Slaying Dusty Boxes

I used a lot of the same colors and choices from my experience painting the Drune forces. Once again, I limited myself to using AP Speedpaints and Citadel Contrast paints.

I forgot to mention that I referenced a lot of the Slaine graphic novels for color choices. I was able to pick up a large digital set through Humble Bundle before I started the project. I’m currently reading Lord of Beasts.

Warped Slaine was probably my favorite miniature to paint for this project. Ukko, Nest, and Slaine were also a lot of fun. Slaine and Warped Slain were almost identical to paint. I think the only difference was adding leather colors. Ukko was a bit tough to lock down the best colors to use and his details are very small. I had some difficulty picking the best colors for Nest and also keeping her looking feminine.

One of the big tasks I took on was the Weirdstone. I primed it Citadel Greyseer, but went through the same process with a wash of diluted Basilicannum Grey. I tried using AP Pallid Bone on the skeleton fragments around the base, but that ended up not coming out the way I wanted. I messed around with a lot of different colors and chose to dry brush the rock with some standard paints to bring out the details. One thing I discovered was that the AP Desolate Brown really stood out to me as a great base color.

I ended up using AP Desolate Brown for all of my bases and added some green grass from a Warlord Games Northern European basing set.

I thought I was finished with my minis and shared pictures of them with a YouTuber I follow, MattsMiniatureProblem, and he gave me some feedback about the colors. I decided to give them some extra details and try to smooth out some colors.

Next up, I’ll share pictures of my finished base set of miniatures for Slaine: Kiss My Axe!

Finally, I’m to the point in my project where I can share my actual goal.  Getting some minis painted!

Like I mentioned in my last post, I decided to stick with a process I learned that uses a diluted Basilicannum Grey to give the minis pre-shading before I dry brush.

I had built and primed all of the minis for the Slaine: Kiss My Axe! starter set, including the special Slaine mini that came with the pre-order. I decided to finish the miniatures that came with the starter set before starting on the special Slaine figure. Mostly because I’m not sure what colors would be best for all the leather he’s wearing…instead of choosing violence he chose fetish for this outfit.

I strictly used The Army Painter (AP) Speedpaint 2.0 Most Wanted set and Citadel Contrast Paints for this step with the entire set.

AP came with two skin shades appropriate for these minis.  These are Crusader Skin and Warrior Skin.  I also have a single Contrast that I wanted to test out, Guilliman Flesh. I decided to use the Skull Sword Miniatures as a test for the three skin tones. All three looked great to me, but I felt the Army Painter Crusader Skin would do best for the rest of the minis. I used AP Dark Wood on the back of one shield where wood was exposed and the hair and furs. Contrast Snake Bite Leather was used for leather straps, sword grips, and boots. AP Pallid Bone was used for the helmet horns, breathing tubes, and skulls on the shields. I used AP Desolate Brown for the riveted shield backing and shield fronts. The helmet was AP Broadsword Silver. The swords, metal on the belts, and shields are a mix of Broadsword Silver and Hoplite Gold. I was very happy with how these turned out.

Slough Throt and the Drune Priest were painted very similarly to the Skullswords for their fur and metal items. I really started to like the AP Desolate Brown color and used it for their robes. AP Zealot Yellow was used for their beards and AP Crusader Skin for the small bit of face you can see and their limbs. For the Drune Priest, I decided to make the Drune Priests dagger stone by using Contrast Basilicannum Grey. Another new color I used was AP Forest Sprite for his hood. Slough Throt had a few unique items. I used AP Pallid Bone for his horns and Contrast Apothecary White for the book pages and a small bandage on his hands.

My brain is a little drained from typing up all these colors for the Drune. Time for a mental break before I jump into the breakdown of the Earth Tribe heroes.

Finally, I’m to the point in my project where I can share my actual goal.  Getting some minis painted!

Like I mentioned in my last post, I decided to stick with a process I learned that uses a diluted Basilicannum Grey to give the minis pre-shading before I dry brush.

I had built and primed all of the minis for the Slaine: Kiss My Axe! starter set, including the special Slaine mini that came with the pre-order. I decided to finish the miniatures that came with the starter set before starting on the special Slaine figure. Mostly because I’m not sure what colors would be best for all the leather he’s wearing…instead of choosing violence he chose fetish for this outfit.

I strictly used The Army Painter (AP) Speedpaint 2.0 Most Wanted set and Citadel Contrast Paints for this step with the entire set.

AP came with two skin shades appropriate for these minis.  These are Crusader Skin and Warrior Skin.  I also have a single Contrast that I wanted to test out, Guilliman Flesh. I decided to use the Skull Sword Miniatures as a test for the three skin tones. All three looked great to me, but I felt the Army Painter Crusader Skin would do best for the rest of the minis. I used AP Dark Wood on the back of one shield where wood was exposed and the hair and furs. Contrast Snake Bite Leather was used for leather straps, sword grips, and boots. AP Pallid Bone was used for the helmet horns, breathing tubes, and skulls on the shields. I used AP Desolate Brown for the riveted shield backing and shield fronts. The helmet was AP Broadsword Silver. The swords, metal on the belts, and shields are a mix of Broadsword Silver and Hoplite Gold. I was very happy with how these turned out.

Slough Throt and the Drune Priest were painted very similarly to the Skullswords for their fur and metal items. I really started to like the AP Desolate Brown color and used it for their robes. AP Zealot Yellow was used for their beards and AP Crusader Skin for the small bit of face you can see and their limbs. For the Drune Priest, I decided to make the Drune Priests dagger stone by using Contrast Basilicannum Grey. Another new color I used was AP Forest Sprite for his hood. Slough Throt had a few unique items. I used AP Pallid Bone for his horns and Contrast Apothecary White for the book pages and a small bandage on his hands.

My brain is a little drained from typing up all these colors for the Drune. Time for a mental break before I jump into the breakdown of the Earth Tribe heroes.

Between the time I stopped working on my Slaine project I decided to start many more projects, and even finished a few of them.  Bear with me as I give a long story to explain painting my Slaine miniatures

Every Christmas, I exchange gifts with a group of friends.  Most of the time the gift giving is an attempt to get other members of the group into new addictions…err, I meant to say table top games.  I received Goliath Necromunda minis from a friend and thought they’d be a great project to learn how to use Contrast paints.

I joined a Contrast Paint Facebook Group and began learning about the paints and checking out all the projects people posted.  One day a post caught my eye where someone shared a tip how they would get better shading results from their minis.  This was before “Slap Chop” became popular, or at least before I ever heard of it.  Also, the tip had nothing to do with “Slap Chop”.

I decided to try this process out on my new Goliath Gang, the Chemcanal Studs, that I wanted to get finished for an upcoming store campaign.  The process is pretty simple.  You start by priming your minis with Wraithbone Spray.  Then you make a mix of 50/50 Basilicanum Grey/Contrast Medium and shade the entire mini.  It creates a nicely shaded, but somewhat darker base.  The last step to prep the minis is to do a drybrush of a lighter color.  I used the wraithbone paint from the pot.  I was very happy with the results for my first Contrast painted army.

Many months later a little company called Army Painter came out with Speedpaints 2.0. I was lucky enough to get the Most Wanted set during last year’s Christmas Season.

I wanted to try these paints out and was able to get a few miniatures primed that I’ve had sitting untouched.  The minis I decided to use come from a Ukrainian company and are sold by the Plastic Models Store.  They are super tiny zombies from the Dark Alliance Zombie Set 1. I use these unpainted minis for my old Zombies!!! board game from Twighlight Creations to add some variety to the zombies that came in the box.

It was a lot of fun painting up these little figures after Christmas and I like some of the paints better than the Contrast paints I used for my Goliath Gang and Enforcers.

Now we’ve finally arrived to my project.  Getting those Slaine minis out of the box and slapping some paint on them.

I used the same process to prep my Slaine minis that I used on my Goliath gang.  All of the miniatures were primed using Wraithbone spray.  The two miniatures in the photo are examples of the prep process before using Contrast or Speedpaints.  Slough Throt only has the 50/50 mix of Basilicanum Grey/Contrast Medium.  The Skull Sword has a dry brushing of Wraithbone paint from the pot.  I think it helps create a smooth shading on the miniatures where the “Slap Chop” technique makes a miniature look rough or chalky with the colors.

You’ve successfully survived reading through my long winded story about how I learned to use contrast and speed paints, details about a few of my random projects, and how I prepped my Slaine minis.

Next up, I’ll share my painting progress.

I mentioned in the description of the project that I previously made terrain for Slain: Kiss My Axe! while my minis sat unpainted for an excessive amount of time.  I figure it’d be worth while sharing what I finished before jumping into the rest of the project.

Slaine inspired me to jump into terrain building due to me mostly owning SciFi terrain and a limited amount of terrain for Bolt Action.  The plus side to Slaine terrain is that it would be useful for lots of different systems.

I decided that I wanted to pick up an additional Celtic Round House from Warlord Games, made by Sarissa Precision, before I started my terrain project.  Once it arrived I jumped into the project.

I decided to make the roofs of the round house using directions that came with the kit.  I did a little research and thought using Green Kitchen Scrub Pads from the Dollar Tree (where everything is sold for $1.25) would be a fun project.

After purchasing the materials, I traced out the roof, cut, and re-cut…and re-cut.  My ability to measure and cut things seems to have disappeared after elementary school.  After multiple attempts I finally had a proper design for the roofs and used a hot glue gun to secure them.

Using the hot glue gun resulted in an unnatural line on the roof.  I decided to use some white glue over these spots and grab a container of flock to shake onto the roof.  I think it turned out well enough.

I knew that I needed some additional scatter terrain and decided to make some hedges.  I consider myself a thrifty person, some might call me cheap, but I decided to use some leftover scrub pad material to make the hedges.  I thought they’d be great for Slaine and Bolt Action.

I cut some wavy strips from the scrub pads using a Bolt Action mini to get the right height for the hedge.  I used white glue to secure the hedge to a popsicle stick…and then the stick warped.

I decided to prime the popsicle sticks and tried gluing the hedge down again…and it warped again.  Reflecting back on this experience, perhaps this had something to do with the Warped Slaine figure sitting unpainted in the box.

I finally used my hot glue gun and the hedges were secure.  I added a little bit of paint and flock to the hedges.  I wasn’t going to put much more effort into them and decided they were good enough for my table.

I think every gamer needs trees and I didn’t have any in my collection.  I decided to order some tree kits produced by Woodland Scenics.  They have some great tutorial videos on YouTube.  After painting up the trees, a mix of brown and grey trunks, it was time to get the foliage on.

For some reason I decided to be thrifty (cheap) again and tried using white glue I had at home to secure the foliage to the trees.  Not surprisingly this didn’t work, even after the tutorial on YouTube shared the type of glue to use.

I’m sure you’re thinking by now that I learned my lesson.  Ha, no way in hell did that happen.  I decided that I’d buy a different type of white glue…that didn’t work.  Then I went back to the store and bought a brush on glue…that didn’t work.  At this point I realized that I should just go ahead and buy the more expensive Woodland Scenics glue for this project.

The glue arrived, I used it, and it worked…

Lesson learned for this project, but I’m sure my thrifty mindset will come back to bite me in the future.

To finish up the project, I painted up the tree bases (large washers) and added some flock.  I sprayed the trees multiple times with watered down white glue and I was finally finished with these frikin trees.

Like many miniature wargamers, I decided it would be a great idea to leave the rest of the Slaine minis in the box for about 2 years. Then I decided to finally start the project back up last week.