Painting Evil Dwarfs

I started by painting some berserkers. These guys were also used to test out methods for batch painting a bunch of figures. I settled on the following.

1, basecoats with Vallejo Steel, Vallejo Brassy Brass and Scale Color Black Leather.

2, shade the brass parts with Druchii Violet and the steel with Nuln Oil. Highlight the brass with Brassy Brass and Vallejo Gold. Highlight the steel with Vallejo Silver.

3, basecoat the skin with Scale Color SC-46 and shade with Druchii Violet. Lighten the base colour for highlights.

4, for the leather clothing. I based them with Scale Color Black Leather and highlighted with Scalecolors Walnut and Birch.

A couple of things I struggled to source from Scibor were a dwarf sorceror and some elementals. I picked up a sorceror from Lost Kingdom miniatures and the K’Daai Fireborn from Forge world.

The stages for painting fire on the elementals and the OSL on the sorceror followed the method shown in the pics. I used the Scale Color colours Mars Orange SC-39, Sol Yellow SC-40, White Sands SC-09 and Deep Red SC-35.

Next up I painted some gunners. I tried some different ways of painting leather along with that I detailed in the general method.

Going to need some terrain and I picked up some ruins from GW. I tried painting a marble effect of which I was pleased with the result.

A couple of bosses for the warband.

A coupl of Bull Centaurs for a bit of pace in the army.

I got a golden button for this project! I’d forgotten how exciting that could be. Many thanks to BoW team for all their kind words. The spotlight article is here:

Community Spotlight: Mighty Gods, Evil Dwarves & Wasteland Terrain

@avernnos and @sundancer cast their eye over this project in the Unofficial Hobby Hangout. It starts around 28 minutes in but the whole stream is worth a watch.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/598543609

There is more to come and I’ve a couple of posts to make after this one.

Our local store has been running painting comps to keep us all occupied. The latest coincided with my need to paint some more basic troops.

They were painted slightly differently to the previous troops. My airbrush is functioning better now so I used that to basecoat the metallics and the purple shading.

I also got a new camera with a built in focus stacking option. I used that to take these photos. I’m not sure if there’s any obvious difference but I rather like how these pics have come out. There’s a bit less shadow than normal.

I’ve behaved like a kid in a sweetshop buying whatever I liked for this project. Frankly I could’ve done with taking my time.

Anyway, I’ve got a few bits in the pipeline. There are some more gunners and and a canon crew. Got an accordion playing dwarf as well. They need assembling.

I bought some dark guardians from MOM Miniatures. They’re just stone golems but they fit the faction.
https://www.momminiatures.com/product-page/dark-guardians

But the big one is the war boss on a bull. I’m looking forward to getting the brush on this miniature. I love the model. There is only one problem with it. It doesn’t fit in the damn army box! Grrr, this is the second time this has happened with this project.

Finally I backed the Lost Kingdom kickstarter for stl files of their Evil Dwarf products. I’ve got a 3D printer to assemble and I plan to print some of their terrain.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1115856510/cuetzpal-empire-and-magmhorin-realm-printable-files

I thought I’d talk a little about working with Scibor’s miniatures.

Generally casts are good. Mold lines are inevitable and I’m not too concerned unless they’re hard to clean up. I’ve found on some weapon hilts a mold line running through the middle of some pattering. They’re difficult to remove without ruining the detail underneath.

Resin cleanup is a chore and Scibor don’t make this easy. While we accept there needs to be a connection point between the piece and the resin feed, some were placed in unnecessarily difficult spots.

Pieces glued together will very likely need greenstuff for the gaps.

Overall the general quality of detail is excellent. Assembling these figures isn’t too straightforward and anyone purchasing them should be prepared to do some extra work.

I should give an apology for having left this so long. Obviously the event impacted much chance of starting to play with this army and my home life got a lot busier. I’ve worked on some other projects I shall start to document but I’m finally coming back to this.

A few of us have been talking about SAGA and before Christmas that pushed us on to create Viking warbands. It didn’t take much of a push to think I could expand this force for Age of Magic.

Unfortunately nearly all my dwarves are heavily armoured so it’s hard to spot a levy from a warrior. I’d also like to expand my range of creatures.

I’ll be kicking off the next batch with a dwarf riding a winged bull. Think I could likely only pass it off as a monster unless warlord bases are bigger than I expect. Throw in 3 golems for creatures. While I don’t have a cannon yet I do have a cannon team to get going with.

I have a different style of dwarf – Scibor Boyars – I could make 2 points of warriors from. There are quite a few to paint so I’ll leave them till a later stage. I do need some levy though and I have some more gun dwarfs and rifle dwarfs. I’ll be adding into this round.

All figures from Scibor except the golems which are from MOM minis.

While most of this project was bought from Scibor I struggled to find some golems I liked. Eventually I settled on the Dark Guardians.

My intention was to do a pretty quick job by overbrushing. I batch primed a bunch of minis black but felt that was a bit too dark to go over with blue. So I overbrushed a kind of preshade.

Next I overbrushed with blues, keeping the blacks for shading, and applied Vallejo Brassy Brass to the metallic parts.

Next I used Druchii Violet to shade the darker parts and the metallics. I mixed Liquitex purple ink with white in various shades to colour the eyes and the glow within the mouthes of a couple of golems. I used that mix on the bases to pick out the runes.

Finally I drybrushed the stone parts with a very light blue and edged with some white.

The golems are done and ready for battle.

I’ve been looking forward to taking on this model for some time. It’s imposing and filled with details demonstrating what a vicious and low breed these dark dwarves really are.

First up were some gaps that needed filling on the wing joints and the horns. I used green stuff and attempted to maintain the continuity of the musculature. Around the horns I tried to add a tufted hair look.

For the airbrushing stage I started with a mid grey, then an overhead white. After that I spot highlighted areas with more white.

Next I mixed Paynes Grey and Purple inks to spray underneath the model in the shadow areas.

I went over the wings with a mix of blue and Payne’s Grey.

After this I went over the upper body areas with a flat green before highlighting some areas with yellow. I coloured the horns yellow with blackened tips.

After the airbrushing stage I began by strengthening the purple shadows and  blue tones with druchii violet and a mid tone blue.

Next I used Scale Colour Birch to add some small, dashes to act as both a highlight and texture.

The next stage was a little more involved. I used Scale Colour Orange Leather to base coart the hairy parts around the hooves and the horns. I shaded with druchii violet, some parts mixed with Payne’s Grey ink, then highlighted the hair with mixes of Orange Leather and Birch.

I basecoated the armour with Brassy Brass then heavily shaded with a mix of Payne’s Grey and purple ink. I finshed the armour with an overbrush of gold in the upper parts.

The wings were wet blended with purple and dark to mid-blue tones. I gave them a wash with druchii violet and drybrushed them up with a light blue highlight.

Finally the dwarf’s coat was basecoated with Scale Colour Black Leather, Dry brushed with Orange Leather and then had marking / wear added with Scale Colour Birch.

The dwarf’s beard was shaded with Basilicanum Grey contrast then highlighted with the same blue tones as the wings.

The base was quite a piece. There’s something very sinister about it. Were the figures just carved in or were they once living? I tried to give them a little focus by making their colour different to the rest of the rock. Rather like they were in the process of being petrified. The large head had a little Vallejo Basic Skintone mixed in.

My general approach was to give the base a desaturated look. I overbrushed most of the rock with some pale blues and shaded again with druchii violet. Where there were other colours like the trees I made sure they retained their desaturated look by mixing in some of the blue base.

The skulls were simply coloured with a bone white and then shaded to varying degrees with Agrax Earthshade.