Painting a Goblin Warlord

Here's a nice little weekend project, painting up a nice little goblin warlord. It's the Avatars of War model of course, a fine model to lead my goblin army into action.

Stage 1 : Preparation

In this first picture the model has been cleaned and assembled and glued to a piece of cork, very handy for simple rocks on bases. I primed it with Halfords white car primer (a UK brand). When the primer was fully dry (check the can for drying times), I applied a thinned wash of a dark brown all over the model, so that I can see the detail better. It looks more like grey on this shot, it doesn't matter that much, it's just a guide for where to put the subsequent layers of paint. Finally for the prep stage, I glued some sand on the base.

Stage 2 : Basic colours

The least inspiring phase of any painting. It's just a question of applying your chosen colours as carefully and neatly as possible. The wash from the first stage should be a help here, acting as guide lines. The picture shows the basic palette I have used. It's pretty muted, that's the way I like my figures, and I can always add some spot colour later on if I really want to. Note also that the figure is attached to a cotton reel using some white tac. This makes it much easier to hold.

Stage 3 : Shading

In this stage I shaded nearly all the basic colours. In the past I have used GW washes for this, or a mix of Tamiya and inks. These days I tend to use matte medium (available in any art supplies shop). I just mix it up with my chosen colour and apply it thinly, concentrating on the deeper recesses and/or areas I want to be dark. It should "rest" in these areas quite nicely. If it flows all over the surface, like a glaze, you need to add more medium. If it's very gloopy and sticks to your brush, you need to add a little water. I am pretty sure that this is how GW washes are made, paint and medium, it's much cheaper and more flexible to make your own.

In this stage I have also painted the rock. It started a light grey (see previous picture), I stippled on a few areas of browns and greens to add a little texture. Then I simply drybrushed the raise areas of the cork, making it lighter on the sharper edges. Finally I toned it all down a little with a brown wash, which was also applied to the sand.

Stage 4: More Shading, Some Details

In this stage there's more shading done, some with simple GW washes such as the gold areas on the axe (that's gryphone sepia over the chainmail). I have also shaded the skin more deeply with a purple glaze (not to be confused with the classic Jimi Hendrix song). It looks a bit much in this shot but will be toned down in the next stage. There are some highlights on the cloth areas, difficult to see in this pretty poor snap.

Stage 5 : Finishing Touches

More highlighting and shading as required in this step, mostly refining the skin and other prominent areas. Much of the work was done on the back of the model which you can't actually see in this photo! Not to worry, it's not been a full step by step article, more a general overview of my workflow.

The colour balance in the pictures is poor, I am using a pocket camera and the light from the window. I will get some better photos posted in the next few days.