CC, these models look fantastic - I got a Forgeworld catalogue in the post this morning and didn't realise they made so much stuff! Regarding the painting I'd agree that it needs some more transitions, I'm sure it will look even better than it does now when your done. A couple of questions: what are you planning for the base and can that new GW foundation paint replace a coat of spray primer??? The reason I ask the last question is because I am getting a slightly textured powdery feeling finish on my primed models and was wondering if I can replace it with these paints. Cheers, look forward to the next installment.

[chemicalcaveman]

Thanks for the reply DFB! I've to finish off my MM entry over the next week so the updates might be a little less regular for a little while. As for your questions, I am planning to go with mud for the base, I'll also post pictures of how I go about doing that. I am thinking of leaving it until last though. Secondly if, you water them down well I don't see why the GW FP's won't work instead of a spray primer. They are exactly like normal GW paints but with a lot more pigment. I hope that answers your questions.

[menace]

A midtone glaze is all you need, no need to go back so far, use very little pigment to a neat glaze and after each glaze has dried assess the transition, keep going 'til it's good for you then rehighlight...

@dfb, if you are using GW white spray primer it has a heavy pigment and is affected by atmospheric conditions a lot, high humidity can cause many problems and also the temperature that the paint is stored under!..or ..it may be just the one bad can, sometimes if there is too much propellant ratio in a can it will create a chalky surface, or 'orange peel' effect... try inverting the can without shaking and blowing of a little of the aerosol... or try a different primer, i have no probs with the gw black primer.

[dogfacedboyuk1]

Thanks for the advice jnr - will try that today as I have some spraying to do. I prefer to spray white and paint selected areas black as it's easier so I don't really want to try GW black. I may switch to car primer if all else fails.

[mutantpotato]

The horse skin looks very good. I also like glaze very much, easy to use and it gives stunning results ;D Looking great so far mate, keep it up!

[chemicalcaveman]

Right time to bring this thread back from the brink I think a healthy five or so months since someone last posted in it. I thought there was no point in starting a new thread. As you might have guessed the horse has been on the back burner, and I had forgotten about it until I re-read the thread and decided I should really get my finger out and re-start him. As well as that I'm going to start posting WiP shots more regularly because I'm after getting the internets back at home.


Right I'd feel bad restarting my WiP thread if I didn't have any actual work in progress shots. These were taken just now and they will be my two entries to Mad puppets contest. Hopefully by posting them here Edgar won't disqualify me, but if he does that to me he will have to do it to Andre!

So without further ado, the scavanger heavy and massive mutant, both still early wip showing off their best basecoats





Sort of blurry because its late, better ones tomorrow I promise.

[razhburz]

As you say the pics are rather blurry, but from what I can see it looks good Good thing we paint them at the same time, so we can get some ideas and inspiration from one another

[Tim C]

I got these in the post yesterday and they are beautiful sculpts I am looking forward to doing a few of Edgar's minis again when I get other things finished soon.