Wow. Season Two of The Emperor’s Herdstone has been an absolute write off. I’m starting the hobby again from scratch (you can read about why here (it’s not hobby related)). Well, I’m really pleased that Season Two has finished on a high with some models that I’m really proud of.
Here’s my SCE Underworld’s Warband in all its final glory:
I’ve learned a lot painting these. Here’s the breakdown
Trying different paint brands is fun
When I started these minis one of my biggest limiting factors is that I didn’t own any paint. That was a big limiting factor! So for different elements I was very conscious to try different brands of paint as I build a collection. Here are some quick thoughts:
Citadel. These are the only paints I can buy locally. I think lots of people have experience with them. yes we all hate the pots and they’re really expensive but I find that they thin well and cover well. Balor Brown is the principal constituent of my gold NMM so I’ve used it a lot.
Vallejo. I’ve only got black and white paints but I also bought the Game Ink set and I’m pretty thrilled with them.
P3. This was a big departure for me – this was the first time I’d really used P3 paints before and I had mixed results with them. I’ve got no qualms saying that the blues are the best paints I’ve used. They thin well, they cover well, they blend well and the colours are gorgeous. Go and get some P3 blue paints right now. The reds I had less success with. I was painting them over black, which was a mistake and I’ll try them again over a zenithal undercoat on my next models. The Ember Orange was a real let down. The colour is very attractive but the paint is very weak. Poor coverage and doesn’t thin well. So yeah, really mixed results but I’m very glad I found the blue paints.
Scalecolor. I do like these paints but, weirdly, I haven’t really used them that much on this model and the one part where they are very prominent, I don’t like. I got the red and yellow set and used them to pant the freehand flowers and they have come up really nicely. I also bought the flesh set and used them paint the face on old mate sword and that looks…utter shit. The paints are gel based (I think), very pigment dense, the coverage is incredible and they’re very vibrant. They take some getting used to and I definitely haven’t got the hang of them yet but hope to on my next batch of models.
I can paint NMM
If you read the blog through the painting process here you’ll know that I went on quite a journey here. The first gold NMM paint job I did on these guys was Hella-bad
I got a better recipe and and better brush control and saved it with the second two models in the unit and finally went back and painted this guy again:
Here was the recipe, I’m going to use this forever from now on (on anything NMM obviously). The steel came out very well. I’ve never painted steel NMM well before but this time they all came out very well:
Faces not so much
Again, if you’ve been following you’ll know that I struggled with the face on old mate sword. It’s still clearly the weakest part of the warband. I’m disappointed with it. The original sculpt is shocking so I was hardly onto a winner from the get go but, yeah, faces / flesh has been frustrating here. I have been able to paint flesh in the past so I’ll get it back:
Freehand is cool
I’ve always enjoyed freehand and have had some successes with it in the past:
I was pleased that the freehand I did for these new models turned out really nicely:
So I’m thrilled with that. I’d like to do some more but stay away from skulls or flowers for a change.
So what’s next?
I have two projects sitting in the UK (my 1,000 points of AoS BeastClaw Raiders and my Adeptus Titanicus models). I will complete these but I think that’s going to need an airbrush (buying a new airbrush will be a whole new thing that I’ll discuss here). So in lieu of having those here are some things I want to include on my next project:
TMM. I like painting TMM. And I think I’m pretty good at it:
One of the fundamentals of good TMM is the paint. This means Vallejo Metal Color. I’ll pick some up for my next project.
Better flesh. This is a given – the flesh on this project is poor. I’d like the opportunity to try more flesh and more faces
Freehand that isn’t skulls or flowers. I’ve got this. Maybe a banner, maybe a design, maybe an image. I don’t know.
Green and/or purple. Ok that’s weird but I don’t have many green or violet paints. I don’t mind mixing paints but if I use different projects as a reason to buy more paint colours then I’ll soon have heaps of paints because I use them not heaps of paints because I bought big sets and I only use a few of them (like I have in the past).
If you’ve got any ideas, hit me up!
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