Step by Step: Aran, the Barbarian

Hey Jungle Painters,

following up is an article about one of Roman's latest projects called
"Aran, the Barbarian - Deep in the Dungeon". It won't be a perfect step by step through the process, more a logbook on how the project grew to its final state. We hope you enjoy!

The basework
Basing was done during a private coaching session with Matthias back in summer 2014. His topic was building up a dungeon base and so Roman did one too. Raffa once sculpted a wall piece and lucky Roman was able to still find one of it in his boxes. Roman already used a white plaster cast of that piece of wall in his project called "Primitivo":



You can find an article about this particular base in step by step here.

Well, back to Aran's dungeon shall we?
This time it was a resin cast and Roman decided to use it upside down for the main part, the front wall of the base. Additional to that Aran needed a place to stand on and some more stones were sculpted by Roman in BeesPutty. A coin was used too to have some more interesting groundwork going on. Basing with coins?

The base recieved some wood parts to give this old ruin a more stabilized look and also some lines of basing composition.

While the base grew in detail work, Aran was placed there to see how he might look in the end. For the detail work true material damage was done to the wall piece, the wood parts recieved some sturdy fixation, done with thicker aluminium foil, some skulls and old weapons were placed among the smaller stone rubbish and a chain was glued to give the base even more details.

Some thin Milliput parts were used as old fabrics and dry plant soil was used for bringing it all together. Some tiny balls from waterfilters were pressed inside the wood to act as nails afterwards. Waterfilter balls? Yes, maybe you know those waterfilters you have in coffee machines or elsewhere. When they are used up, do not throw them away. Open them up and you will find tons of these balls.

 Here you can find some more articles to see these balls in use:

Tutorial - Sculpting tiny armour parts
Step by Step - Nurgle Death Guard
Tutorial: Magic Effects on Miniatures

Well, so far so good the base front was done and looked fine to Roman, but the back still needed some more attention.

Roman created some small candles to make the back area of the wall a little more interesting. Have a look on how they are placed: Some are standing in groups, some are fallen and some stand alone. This is all about the prinicples about basing composition.

After Roman already baked the sculpted BeesPutty on the ground he was a little to lazy to fill one area with new sculpted stones. He found a small piece in his box that fitted well, it was from white plaster. He just glued it in place.

Additional to that some detail part were spread over the ground of the base. Details are important, you might check this article for it.

The Paintwork
Sometimes if you don't have a perfect plan of colours you want to use for your project it is a wise choice to start with more desaturated colours. It is easy to saturate them afterwards.

Aran first recieved just some green grey all over his body via airbrush, before Roman started to work out different basic tones.

The base recieved the same colour, but already with a second step after the first basic colour of adding some white to the mix and sprayed a little light situation. This time only from the top, which leads to more highlights on the edges of all those stones.

Well, now the base needed contrast and a little more saturation all over. Roman used the airbrush again and gently sprayed some red brown from a low angle into the base. Some washes were used to make the interspaces between all those stones darker. Mainly strong and dark tone by Army Painter were used here.

Metal parts were painted black, then metallic using the brush. Still equipped with a brush Roman took his time to paint some edge highlights stronger with the initial green grey # white mix.

While the work on the base happened Roman just used pure meditation to paint with the same colours on Aran himself. No, you do not believe that? Right you are. Roman painted skin, leather and all those other base tones with the brush to Aran, but when he used the airbrush on the base he used it too in the same angle on the model to make it all grow together and - even more important - fit together in the athmospheric aspect in the end.


He went for texture on the leather parts as you can see on the photos. It is important to paint this texture very fine and strong. It should be visible for your eyes very good while you do it, because it will be blended in afterwards via thin glazesof dark brown.

Now we are taking a little jump to the final result. The contrast on the model and base have been pushed further. More darkness, more highlights. Everywhere, no matter the materials. Skin, Stone, leather, metals, hair, fabric, soil and so on. As you can see in the next photo Roman is aiming for points of interest here. Points on the scene that tell the story and guide the eye:

- Aran himself
- the area where Aran is located
- the zombie hand deep down in the dungeon

Some simple tattoos have been applied to Aran's skin to make him look more barbaric, more tribal. He also recieved some wounds here and there to show that he is really struggling and fighting his way deeper and deeper into the dungeon.

So far, we hope you find some interesting thoughts, ideas and inspirations in this article.
Keep on happy painting and do not lose yourself deep in the dungeons ;)