1 - On to the Real Fun...

ixminis writes:

Antonius: Are you afraid to die Spartacus?
Spartacus: No more than I was to be born.

First Impressions:

• These Legionaires are big!
• Basing them on square bases will prepare them for a movement tray
• These Legionaires are big!
• You mean I have to paint that shield relief on six figures?!!!
• Oh crud, some of the swords are bent
• Did I mention that these guys are big?
• Wow, very clean casting... not much work need to get them cleaned and primed.

On to the real fun:

I started off by cleaning and priming the figures. White was my choice because I wanted to be able to quickly bring the purple up from its base colors. While I painted all six models at once, I chose to keep the number of models in the picture down to one or two. I need to see progress as I paint, so I quickly blocked in the fur on all figures with black.

If you hear someone speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself you should say: 'he obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned.
- Epictetus

I blocked in the remaining component, the tunic, with Purple.

After some deliberation, I changed my approach and blocked in the figures accessories in a watered-down black... This gave me a little bit more definition to help shade the shield, armor, and sword. I also built up the purple and found a better approach to taking my photos (white background). The Purple layers were built by mixing paint on a pallette as follows:

Reaper Imperial Purple
Reaper Purple Ink
Reaper Imperial Purple added in two thin layers to smooth the blend,
1/2 and 1/2 Reaper Imperial Purple and Reaper Elderberry
Reaper Elderberry
1/2 and 1/2 Reaper Elderberry and Reaper Liche Purple
Reaper Liche Purple
White added slowly to bring the highlights up to pure white (Consider this a few more layers)

The next picture shows the figures after I blocked the remaining colors in:

White for the center of the shield.
Citadel Beaten Copper for the Bronze Detail's base color
Reaper GunMetal as the base color for the remaining metal

While it looks like there's alot of work to go, really it's just adding details to complete the figures.

Next Time - Detailing!