Showcase: Space Dwarves - Hasslefree Grymm

Thanks to 40k's genesis as a spin off from Warhammer Fantasy Battle space orks and knights are pretty common among sci fi minis. It's a little odd then that dwarves were few and far between for many years after GW wrote the Squats out of the 40k universe. Happily that isn't the case any more. For my tastes, Hasslefree's Grymm are some of the best space Dwarves out there and there's quite a bit of competition these days. I like the clean sculpts wnd the and the modern sci fi look. Anyhow, a while ago I painted some up for use in a Sci Fi role playing game I was running.

Painting wise they were fun to do and quite straightforward. I spent a bit longer on Kraggs and the pilot as I anticipated them being named NPCs in the game. The main point of interest was that this was my first experiment with the Games Workshop texture paints for basing.  I was quite pleased with results and they're very easy to use, you just paint them on. I did do a couple of coats though.

The Grymm advance across unknown terrain

Kraggs leads his troops forwards

Grymm trooper takes aim...

The civilian pilot looks around nervously.

Kragg the squad leader hefts his axe.

The Grymm deploy sentry guns for additional fire support.

Showcase: Female Viridian Sniper

Just a quick post tonight as it's been a while since I posted anything. Here's another of my Imperial Guard figures, this one being a Viridian Sniper from Urban Mammoth. Their Viridians make great Imperial Guard although I think they look more like veterans than ordinary guardsmen. (I do have some GW figures in this army, honest!)

Viridian Sniper

Anyhow, I painted this some years back and did it as a bit of a study in painting different greens. It was quite fun to do and I was pleased with the results. The warm skin tones and the red lenses contrast with the cooler green colours which I think is what makes the paint job work. Picking a good colour scheme is half the battle in painting I think. 

Hmm, one day I'll actually have to finish the base and re-photograph it better. :-)

Six reasons to use a wet palette when painting miniatures

One thing that many newcomers to this wonderful hobby do is use paint straight out of the pot.  I did too for a long time. However, one of the things that really helped me to improve my painting was when I started using a palette, in particular a wet palette.


So what is a wet palette? Well, it's a plastic lid with some old rag or kitchen towel in it and grease-proof paper on the top. It's cheap and easy to make and is on of the things that can improve you painting fast. If you want to see how to make one there's a quick tutorial here.

A wet palette

Why use a wet palette though? What's so great about it? Here are six reasons:

1. You'll paint better
   Using any palette makes it possible for you to thin your paints and mix colours, both of which are essential for good painting. If you ever want to try layering or blending on your miniatures you'll need  to do both. There's so much to say about these that I'll talk about them in detail in a future post.
2. Paint stays wet longer
   Paint can stay wet for hours on a wet palette at the right humidity and room temperature. Even in the least favourable conditions it stays wet much longer than anything on a dry palette. Given how quickly acrylics normally dry this is a huge advantage.  You also don't need to continually keep getting fresh paint out of a pot which can speed up batch painting considerably. If the paint is still wet on your palette, that means it won't dry on your brush whilst you're studying the miniature and thinking about what to do next.
3. Keep you options open
   It's easy to keep several colours available at once which is useful when you want to go back and touch up a spot you missed or cover up a slip of the hand. You don't need to open the paint again, put paint on the palette and dilute it just to repair a small error.
4. Get a point on your brush
   The wet rag in a wet palette is perfect for bringing you brush to a point without the need to lick it! Put the bristles of the brush on the rag and roll the brush in your fingers while moving it towards you. Try it, it's trickier to describe than to do!
5. You use less paint
   Leaving you paints open for long periods of time means that they start to dry up. They're also more likely to get knocked over by pets, fellow gamers or other unwary passers by.
6. No cleaning!
   Dry palettes get caked in dry paint quickly and need to be washed before they can be used again.  With a wet palette you can just throw away the grease-proof paper when you've finished with it and put some more on.

So, there you go. One simple way to improve your painting. If you want to know how to make one click here .

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How to make a wet palette for miniature painting

A wet palette is a wonderful way to improve your painting - I did a post on six reasons to use one if you're not sure what the point of it is. Anyhow it's easy  and cheap to make and the chances are you already have what you need in the house:

• An old lid of some kind. Anything waterproof will do. I normally use a small plastic lid but I have an old biscuit tin lid that I keep for the days when I want a big palette.
• An old rag or some kitchen towel. Anything that holds water and won't disintegrate will work fine. Tissues don't work well.
• Grease-proof paper or baking paper. you know, the kind of thing used for making cakes. Make sure it's not the waxy waterproof kind, as that won't work because it won't let the moisture through.

Once you've got these items fold up the rag or kitchen paper and so that it fits snugly on the palette.

Make sure the rag is soaked with water and then pour off the excess.

Pour off the excess water.

Press the paper down on to the wet rag so that it sticks and there aren't any air pockets. If it doesn't stick it won't work.

That's it. Get painting!

A wet palette in action.

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Painting Space Wolves the quick and easy way: Part 2

Introduction
Welcome once again to the joys of painting the Emperor's finest! Last time I got the Space Wolves painted in a a very simple way so that they could appear on the tabletop and defeat humanity's enemies with a nice, simple paint job. This time I'm going to do a bit more to improve the look without doing anything too difficult or time consuming.

First steps
The first thing to do was to tidy up some of the mistakes that I hadn't bothered with initially and to paint some of the bits that had skipped the first time round.

I tidied up the shoulder pads where my hand had slipped with the red or yellow using Codex Grey. I painted the purity seals using red and Bleached Bone. Since I had the colour on my palette, I went over the assorted wolf skulls and claws with bleached bone at the same time. Finally I used the same colour to drybrush the wolf pelts that two of the marines were wearing.

Shoulder Pads
There's no getting away from it; Space Marine shoulder pads are there to be decorated and space Wolves probably more than most since each one is an individual warrior.  There are basically three options when if comes doing shoulder pads; you can use transfers, one with a molded design or you can paint something free hand. As you can see below I managed to use all three options of the red shoulder pads!

On the left there's a paw print decal which seemed nice and characterful. Given that it's relatively small it was also quite east to apply. In the middle, there's a molded skull shoulder pad that I painted in the usual way and on the right is a simple geometric design that suggest a gaping maw - at least in my mind!

For the yellow shoulder pads I just applied the chapter symbol decals to each. The basic procedure is on the reverse of every sheet of transfers that GW produce.  A couple of things that make it easier to apply decals:

1. Paint gloss varnish on to the area first and to apply the decals quickly before it dries. The gloss varnish helps the decals to stick. You'll need to use some anti shine later to stop it looking glossy but that's a minor inconvenience. 
2. Use a pair of tweezers to pull the transfers out of the water. A paint brush can work too but I personally prefer tweezers.
3. Use some clean, dry kitchen paper to get rid of any excess water.

Decals are bit fiddly to do on curved surfaces like these, flat surfaces like shields are much easier, but I got them on in the end. The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that one tore slightly in the process but I decided just to leave it. This isn't a tutorial for perfectionists...

Painting the wolf skin

I quite liked the brown colour of the wolf skins, but I felt that the guy with powerfist needed something more traditionally wolfy in colour. (Powerfist =  veteran sergeant = curmudgeonly traditionalist space wolf in my mind. Go figure..) I painted over the brow with a light grey and then gave it a wash of watered down Codex Grey to put in some shading and picked out the eyes with yellow just to add a little colour. 

Basing the figures
I painted the bases with thinned Vallejo Khaki which is the nice light brown colour you can see. Since I'd glued the sand on the bases before I started painting and made sure they got sprayed with undercoat, this was a nice quick process! I then dabbed on some PVA glued and added the static grass.

I'm firmly of the opinion that even simple basing like this really improves a figure. Lots of Golden Demon entries put almost as much work into the base as they do into the figure.

All finished!

There you go, three Grey Hunters painted quickly and easily. There's numerous things that could still be done to them, the most obvious being highlighting

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Painting Space Wolves the quick and easy way: Part 1

Introduction
The goal of this tutorial is not to paint 'Eavy Metal standard or award winning minis, it is much simpler. How can you paint your Space Wolves quickly and easily so that they look nice on the battlefield?  Fortunately it's not particularly difficult or too time consuming.  I decided to paint my Space Wolves grey because I'm not that keen on the official colour scheme but with a few changes you could adapt this tutorial to the normal scheme.

Space Wolf Grey Hunter ready for battle!

Getting started
The first step of course is to clean and assemble your figures. It's worth investing a bit of time at this stage as flash and mould lines do look really ugly later on if you don't remove them. It's also a good idea to glue sand to the bases now because then you can spray undercoat it when you're doing the rest of the model. Gluing and painting the base later is more time consuming in the long run.

Space Wolves undercoated with Uniform Grey

The next step is undercoating. If you're a beginner you may like to check out the post I did on undercoating before you do this.  For quick and easy painting, a coloured primer from The Army Painter is a must. This gives you the undercoat and the base coat in one fell swoop which speeds things up by saving the bother of base coating.. I used Uniform Grey but they make Wolf Grey as well for those of you who like the studio colour scheme.

Shading the easy way with washes and inks
The next step is to put in some shading. I do this by liberally applying a wash to the models. I used Army Painter Strong Tone Ink On these models but any black ink or wash should do. If you don't have a commercially made one then thin down some black paint with water and use that, making sure it gets into the recesses. The figures should now look something like this, a bit grubby but very 3D with the shading! Most importantly you can see the detail clearly.

Black ink adds shading and brings out the details

Proper painting starts!
Now begins the fun part; adding colours. It helps immensely if you don't need too many different colours. These Space Wolves just have red, yellow, brown black and metal.Using a limited number of colours has several advantages. One, you don't need to have so many paints which is important for the beginner on a budget. Second, it as stops the figure looking gaudy; gaudy is virtually always a bad look.  The last is so obvious that I think it's easily overlooked. The fewer colours you use, the quicker the painting.

Another trick to painting quickly is to paint batches or groups of models together. Personally I find three or four is a good number. Whilst one is drying you can paint the next. Keep using the same colour until it's on all the models. Concentrate on being neat and getting a smooth coat. When you've finished go back and tidy up any mistakes.

Space Wolves painted the quick and easy way

So there we are: three Space Wolves ready to do battle for Russ and the Emperor! They won't win any painting awards but as a group they look just grand for the battlefield and they didn't take forever to do. There's plenty that could be done to improve them and in part 2 of this tutorial we'll do just that.

Final thoughts
There are many fantastic miniature painters out there on the Internet. Many who are far more talented then me in fact and have armies of beautifully painted figures that grace a 40K battlefield.  Hours of work have gone into the figures and each one is a miniature work of art. Pun intended. If you want a tutorial on that method there is a rather good one here on an awesome Space Wolf blog.

It can be inspiring to  admire these figures but it's also a bit disheartening if you don't have the time or the skill to paint to that standard - and most of us don't.  I think this is partly to blame for the numerous armies I've seen over the years which are unpainted or simply black undercoated figures. People think every figure needs to be 'pro painted' and are afraid to even start. Hopefully this tutorial will help you get started with painting your army.

If you want to improve the models you painted before to a nicer tabletop standard, check out part 2 of this tutoral on painting Space Wolves the easy way.

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Showcase: Hasslefree's Mckenzie (a) and Grant

So here are couple more figures from my collection... After painting Debra I decided to add a couple more figures to my Cadian Imperial Guard.  Grant was one of the earliest figures from Hasslefree. I've often thought he would make great Sly Marbo but I've never gotten around to fielding him as that. Mckenzie I've always figured for a driver who's gotten out of her vehicle and is about to defend herself!  There is, by the way, another version of Mckenzie with a rifle which I'll post in the future.

Two soldiers show the power of drybrushing.

The painting on both figures was quite straightforward as they're basically just three colours. Together they show off a couple of simple drybrushing techniques quite well.  Drybrushing is when you wipe of most of the paint from your brush until there's almost nothing left. The brush should basically be dry rather than wet, hence the name of the technique. This can be a bit hard on brushes so either use an old brush, a cheap brush or a purpose made drybrush!

I painted Mckenzie's fatigues brown, probably Graveyard Earth by the look of them, and her armour and accessories in Olive Drab. I then drybrushed all of them with Khaki with an old standard size brush. It's a quick and easy way to give them some texture and highlighting.

You get a lot of bald, tough guy miniatures - not least of which are all the Space Marine sergeants I've ever met!  Whilst there's nothing wrong with that, it isn't really hard to give a figure buzz cut. Honest! I did Grant's hair and stubble by dry brushing Scorched Brown lightly onto his head. Obviously you need to use a small brush for something like this! So long as you do it gently and build it up gradually it's not hard though. When you're painting it's always easier to add more than to take off excess paint.  So long as you keep some flesh tone on your palette you can always go back and touch up the skin afterwards if you need to.  Cleaning up mistakes is something every painter does - including the pros!