Tales from Albian
Hello and welcome to my first instalment of Tales from Albian, I know it’s not right but I made it up.
Where to start? It’s been a long time since I posted anything….that does not to mean to say I have not been doing something. Oh how I wish that I didn’t have so much to paint. My plastic crack partner in crime and I have spent the last few months, ploughing through our latest project, which is the ongoing saga of our Chaos Army of massive proportions….
But wait before I get into that, maybe a short recap for those of you who haven’t read or seen any of my pervious posts. Last year or longer, time disappears in the great eye faster than you think; I posted some pictures of some complete regiments of the Beastmen, Warriors and a stack load of Marauders. As I ploughed through this rank and file, I developed the idea of making my Warriors of Chaos side of this army more Barbarians themed, to add to the overall feral base of this army.
[Picture of old marauders 2013]
This brings me nicely into this blog post. During my infinite sessions of self torture to the God of Pleasure, I inhaled so much plastic that a funny vision of strapping young man with nothing but a loin cloth and an axe! Now before you all start to switch off like any sane man half way through a Game of Thrones episode, I realised that my old Warriors and Knights for my Slaanesh were a bit plain and over done idea. So my minds eye opened and out popped a horde north of the wall theme. Yes I know you guessed where that came from.
But in my defence I have been experimenting with bases recently and had stumbled upon a swamp and stone technique for making a simple yet effective looking base, plus I had loads of unused snow flock. I combined that with just having finished around 50 Marauders and I was slowly starting to like how I painted skin. (Only after 25 years of painting it.) As you can see this isn’t a million miles away from me making a leap, well small baby step, in the direction of a Barbarian theme.
[Picture of old Horseman 2013]
Enough of my spiel, down to business! Around the core of the units you see above, I decided that I needed a heavier version of each, these in game terms could then be used for Warriors and Knights instead of Horseman and Marauders. This meant that I would have to convert and ultimately paint to a lot better standard than I have been.
Off to eBay I went for some cheep bits to start the conversion work. I started by getting myself some cheep cork sheets recommended to me by my evil twin @CPJohnson80. Luckily I also spotted some new Chaos Knight spares, I damned Tzeentch twice for making me pay stupid P&P costs but I hope it was worth it. Once all my bits arrived I started by constructing 14 heavily armoured horsemen, two of which would be added to the old unit as a command. This effect I achieved by simply adding a few Knights shoulder pads and adding spears axes and shields to all of the models, then layering bits of cork randomly on the bases to achieve the effect below.
[Basic construction]
Next I set about spray painting the entire model after cleaning up with a craft knife. Once spray painted I proceeded to get some random horseflesh tones down as base colours. I went with one cream (Bleached Bone base), two greys (Shadow Grey) 4 bays (Bestial Brown) and the rest chestnut (Scorched Brown), using the entire unit as a bit of an experiment on flesh tones. Once the base colours were down on the majority of the model I mixed the next tone up from the horse flesh colour I had picked and proceeded to paint small hair lines on large open areas of flesh, to mimic the appearance of horse hair. Once complete I applied a base colour tone wash over the skin to blend into the model, watered down 50/50.
[Undercoat and wash stages.]
Once dry I dry brushed the hair, and finished other parts of the saddle in a Cavalry Brown, again applying a brown ink to add depth. The horse cloth was painted in Warlock Purple and highlighted to Tentacle Pink, finally washed with Magenta Ink watered down to about 25/75 split. Bases flocked, dry brushed and static grass added completing the final look.
[Finished Horses]
Next onto the riders, once again spray black and clean up with a craft knife, remember don’t sacrifice a finger to Khorne. Then I put down base colours, Dark flesh for the skin, and Warlock Purple on the belt and straps, Cavalry Brown on the boots and blue on the trousers for a tartan theme, we are north of the wall, ahhhh see you were all thinking something else weren’t you!
Cover any bone or wraps Scorched Brown, final colour that I have just gotten used to doing, is a Tin Bitz covering all metal parts immediately followed by a slightly watered down Boltgun Silver to give the metal a heavy and used feel, I don’t necessary have to cover all of the Tin Bitz.
[Basic Colours]
The pink on the riders was completed in the same fashion as the horses; the boots and all other leather the same as the horses’ saddle. The bone and wraps slowly layered up through Camo into Bleached, while the metal is just lightly dry brushed with Silver. This leaves just detailing on the trousers and skin. Now I wont pretend to be ‘Pro Painter’ I am sure you will find much better guides on painting skin than I could ever provide but for what it is worth I layered about 4 or 5 layers from Dark Flesh through to Tanned Flesh then Dwarf Flesh, finishing extreme highlights with Elf Flesh on any high raised areas. This wasn’t your normal layered painstakingly for years on end jobs, just a 100-80-60-40 covering mixed 50/50 between each paint, in about 5-6 layers, but where required attention was paid to ensure not to stark a difference, by simply repeating from the layer before if it looked wrong.
[Champion Finished]
Now as you can see they appeared to turn out ok, and in my mind to a high table quality. They also achieved my original aim of looking slightly heavier horse, through the addition of a shoulder pad and spears. The last thing I made was a magnetised base; if you are interested in how to make one I have already covered that in an older post.
[Completed Marauding Horsemen]
Your comments and feedback are most welcome, even if you don’t like them. If this blog series gets enough traction I aim to extend the posts covering this army, so look out for more Tales from Albian.
Greg
Follow me on Twitter: @freexerjin
Tykens Rift 