Crazyredcoat’s Crazy Compendium of Collected Creativity

Following the rules of painting outwards, let’s get on with the skin tone. Normally I do skin with a simple Contrast method these days, but a lady shouldn’t look like she’s been in a fight, so I started with Contrast then built up to a ‘cleaner’ look.

And that’s the skin done. The hair is next, and it’s a simple colour to keep a golden, but natural look to the lovely locks.

My next project is something I haven’t done for a while; batch painting! I’m going to be painting my House Umber Berserkers from CMON. Hopefully it cools down enough out there to prime them, but at 40+ Celsius during the day I’d rather not risk the heat and humidity screwing up the priming stages.

The way I will do this will be to paint the main lads as I go, but show the colour choices using the Champion…though I will do a bit on the banner as a separate bit, most likely.

The colour pallet is going to be quite dour here, focusing on rugged colours with spots of colour in hair colour and the tabards that I will paint in Khorne Red. This is a little darker than the colour shown on House Umber’s heraldry, but it should fit in quite nicely with the rest of the gritty feel of the minis.

While I am focusing more on the book descriptions, I find for the general aesthetics of the Northmen that the TV Series isn’t too bad. The colours are weird and the heraldry is wrong, but they are useful sources for the armour and leathers…though I will be using a few more ‘bright’ leathers because I hate painting black everywhere; this isn’t The Watch…

Hopefully, if this storm breaks the heat, I can prime tomorrow but this project will take a lot longer than many of my other projects. I haven’t done unit painting since my last Ultramarine project, and that was a bit smaller scale than this but in A Song of Ice and Fire you don’t have the option of half squads…

So while I was working on the Umbers, I got the a shade part of natch painting and opening up a fresh pot of Agrax Earthshade I happily slapped it on and something went a bit wrong…

He is shiny. Very shiny. They all are, which is annoying. Not sure why, yet, but my two thoughts are that I didn’t shake the paint enough before applying it, or that it’s actually a mislabeled ‘Gloss’ pot. It’ll be annoying if it’s the latter, but I suspect it’s the former (remeber, kids, give your paint a good shake before applying!). I do have a solution that I thought I’d share, though; Lahmian Medium! I also use this to dull down the shine of decals in the same manner, but as a paint without pigment it dries with a nice matte finish that does not cover anything in any kind of colour. The only real downside is that I don’t have much Medium left in my collection. If it is an accidental Gloss pot, then I’ll need more Agrax, so I can get more Medium when that happens. Either way, a single coat is enough, and significantly dulls the shine.

A post about the actual painting stages should be coming up in the next little while, hopefully, so stay tuned!

A quick note: Rather than make a whole new post for about 2 sentences, I’m just adding this here. The rest of the project log will focus on the Champion and Standard Bearer simply due to a limit of Lahmian Medium (though I hope to fix that soon) and then a ‘finished’ product of the whole unit can been shown once I can have the paints in hand.

So after several hold-ups, significant progress has been made on, at least, the Champion and the Standard Bearer. The others will be done at some point, but these two models can show everything that would also cover the rest of the Umbers from the Stark vs. Lannister box. The important thing to note is that I plan to base the Champion off of Mors ‘Crowfood’ Umber (who I keep confusing with his brother Hother ‘Whoresbane’ Umber) so the bear will be a snow bear and probably be done last in a separate project post. The banner is also going to be done this way, though I will have him ‘kissed by fire’ using the same method for painting ginger hair that I used in the Crimean War Highlander posts.

Following the disasters of the ‘shade incident’ the basecoats were reapplied and the highlights could begin. While doing this, however, I did apply Mournfang Brown to the hafts of the weapons and such which will be finished at a later stage.

So a simple procedure here for the highlights. Skrag Brown for the areas done in Mournfang Brown, Tallarn Sand for Steel Legion Drab, Gorthor Brown for Dryad Bark (the Banner Bearer shows this off a lot better with his collar), Dawnstone for the Mechanicus Standard Grey, and Wazdakka Red for the Khorne Red. Screaming Skull was using to pick out any stitches in the leather to help them stand out and could be used to highlight the wraps around the axe hafts, but I decided to keep them looking a bit more drab. That might change.

Next up is weapons and belts, then on to faces. To be honest, I plan to do the faces in Contrast for ease of painting and these chaps are Berserkers, so if they look a little grubby it’s ok.

Work is done on my Champion and the Standard Bearer (almost, but more on that later) and I am very pleased with the results. When last we saw our gallant hero(es) they had just be covered in cloth and leather! And now; armour.

As is typical for metal, a base of Leadbelcher was followed by an all-over shade of Nuln Oil then, in order to keep the darker look to the metal, the plates and blades were edged in Stormhost Silver. I didn’t highlight the chainmail so that it stayed nice and dull, though by the end you may notice one addition to the links… The wood of the axe handles and such were also covered in the Nuln Oil and I decided to leave them as they were because I liked the dark look it gave me.

Typical Contrast for the skin, I used the Grey Seer simply because I like the colder tones it gives, but as with any Contrast-type paint any bright base would work. I would like to see what this would look like over Rakarth Flesh, at some point, but that’s a problem for Future Me; I don’t envy that guy…

I then layered Ulthuan Grey to the beard in downward strokes to emphasise the hairs and did the same with the bear pelt. After that I did a very light drybrush of White Scar over the top of the pelt. It is so subtle that it may as well not be there, but I did it anyway. I also added Abbadon Black to the nose and claws of the pelt that you’ll see in the final pictures along with the only real ‘bling’; a golden hilted dagger. Has anyone spotted the other bit of bling, yet? It is probably very hard to spot. I did two of these using the argument that Mors lost his two sons in Robert’s Rebellion so he took two things from the southern lords in payment. That’s my own interpretation, but sounds right.

And that is an Umber Champion based on the descriptions of Mors ‘Crowfood’ Umber. Very pleased with the final product, even if there were some bugs along the way. I may add some Lahmian Medium to the beard just to cut off that small amount of shine that’s still there.

Also, if no one has found the extra bit of bling, it’s a single gold link in the chainmail. It may not even show up in the pictures, so I thought I’d make you read to the end to find out what it was.

Stay tuned for a future update about painting the flag that I should hopefully be able to have done in the next few days.

Now to finish off the last part of the Umbers; the flag! I really do like the Umber sigil of the giant in chains. I used the image presented in an earlier post as the guideline, so let’s begin.

The basecoats are rather simple with Khorne Red for the red colour, which may appear a bit darker than the reference image, but brighter colours are usually more expensive to make and the Umbers are Northmen and not as rich as the Southern lords. The giant’s skin/fur? was basecoated in Dryad Bark the skin shirt was done in Rakarth Flesh and the teeth were picked out with Screaming Skull and the chains picked out in Mechanicus Standard Grey. You may notice a few missed patches of the red here and there, but they were tidied up in later stages. Next up was the shade…and it is at this point that I decided I DO have a mislabeled pot of Agrax Earthshade, but I also got some more supplies of Lahmian Medium to dull the colours down again so it’s not a big deal. In reality, a mislabeled pot is not exactly a life altering problem.

Next came a re-application of some basecoats, but also some layering of other colours. Khorne Red was layered over the high points if the cloth. Gorthor Brown was used to highlight/layer the giant’s skin. The shirt was left as it due to the texture being sufficient to get the detail across. The chains were edged in Dawnstone to give them a brighter look without jumping to metallics. After that the red cloth was highlighted with Wazdakka Red.

With the main body of the flag done, all that is left is to finish the edging details. For this colour I went for black for some bold contrast, but started with a tidy up layer of Mechanicus Standard Grey before covering the grey in Black Templar Contrast and finishing off with an edge of Mechanicus Standard Grey along the more prominent edges. After that, picking out the edging line in Rakarth Flesh and a small dot of Retributor Armour on the nails holding the flag in place and  and he was done.

The rest of the Umbers will be worked on over time; the shade problems took away a bit of drive, but they will be finished soon-ish. Something else may come inbetween (possibly The Greatjon or The Mountain) but we’ll have to see.

So as work is moving a bit slower than intended on the finished unit of bersekers (they are coming soon, I swear…) I thought I’d do a quick update on something a little special with this sort of unit. The Northmen of Westeros seem to lack a certain level of uniformity in their garb that is quite typical of medieval systems. You brought your own stuff to war, quite often down to your own weapons, and I wanted to present this with my berserkers. My Sworn Swords will be a bit more uniformed as they are a little bit more militaristic in their look, but the Umbers are berserkers. While it would have been fun to paint each of these chaps individually with whatever colours I felt like, I wanted a certain look to them.

Looking at the Stark list, there are 4 (5 if you count the Boltons) distinct variations so far; Starks, Umbers, Tullys, and Crannogmen. Each of those unit has a particular look to them that makes them stand out from the others. The Tullys have lots of armour, the Starks have a fair bit of mail, the Crannogmen have their hoods and such, and the Umbers look like drunk maniacs. Any guesses on why I wanted to start with them? The colour palletes of these units help them appear distinct as well and, so long as certain colours cross the whole army, can nicely tie in while looking different. The Crannogmen, for example, would wear a lot of greens alongside the browns, but if I started adding greens to my Umbers (which would be a perfectly normal colour for the people of Last Hearth) they may look out of place in a unit of leather-clad burly men. The heraldry ties the units together, but the other colours have to do the same thing without everyone looking the same as the others; it just doesn’t give the right feel to the unit.

There’s actually not that many colours across this unit, with the greatest variation appearing in the hair. Hair, when it is on every model like this, is a great way to show individuality. You’ll see that there is still a relatively consistent pallete to the hair, except the banner to help him really stand out, and that helps tie them all together, but there is still an air of the individual about them. This is even more important with mono pose minis that will be standing next to each other on the field. The more variation, the more individual they look. Hopefully, that will all work out once the last 4 chaps are finished and the unit is done. Ignoring the heraldry, my colour pallete is 4 colours; 3 browns and a grey. Even the grey is shaded with brown, though, to keep that colour and the ‘binding’ look. The grey, though, is used as a ‘uniform’ colour, mainly, on the cloaks. I also continued this colour across the Champion and The Greatjon will be the same to tie them all into the same House.

As I’ve been painting these guys in batches of a single sculpt, the overall effect won’t be seen until I can have all of them finished and arranged on the tray properly, but you can see from the images here that there is a uniform look to them while each looks different to his neighbour. When I get around to getting some Crannogmen or the Reeds they will be treated to similar methods, but with primarily green tones. Obviously, for the Lannisters these ideas don’t work as well and they benefit from a much more ‘professional’ look to their armies, but the men of the North, the Sellsword Companies and even the Dothraki will all benefit from this kind of treatment.

And so, after much time, the Umber Berserkers are finished, and what have I learned?

The first, and most important, is to NOT rush! My excitement to get this unit, and my ASoIaF minis led me to rushing to get paint on them that made me miss all sorts of little details that I’d normally get to in the model prep. This is most obvious with mould lines as you can almost certainly find all over these chaps. With other minis I’ve dealt with these with a nice sharp blade and the GW scraper tool (other scraping tools are available), but I just had a quick look these chaps and thought ‘good enough’. This was not the case.

Second is the painting issues I had along the way. One of the main reasons these chaps took so long is frustration of the shininess of several stages of paint work. I am still unsure as to why certain stages decided to go shiny, but such is life. The lesson here is that it never really hurts to have some way of matting down paints or even some matte varnish for an after coat (something that I will be doing later for these chaps).

A final note is playing to your strengths. While I know many people can paint in batches of 10 or more, I’m just not that good. I am better at individual minis and it’s actually quite tricky for me to paint another way. I originally wanted to do all 12 at once, then realised that I wanted to do the banner separately, then very quickly got bored of painting 11 minis colour by colour as time when by. This might not be a problem for everyone, but I am one of those people that once I’m bored I’m done for the day. In the end I painted them by rank which worked quite well or me and meant that I could stick to a schedule while still playing to my strengths as a painter. Hopefully they have turned out alright and while I am not 100% happy with them, the fact that they are a bit rough and ready, as an aesthetic, works nicely in my favour.