's barbarian army.
Howdy!
When I saw TMP was looking for someone to paint up one of the new Hordes sets, I jumped at the chance. I took a good long look at the Skorne set, and thought they would be incredible to paint up. The Circle Orobos was also intriguing. The Legion of Everblight I thought I could try some wonderful glazing techniques. And then the Trolls. Well, they are Trolls. I had painted up a few for Warmachine here and there, and they were the ones I was least encouraged to do. So naturally, those are the ones I received in the mail!
Sooo… What to do. Well, I figured I would stick fairly close to the general color scheme. Bill said these were for playing with, and I thought an above-tabletop standard would be best.
The assembly of the figures was fairly simple. Only the Harpoon/Spear Trolls required a little greenstuff filler, where the torso attached to the legs.
I primed all the figures in black so I could go from dark to light - it is my standard method for gaming figures. (I tend to use white or grey if I am going to enter a figure in a competition, to make better use of glazes and color.)
I began with the axe-carrying guy. (I don't know what their official names are, so calling them by weapon works for identifying them.) For my deepest color/shade, I mixed up GW Dark Angels Green and Scaly Green, with a bit of black to darken it. This was applied thinly on all the flesh of each Troll (except the caster guy).
Next, I added a little Ceramcoat Pineapple to the mix. This was applied to the muscles and raised areas of the figure.
I added more and more Pineapple to the base mix - and then, after 3 or 4 layers, I added Americana Ivory for the final skin highlights. All these highlights were added in progressively smaller and smaller areas using a bit of a layering technique. I say 'a bit of a layering technique' because that is not exactly the way I did it. The paint layers were wet-blended on the model. Wet blending is where you apply paint on the figure, and them mix/blend another color with another color. In this case, I went from dark to light to get the layers smoother, but I made use of intermediate colors to help reduce the starkness of the contrast. I am very pleased with how it all turned out.
I used a base of GW Scorched Brown on all the other regions - teeth, hair/quills, leather straps and armor. I then used Americana Milk Chocolate as a highlight on all the leather. Added to this was GW Snakebite Leather for a final highlight. This was done on the straps and the weapon handles and the leather skirt the Warrior Trolls are wearing.
The weapon and armor was painted with Vallejo Oily Steel, washed with GW Armor Wash, and then painted and washed several times. Each time I added GW Mithril Silver to the Oily Steel, until I achieved the result I wanted. The trim on the axe was painted with GW Tin Bitz, washed with GW Brown Ink - and the process was repeated, adding Vallejo Glorious Gold and GW Silver, till the final effect was achieved. I didn't have a result in mind when I did this, I just stopped when I thought it looked right.
The quills on his head were painted GW Scorched Brown, then GW Red Gore on top of that, and GW Blood Red as a final highlight. The teeth and nails were highlighted with GW Snakebite Leather, then highlighted again with Bleached Bone, and finally touched a tiny bit with white on the very tips.
The bases were made to fit. I used plumbers epoxy putty as a base, and pressed the figures into the base to get a footprint for where they would stand. I then glued base gravel on top of the putty, and primed it all black. Then I drybrushed the base with GW Scorched Brown, GW Bestial Brown, and then a tiny bit of Americana Slate Grey mixed in with the Bestial Brown. GW static grass was glued in to dress it up.
