Dwarf Gunners of Oakenheim

A brace of dwarf gunners, hastily finished as part of Decembeard. These two are fairly muted in colour, I figure that they would spend much of their time hunting for game and would want to blend into a forest background. They are, of course, from the marauder miniatures range from around 1992, the year I started  in Warhammer. I have to say I am not that keen on the strange grin of the sniper dwarf.

And with those two added to the unit I now have five gunners ready for battle. That’s enough to make a unit for games of Erehwon, which has become my favourite way to play fantasy battles, on the very rare occasion I roll dice. Hopefully they will see some action over the midwinter break.

Dwarf Miners Painting Part 2

The second half of the painting guide is where all the good stuff happens. The focal point of the models is the face and beards, and those two areas are covered first. I did write an in depth guide to painting flesh which might be useful (I certainly referred to it)! Beards I might cover in a video tutorial at some stage in the future. For the time being, these photos will have to suffice. As before, each photo is taken at the end of a one hour session of painting.

Faces and stones on bases

Base coating beards and candles and trim

More work on beards, candles and gloves

Finishing the beards and candles, matt varnished

After eight sessions of roughly an hour each, the miners are nearly complete. I have to finish the base edges and addd a little metal highlighting. In total, around ten hours including preparation and basing. When they are photographed under decent lighting you can see if that was time well spent.

Dwarf Miners Painting Part 1

 This is a brief description of the way I painted the dwarf miners. It’s not a detailed step by step, more a summary of how I tackled the unit. Each photo shows the state of the figures at the end of an hour long session. I tend to paint one hour at a time and, these days, seldom have more than one session in a day. So the time taken stretches over several days.

Primed white, then metals base coated

Metals shaded

Leathers base coated, using artists acrylic paint in this case

Shading leather, base colours and flesh started

That’s four hours work on this unit and now they are finally coming together. They are moving from the ugly duckling stage and starting to look a bit dwarfish. When the beards and faces are painted the  unit will really come to life, that will happen in the next part.

Dwarf Miners preparation stage

The first step in getting the miners painted is to get them cleaned and primed. Some of these were previously painted and have been cleaned in a bath of biostrip. I have blogged on stripping paint from minis before (post here). They were then glued to the bases, which for me are coins. If the mini has no tab, I usually glue them on to coffee stirrers and then glue the stirrer on to the coin. I then add sand and basing material. For a fuller explanation on this process, I have a handy video guide. Once the base texture is dry, I prime the figures in white. Not the most exciting of stages, but certainly one of the most important.

Old timers will recognise these minis, but if you did not start the hobby in the previous century, you might be wondering what they are. These are dwarf miners from Marauder Miniatures, a small independent company that ran alongside Citadel for a few years in the 1990s I think - I am no expert on the exact details. These figures were released in 1992/3, I am pretty confident about that date as that was when I started in the hobby. Here’s a catalogue page from that time. I have one of each of the miners and the full command group, though my leader is pointing a finger rather than shaking his fist. I think this was released at a later date as part of the Grudge of Drong campaign release, though as I say I do not claim to be a reliable source.

It’s Decembeard

It’s that time of year, when thoughts turn to partridges in pear trees, mince pies, and rotund bearded visitors. The perfect time to dig out some old dwarfs and get them painted up. Though in this case, they may well have dug themselves out from a deep, dark hole where minis lie for years, yearning to be discovered. It’s time to get some dwarf miners painted!

It’s the first day of the month that I am calling Decembeard. It’s a thing, like Orctober, but for dwarfs (and maybe wizards and gnomes). My aim is to paint as many bearded figures as I can in the next month. It’s been a lean few months for me in hobby terms, and with Cyberpunk 2077 looming on the horizon, I could be heading for an embarrassing failure here, but let’s be positive and hope for the best. I have a lovely little group sitting in a bath of bio strip - dwarfs are always happy to strip in a communal tub. But that window will be opened another day.

Elf

 

The full title of this post is Zorn Silverhair, an elf from the Golden Realms. Maybe that works for an old school RPG character, but there is a slightly more esoteric reason for such a mouthful. Let me break it down for you.

The elf part is simple enough, this is an elf figure! It’s by the company known as Statuesque Miniatures and now available through Crooked Dice. It was originally sold in a set of four adventurers though they are now available as individuals. You can see the elf’s painted companions below, a dwarf and a wizard, with just one more to paint to complete the band - free cookie if you can guess the unpainted figure. 

On the palette choice, I was originally thinking of classic green wood elf, inspired much by the old Talisman artwork. But recently I have been replaying God of War and was really struck by the beauty of the light elves, which I have tried to replicate here. White robes, pale skin and even white hair, punctuated by grey and brown leathers.

The name Zorn is not particularly elvish and was chosen for his palette rather than his race. The Zorn palette is named  after Swedish painter Anders Zorn and comprises four colours - black, white, red and yellow. From this apparently limited set it is possible to mix up many colours, not surprising if you know colour theory. Add in a blue and you have all three primaries and an almost infinite palette available to you. The figure was painted using just these four colours, though I did also also use a little silver and a brown ink.

And that brings us to an explanation of the Golden Realms. I have been painting acrylic on canvas recently and have come to appreciate the much higher quality and pigmentation of artist paints. I spotted this set on sale and so have bought a set of acrylic artists paints manufactured by Golden. These are a high fluid set rather than the thicker stuff usually used painting on canvas. I thought they would be suitable for painting minis and from my limited test to date (one elf) they are showing great promise. The four colours I used were black and white, yellow ochre and burnt sienna in place of red. I will blog more about them in the future when I have experimented more.