Good Morning Jungle Painters,
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Tutorial Voting made the Slayer win against two other articles and
Massive Voodoo's year of the painter is proud to bring you an article about this model, painted by Roman..
We don't waste time with further blabla or yackidiyack, we jump right into Roman's thoughts.
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I was in the middle of finishing my version of Sha'un, Ram Tribe Warrior and very often if a bigger project comes to an end energies and will are fading away as the final work often gets annoying in such a large piece. I was happy to have Peter and Bene doing a painting evening with me that particular day and I got distracted from the beastman bust. I was searching for something easy, something quick for relaxation and did choose to paint up a Slayer by Games Workshop.
After I prepared and glued the Slayer right out of the box, I primed him black and used a mix of a sand colour and red for the basic tone to find into the piece. I did not grant any advantage with this colour, I just wanted to be able to quickly see where this might lead. This tone could be used as basic for the hair and the skin at once, at least this was the plan. Use the airbrush for this step.
In such quick projects I do not think to much about what happens, I rather enjoy to paint without my brain occoupied. So the initial plan changed again. I airbrushed more natural skintone to the whole piece and afterwords did some rough paintwork on the trousers, stone and metal parts. Really slapping colour there, my basic tone was the neutral Fortress grey and while it was still wet I slapped in highlights with a stronger blue grey. In this step I was already able to set highlight areas. Pow! Pow!
I did choose this figure to be an example for the different
masking options article.
So the next step was particular stupid. Hiding all the figure behind the masking tape just to spray the beard and mohawk in his basic tone, but it was fun and after the work with the Putty went pretty easy it did not feel as awkward as expected.
After removing the masking tape I did paint the metal parts in bronze and painted stripes with a darker blue grey - it was the same colour as for the stone but with an additional black to it to darken it - to the trousers.
Now it was time to bring in some depth. A quick way to do so I enjoy for fast projects is using Army Painter washes, mainly the Strong Tone. They are particular good as they dry out matt compared to other washes. I used the brownish Strong Tone on the whoole figure and some of the Green Tone ont he base. To avoid a big mess try to bring it on with plan. The rules of
zenithal light on where to place shadow helps me here. In the end it is still a mess, but a controlled one I can work on with.
I don't fear the step of washing as I know the next step - cleaning it up with repainting base tones and adding the first highlights - is following after it. That is what I have done. Using skintone to clean up the skin areas, added some highlights in the volumes hit by zenithal light. Same done to the hair, trousers and stone parts. Also on the bronze.
Upside down you can see how I used the glazes on the blades of the axes and how I reworked highlights there. On such quick projects I do enjoy to bring in texture as I do on long term projects, such can be achieved by using a brighter tone and dab it to the stone for example or painting thin stripes to a material.
Meanwhile about 2~3 hours passed working on the dwarf and the three of us decided to do a in between photo of all projects under the brush this painting night. From left to right you can see the WIP-Dwarf, Bene's WIP of an upcoming Forged Monkey release, followed by my version of Sha'un in late WIP-stage and Peter's version of Sha'un during Work in Progress.
Work went on at the dwarf and I decided to push the skintone to more highlights. I choose to paint some simple tattoo pattern to him by using a dark blue grey again, but this time added a tiny drop of skintone to the tattoo colour. This helps to make the tattoo look more natural when painted on skintone, instead of looking like... well, painted with a big blue marker by some goblin. I added Verdigris with GW's technichal colour quickly to the bronze parts. On a quick model like this I rather do everything pretty fast without getting stuck too much in detail work. For example the dirt on the trousers was just done by the use of the Wash, some highlights painted afterwards, but wait there is blood already ...
Well, yes, blood. I used the airbrush and some of GW's new technical blood colour to spray it to the figure to make him look jumping right out of a slaughterhouse. I mean he is a slayer, he is supposed to look like that in battle. I decided to secure the face with masking putty to have no big accidents here with the blood.
The basework recieved some more controlled green washes to make several areas look more interesing. Even added a drop of black colour to the green wash to have it darker in the lowest areas. In this step I also painted his trappings in the beard in metal tones.
Now to blood. Spronngggeeee! Splloouuurrppp!
Pure gore in here, always keep in mind that less is more.
Cool, not. It went pretty shiny on his beard.
I used the brush to create tiny scratches here and there, little wounds to our little hero.
Next step was adding
moss to the base to underline the greens I have painted before. You might recognize, that even without a perfect plan there is always a bigger picture to think of. Photobomb.
Next step was using some grass pieces of the company
Polák, but only single ones to be added to the moss. A small detail that looks interesting in the end.
I used matt varnish to place them. Love to use matt varnish at base detail work
as it leaves no traces or accidents like superglue sometimes does, it just disappears.
I added some dirt and small moss parts to the feet of the slayer to make him look authentic running through hsi environment.
Last steps were adding a stronger shadow here and there or adding a final highlight here and there.
I'd say this is how the quick painted Slayer was done. The last thing I did was using the airbrush and matt varnish to get a grip on the shiny beard, caused by the blood accident and lucky me - it worked well.
This quick model really helped me to relax and to get back to the beastman once more for the though work there that drains so much energies. Thank you Slayer. Never underestimate the healing powers of a quick project, healing power for your mind and heart.
My tips when doing a quick project just for fun:
- Don't use too many different colours, for example I have used the same for the axes, stones and trousers, try to stay in a simple colour scheme
- be brave to use washes, but control them to have a better looking result
- Think ahead: Don't worry if at one step something looks awkward, don't get distracted or frustrated by it. It will change to the good when you paint on. In the best case you already know what you are doing and what will be the next step. Don't worry too much, have fun and be self-confident.
I hope you enjoyed the article, let me know what you think and if you got questions please feel free to ask them via comment.
Keep on happy painting!
Best Wishes
Roman
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