Burning Armour - A tutorial

A few people on the Warhammer Forum have asked about a tutorial for the armour I painted on my Chaos Warriors. I have finally managed to get something together. It is not perfect but it should give a good idea of how to do it. I have popped this tutorial there and on the Northerns Wwasters site too. I have been slowly getting my Forsakonettes done for this months challenge on the Northern Wasters site. They are approaching the finished state. I might have them finished by next weekends deadline if I am lucky. Thankfully New Years comes with a few holiday days around it, however it also comes with parties! Maybe I will have some time. While doing their armour this weekend I have photographed the process.

Step 1
The armour is basecoated from a mix of paints. I used to use Dwarven Bronze but as GW don't make that anymore I have mixed my own. I start with Brazen brass and add a lot of black ink. It thins the paint a lot and darkens it nicely. It needs a lot of mixing and it will separate for a few weeks but after a while it settles well. The dark bronze colour this achieves is still very metallic. I then give this a wash with GW Badab black. It is important not to water this wash down as it loses the quality needed to give the burnished effect. Once this is done and dry, which thankfully does not take too long, I begin with the first Orange. The Chaos Warriors' armour was much easier to do as the flat plates lend themselvels to edging. The Deamonttes are a different mater entirely! I am not sure if what I have done is actually that good but considering their ribbed armour it came out alright. Anyway Vallejo (VJ) Hot Orange is the first colour. It is laid down lightly along the natural edges of the armour. I lay it down thinly and over a thicker area than I intend to have in the end. I want it to form a failry translucent band along the edges. I then lightly trace in the lines between the edges ot in this case along the indents in the armour. As I said with flat plates this is a lot easier! Again I try to creat a translucent band. This stage is shown above.

Step 2
The second stage is designed to have the previous orange blend a little into the armour and form a base for the stronger brighter effect of the later stages. It also serves to dull the armour down and give only the highest points a metallic effect. The blackness of the armour accentuates the lava\burning effect but the higher metallic areas make it still look like armour. Anyway this stage is simply a second wash of undiluted Gw Badab Black. Just don't allow it to pool too much in the recesses.

Step 3

This step is important, possibly the most important to get right. It is once again easier on the Warriors but is still okay to do on the Daemonettes. The orange is very dull after the wash and looks terrible. It blends well into the armour though. I use VJ Hot Orange again but in thin strong lines to give the heat. The previous orange then looks like the heat dissipating into the metal. On this model my orange lines are a little too thick due to the form of the Daemonette armour. The delicate models don't give you much room to play with! I was also a little out of practise and heavy handed when it came to the strokes I think.

Step 4
(Sorry for the poor photograph, I didn't realise it was so out of focus. It is too late to go back now though)
This stage really gives the model some heat! Again I missed a few tricks but the principle is easy to explain. I use VJ Orange Fire for this layer. Here what I am trying to achieve is the warming of the lines. I highlight the areas where the lines meet. So basically where one line intercepts another you paint in the brighter orange leaving a little of the darker one showing. I also sometimes paint the brighter orange on the raised areas. This gives a nice effect.

Step 5
Thankfully the more you do of this effect the quicker the steps become. The second last colour to go on is GW Sunburst Yellow. This is used sparingly right at the intersection points of the lines and on some of the most raised areas. The paint is really thin which works to my advantage. I can take a little and work it into the lines in two coats. As it is transparent it highlights perfectly. Its that simple! Just ensure not to get any of the yellow outside the orange lines as it really defeats the effect.

Step 6
The final painting layer is optional. I actually left it off most of the Daemonettes. The exact meeting point of the lines of orange should be given a very thin coat of white. I use GW Skull White but having just bought VJ Dead White I have come to prefer it already. I also pick out certain areas that have received a yellow highlight with the white. The Deamonettes white skin however might not suit this so I really kept it to a minimum on this model just to show what it should be like.

Thats pretty much it for the burning armour. I do have to say again that my inspiration came from the Warriors of Chaos book. There is a much nicer effect achieved there that a bit of study should be able to recreate well. If anyone else has tried this please let me know so that I can learn what might work better in future! I will be doing this on my Chaos Knights once I get to them. Hopefully it will look nice there too!

A game a week?

So a game a week then? I have heard about this aim in White Dwarf and it actually is appealing. A game a week should be possible? To be honest I doubt it but I am going to try. After spending so much money and time preparing an army I might as well get some use out of it. The gaming should help to keep me motivated about the painting too. The lead collection has already begun to mount in Germany. I really need to stop collecting... as if that would actually be possible. I have two days off over Christmas so I don't know if I will actually get that much painting done. The Forsakenettes need to be finished soon as I can't really be bothered with them anymore. While I will need them to bulk out the army a bit until I have knights and stuff ready I don't see myself using them. They are really sub-optimal. I don't think they would even be good for fun games!

The extra gaming would be great in terms of improving my gameplay. I have noticed that I am not that sharp anymore (in game terms!). I make really stupid mistakes and while I don't believe my army choice is optimal I make things far worse for myself by not paying attention. The mistakes can be ironed out by playing more. The army list is something else entirely though... In terms of army choice or list making I have so much useless things in there. My 2000pt army is bigger than most horde armies. I could almost challenge the new skaven for sheer numbers! I have bought a few new toys to change the army a little. Two spawn should give me better options as will a Warshrine. The Spawn models are pretty terrible though. When I finally saw them 'in the flesh' I was dissapointed.. They have poor poses, poor sculpts and not really that many options. Still they will do for now. The one I was sculpting myself won't be done for a while! The Warshrine I am converting from the Corpse Cart. I have to figure out a way to have it pulled by a Chaos Steed though. It also needs to fit inside the foam case, which thankfully has a slot for a chariot at least. The Warshrine has the potential to make for a very powerful unit somewhere on the board. It also gives a nice focal point for the army. With what I already have and the additions I should be able to come up with a

Christmas parties

As Christmas approaches it seems I am getting less and less time to paint! It is my own fault really as recovering from my work Christmas Party has taken most of this weekend! Having an effective public transport system that runs 24 hours a day means that parties tend to run on that little bit longer than back home in Dublin! My other excuse this weekend for not painting is because I have a roleplaying session today. We shall be forming a new group here in the city and today is the first session. I guess it is just to see what players suit and are available. I believe we will be playing Spellslinger. The setting seems interesting but I am not too happy that it is 3rd edition DnD. That system is supposed to suck and as I have never played it before this should be an interesting beginning. I am looking at my 4th edition collection here and wishing I could get someone to run that!

My online 4th edition game has been good. It suffers a little from the fact that we can't get maptools to easily work for us. Having to open ports on our routers has proven next to impossible. That means we can't easily use maps and therefore the tactics of the combat scenes are lost a little. The timing has proven okay at least so we can regularly meet without too much disruption. Currently I think we are playing through an old Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay scenario. I can't remember which but as the story goes on it feels more and more similar! Online roleplay has been good. The dynamics of the group work differently but there still seems to be a lot of fun. The familiarity generally created between players takes a lot long to build up but we are getting there. I wonder what it will be like with a bunch of Germans playing Spellslinger today... fun I hope?!

The North Wexford Gamers have begun another painting competition here. This one comes with prize support from Battlecry miniatures. I will hopefully be entering with Crom. I really need to get working on him. As you can see there is still a lot to be done! The armour is almost complete. I made a few mistakes here and there that are not visible in the picture. I have to tidy these up and then get into the more detailed work. The miniature has loads of little details that should provide some nice contrast against the dark armour. I have finally converted and base coated his shield. I am experimenting with some different methods for painting bronze. So far it is coming out well without having to put too much effort in. Thats always good! I have found that the GW purple wash gives an interesting tint to the gold. It is very easy to overdo it though. I haven't green yet but I assume it should also be good. I really think with Crom I should have cut the horns off the helmet though. The more I look at the model the more I hate them. The only handy thing is that it is easy to pick the model up with them. Maybe once they are painted I hope I will be happier.

The Forsaken

I managed to get some painting done dispite the lack of daylight. The Daemonettes have been basecoated and I have done up a test model to see how the scheme will look. I wish I had canverted these models but I couldn't think how. The models are pretty goos already. They don't fit into my theme that much and making them look 'viking' didn't seem possible. Anyway so far I am pretty happy with them. I incorporated the burning lava armour from the Chaos Warriors. So they should fit visually at least that way! Big furry cloaks just didn't seem appropriate.

I haven't really done much with the skin on these ladies. The little I have done has shown me that there is not much contrast on the skin once I begin to hightlight it. While that is essentially what I want I don't want them to look like they are just pure white. I began the process by painting them white, a good solid basecoat. I washed this with a very dark purple. It actually dried quite pink which was suprising. It looked alright though but not perfect. I then highlighted up with pure white. The white is transparent enough that it takes a few thin coats to build up to a pure white. Anyway you can't see this in the photographs as I hadn't done it by the time I was taking them. Maybe during the week I will get a few more work in progress shots and have gotten closer to a better skin.

I had actually intended to give these a very pale flesh colour. However after I had washed them all purple I remembered it! I had the wash on before I thought about what I had intended to do. It was too late by then. Anyway I think they look okay this way. The armour has come out a lot better than I though it would. It gives a very good contrast to the skin. I don't know how I will do the claws though. I have looked at a few different things but at the moment I really don't know how to proceed. I was thinking of a really dark brown.

A weekend, I won't know what to do with the time

As predicted work has swallowed a lot of my time. I finally have two days off together so I intend getting some painting done! I managed to win the Northern Wasters painting competition this month so I have decided that the next months theme will be "the best of the best". It is intended to have the elite members of the amry represented so I will be doing some painting on my unconverted Forsaken. I have used Daemonette models for them in games. I have to say they were pretty useless and tended to be free victory points for my opponents. I would like to use them more so I want to get them painted up. I will be doing them in a white scheme but hopefully with the burning armour you have seen on the Chaos Warriors!

My tournament didn't go so well last weekend sadly. One of the games ranks as the possible worst ever both from my point of view and possibly my opponents. More of that later! The tournament itself was great. Organised well and run well, the only complaint was it running a little late meaning I didn't get home until midnight. Wwell it wasn't home but to a friends house that night. The first game was against a decent Dwarf gunline with an anvil. It lead to a very tense game that was decided by some very lucky rolls on my behalf. I managed to hold a decisive charge on a double one! That saved the game for me. It ended up a draw. I was happy with the result to be honest. If it had gone on longer I think I had the edge but a fair result by the end of turn six was a draw.

Game two was a different story altogether! I played another Wwarriors of Chaos army. These civil wars are often very bloody and this game was no exception. My opponent had no magic defense instead trusting to the most elite troops! I got first turn and advanced with everything. He did the same and suddenly I was pinned behind a wall of chaff with knights pointing straght at me! There was little I could do to stop the worst but I managed to hold off the worst charges and get in some of my own. The trouble, in my opinion thats of course biased, is that the guy I played against had never been in a tournament before. He played and acted a little too agressive and wasn't following what would be considered standard tournament etiquette. He would vaguely measure things and then move them while I was telling him that wasn't possible. Things like spawns moving through friendly troops became the point I lost my cool. I admit I eventually couldn't stay calm. We more or less had to keep the ref beside our table to explain everything. I just sat down and didn't care what happened. By turn four I was prepared to concede. I had had enough. Once the turn five was finished we had been told that there was five minutes left. Aat this point the opponents general and main regiment of knights was fleeing. I stood up, said sorry, and went to the toilet. While I needed the break to stay calm I knew that in taking it the game would be a draw. Bad tactics I know but I really couldn't do anything else. When I came back there was a minute or two left so I started my turn six (I went first). The judge decided that as there was no chance to finish the turnj we shouldn't start. The game ended up a very minor win for me, 12-8 in ETC terms. So I pulled a bad tactic. I felt shit about it but in the moment it seemed appropriate due to my opponents behaviour. No excuse though....

Game three was what the doctor ordered! A great friendly opponent playing a fun army, Savage Orcs! The game went well until shagga's sword got close to my character bunker and tore my Chaos Warriors to shreds. I lost badly 6-14 I believe but it was a fun game. I have to thank my opponent, if he ever reads this. That game was really what I needed.

So in the end without painting points due to my hastily assembled Forsaken I came 26th of 32. A bad result, possibly my worst ever, maybe a good sign that Karma exists!