Draconis: Spring Clean 2025 (Oldhammer) and Onward

29th July 2025

First up after the end of the Spring Clean Challenge is this random grot that I found while sorting out some other things.

Between Silver Bayonet enemy figs I just decided that I would paint up this chap and try out a darker base for using contrast, plus try pushing highlights again. And this fellow is pretty small, even for a grot, at just 13mm to the eyes.

Started out by painting it Rubber Black by hand.

Then I drybrushed it pale sand, but didn’t go too heavy, leaving a lot of dark area remaining. This was followed with Plaguebearer flesh contrast, drybrushed a light ochre, a small amount of ochre highlights, then some pink for the nose, lower lip, palms and ear tips.

Picked out the teeth and nails in ivory, washed with agrax. The eyes were Mephiston red.

The loin cloth was where I worked on my layers and highlights. At the moment red seems to work best for me (maybe I need to get some good groupings of other colours).

Went from the flesh tearer, through Mephiston and evil sunz, then a mix of evil sunz and Fire Dragon, reducing the highlight, finally adding just a small amount of fire dragon for the final smallest highlights.

The rope belt was painted in a mid beige.

In person the skin looks better than in the pics tbh, but I am not sure about leaving as much dark for the contrast stage. I think it would suit zombies and more grimdark paint styles, but it may be just a touch too dark for something like this grot, and definitely wouldn’t work for things like elves.

Quite happy with the non-contrast areas, and the highlighting of the loincloth. It’s a pretty small area, but luckily had good definition. The final orange may be a little too bright perhaps, but I do want to try to keep pushing on this sort of highlighting.