Draconis: Spring Clean 2025 (Oldhammer) and Onward

5th June 2025

Ever onward, next up was another classic 80’s Ogre, the executioner (also known as Gutlagg).

The basic flesh colour was laid down with contrast at the same time as the chaos dwarf. I added purple and red washes to give it some more depth.

Then it was onto the larger areas of the hood, jacket and boots. I went with a dark grey black for the hood, which was then drybrushed up and highlighted with a final light grey. The jacket was painted in a mid leather colour, studs in metal. Boots were washed with a grey/brown.

I decided to add a bit of colour with the trousers. To harken to my previous ogre (and perhaps imply Altdorf affiliation if ever inclined) I went with a split red blue. Red was a base of mephiston, washed agrax then highlighted up through to orange. The blue was Kantor again washed agrax, then highlighted up through to a pale blue.

I again pushed myself to go an extra highlight stage compared to what I would normally do, and find that I like the extra pop it gives it.

The hood was looking a touch too grey, so I gave it a nuln oil wash, followed by re highlighting it with grey. In places I tried to make the edges look a little frayed.

The pouches were painted in an off white (doesn’t show the shading too well in the pics), axe and other bits were painted up.

After picking out the teeth and eyes as best I could I also added an extra highlight to the face and knuckles, plus painted the hair white.

9th June 2025

Continuing with my Oldhammer repaints the next up was an old giant from around 1986. Back then they cost £3.50 😊

I wanted to do a more pale skin tone for the giant, so started out with a mix of flesh contrast and medium.

I then added thinned crimson wash over the whole thing, followed by some thinned yellow contrast in and around the joint areas. Then I gave it all a drybrush with a mix of my palest flesh and ivory roughly 50:50. After that I repeated some thinned washes, and also applied a thinned turquoise to the prominent veins. The hair was also blocked in at this stage.

Next up it was on to the kilt.

I wanted to make him look a bit like the Porridge Oats man (red kilt, white shirt). The kilt was painted Mephiston red, then washed agrax. This was followed by a grid of an earthy brown, with thin ochre lines painted in the centre of that grid. After this I painted two vertical lines on the red areas in a lighter red, and horizontal green lines also in the red areas. After another wash of agrax to tie it together I needed to redo the lighter red and the green lines as they got lost a little. (Neglected to take pics during this as I was winging it a bit).

To give some more life to the face I also painted him as having a very snotty and dribbly nose, using some fluo green paint and a touch of yellow.

The shirt was painted white, washed with a contrast and given a few minor highlights.

From there it was finishing off by painting the pouch, shield, weapon etc, picking out finger and toe nails and suchlike.

13th June 2025

I wasn’t sure about doing this mini. Firstly I thought it may be too new, but 1990 is still 35 years ago 😊

Secondly I was a little off put by all the slashed clothing, but clearly I did go for it…..

Started out by laying down the red and blue, to see if I was happy with the choice of split. Then I painted in the undercloth behind the slashes in the opposite colour, followed by repainting and tidying the overcloth.

Then I went through several highlights stages on the red and the blue – again, like on recent work, I also planned to push the highlight a stage or so further than I normally would.

I also added some further colour by painting the socks and the hat band in a yellow.

I washed my socks (😊) then highlighted them up in two stages of Ochre, and added more highlights to the red and blue clothing. Also started to work on the sword.

Then it was finishing off, painting the hilt, pouch, bag, cuffs, hat pistol, feather, teeth and giving the skin a further highlight. I left the eye patch in a plain full black – but may do something different with it in the future.

Tried a slightly different green for the base rim, an old foundation Knarloc green.

17th June 2025

Just a quick one.

Here we find our plucky diminutive hero Thorimbo facing off against a porridge loving giant in the jungle terrain of G’Arden….

19th June 2025

Probably the last mini for the Spring clean part of this project, here is a venerable Space Skeleton, from 1986 I think.
Started off stripping the old paint job and priming again. Decided that I wanted to emulate the orange suit of my old paintjob though.

The orange was painted with Fire Dragon Bright, washed Crimson. Then highlighted with FDB followed by a couple of stages of FDB and ivory.

The bones were initially blocked in with skeleton contrast, then highlighted with Ushabti Bone followed by bone and ivory then ivory.

I painted the wrench as slightly rusted old gunmetal.

Added some colour interest by painting the gas cylinders in green (going from Castellan Green up to Moot Green) and some of the pipes in blue.

Happy with how the orange came out.

19th June 2025

My main goal for this year’s spring clean was to build and paint my ancient ‘Giant Chaos Battering Ram’. It did take me a bit of time to get it out of ‘the vault’, but once I had it progressed quite well. I am pleased that I got this painted after all these years.

The rest of the clean was focussed on other ‘Oldhammer’ era minis.

I had fun painting these minis from my youth, trying to go a bit further with highlights etc than I usually would. Overall I am reasonably happy with the results.

I will keep this project open for any other smaller hobby work that aren’t enough for their own project. However, for now I sense a return to my Silver Bayonet project…..

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.

24th October 2025

A short break, followed by busy work, meant no progress here or on my Silver Bayonet project of late.

So to get back at it I decided to work on this 3D printed model that I designed (and a friend printed).

The overall concept was for an engineer type character, but since I would be using it for sci-fi skirmish games (not sure which rules yet, that will be in a future project) he of course had to have a gun as well.

Usual zentihal prime for him. I used the Eldritch Foundry software to test out some colour schemes, and went with a brown jacket.

For a pop of colour I chose to give him an orange shirt, complemented by dark grey trousers.

I did consider giving him white boots, but felt that would draw the eye away from the core area, so went for dark boots instead.

The blond hair was painted brown at first, then highlighted with several stages of ochre, finishing with ivory for a few strands. Initially I didn’t paint the eyebrows, but a friend convinced me to give it a go. They came out quite well, with his left brow raised slightly quizzically. Although in the pics they don’t show as clearly (blond against flesh).

Various highlight stages, picking out detail on the handheld device and also working on the base followed.

Base started out white, painted over with Gryphon orange then some areas of Gore Grunta fur. Followed up with a silver drybrush and detailing the cables (with multiple highlights) and such.

Then he was finished. Reasonably happy with him – and you may see him return in a future project 😊