Danchitsu

Time to start my second Doom Company for 1490 Doom, and this time I want to explore the greens in the Blanche sets.

Specifically used here:

Midnight Olive, Tainted Garden, Grimdark Shadow (all over wash), Heavy Metal, Blanched Berry.

Those are the main colours. I also used Banshee Brown and Ruddy Terra for the polearm, made an orange out of Fiery Vermillion and Moonbeam Yellow, and used Ivory White to mix into colours to create highlights.

It’s been a really interesting and enjoyable month or so using the John Blanche paints exclusively.  Some versatility in the set, and some results I am very pleased with.  Here is the direct comparison.

I think next I’d like to explore the green paints and see what they can do.  I have some ideas..

Over the last couple of weeks I have discovered, then gotten completely obsessed with, a game called 1490 Doom from Buer Games.  So my mission at Salute this year was to spend the limited time I had there running around picking up everything I could find to help me get the game on the table.

I am sure I’ll set up a separate project to cover all of that, but the reason to talk about it here is that this will be the next test for the John Blanche paints. The aesthetic should suit them perfectly.

In terms of miniatures, I already had a small number of  Trench Crusade minis from their first small Kickstarter (I didn’t bother going into the big one), and at Salute I managed to pick up some more from Mammoth Miniatures (of Planet 28 fame) and Bifrost. The scales don’t match perfectly, but we’ll see how they look when painted.  They are good enough to get me started at least.

You only need 3 miniatures per side so I’ll have enough even if one of these gets the axe!

Today’s XLBS was 1hr 32mins 27sec, so I tried to get as much painting done as possible whilst watching!  I got all the basecoats done on 2 models and got the wash on.  All just straight-from-the bottle colours, aside from the skin tone which was my new favourite recipe of Ivory White with a touch of Ruddy Terra.

Ok so I didn’t meditate on it for very long.  While I have no chance of emulating Mr Blanche’s painting style, I did fancy having a bash at something a bit more ‘artistic’ and use the Masterclass paints in that vein.  My usual style is quite ‘neat’ as can be seen from the Inquisitor Ostromandeus effort earlier, so this will be out of my comfort zone!

So I had a rummage in the random miniatures box and found something that looked decidedly grimdark.

I wasn’t sure what it was or where it came from, and it didn’t have any instructions, but I eventually deduced that it was a Slaugterpriest and that it must have come free on a White Dwarf magazine at some point in the past.

I haven’t got a full step by step, as I was trying to be ‘arty’.  But I captured a few pics from build through to the first hour of slapping paint on:

I even abandoned my usual airbrush prime and zenith, and brushed on the Stynylrez primer!

The pics above are the first hour and the one below is where it was after 2 hours:

At this point I was thinking that it would be another hour to two hours of work, but I realised that was monkey-up-the-ass ‘neat’ Dan talking and decided to get over myself and finish it in another half an hour!

So I’ve satisfied myself that this is a good paint set, a complete palette that can paint an army (but not all armies!) no problem.

But the great Mr Blanche has put his name to these.  Are these really colours he would use, or is this a sneaky way to upgrade the Fanatic range with clever marketing?

A quick rummage on the bookshelf, and I found what I was looking for.  This biography of Mr Blanche’s life and career:

In it, there are some spreads showing pictures of John’s own painted miniatures:

Inspecting these photos, and comparing them to the paint sets, can I see any colours that are obviously missing?  In short – no.  They are all there.  Mixing would be required of course, the oranges in particular stand out as requiring the reds and yellow to make, but all doable.

Now, clearly Mr B has a painting style all of his own.  And the paints he would have used for these models would have includes inks, and paints of various types and brands.  But in terms of colours?  They all seem to be there.

I am now tempted to have a stab to see whether the paints can achieve anything that looks like John’s work.  I suspect they will require some different mediums to get there.  I am a bit reluctant to do so.  John doesn’t encourage copycat styles, he urges people to develop their own styles.  If I did it, it would be an experiment, not an attempt to adopt John’s style as my own, but I am still in two minds.

Meditate on this I will…

I thought in for a penny, in for a pound, and tried painting these models with the synthetic brush that came with each set. Actually, they weren’t bad.  Aside from grabbing a smaller brush to paint the eye of the Inquisitor, I used these brushes all the way.  The first one lasted almost to the end before I got a bent tip and found it harder to use, so I switched to the second one.

One the left is the one that did most of the work, and the one on the right finished the job.

Would I have painted more neatly with my sables? Sure, but not by much.

Will I be switching to these brushes going forward?  Hell no, but they shouldn’t be poo pooed as useful tools!