The Beard Brigade marches again!

Tuskerton

Member
As I mentioned in my post on the Introductions forum, I've picked up my paint brush again after a looong hiatus and retrieved the box containing my dwarf army from my parents attic. The plan is to eradicate the crimes of my early teens and repaint at least 1500pts of 3rd edition dwarf army to a standard acceptable to me and maybe find someone to battle against! results

This is the first one I painted and, as it turned out OK, convinced me this project wasn't entirely a bad idea:

AmG4Ybn.jpg


I've started with some troll slayers and here's a couple of pics before they went for a dip in the Dettol:

Ylbyyo9.jpg


OFhmyHn.jpg


Here's the current progress:

x3QOc9y.jpg


Next unit up for a bath. Some of these guys are missing axes and shields, but IIRC they were like that when I got them. There's also one where a previous owner had tried to convert an axe into a mace with the help of a lighter... Surgery will be required!

0bsaSF4.jpg
 

Tuskerton

Member
Here's the next 3 slayers. Looks like I need to redo some of the static grass. If anyone has any good hints on best ways to apply it I'd be interested to hear them.

AWyxfUn.jpg
 

Gallivantes

Member
So, you're asking specifically for what method to use to apply the grass, but in my eyes there's nothing wrong with how you've applied yours. If I interpret your question more broadly it sounds like "give me tips to improve the basing", and to that my first tip would be to involve more elements.

Let me illustrate, your bases involve one thing — grass of one shade on the perfectly flat base top. I did an exercise to improve my basing recently and in the end I have more than ten things going on with my basing. If that sounds daunting (and boastful), don't worry :grin:. It's not that complicated. And you could skip a lot of my steps and still get something more visually complex than what you currently have.

For example, using a grit mix of sand, tiny ballast and coarser ballast glued to the base, painted dark brown and drybrushed medium brown before applying the grass on top in a more random and patchy manner. Neither very challenging nor time consuming and your basing now involves several elements to create visual interest; the texture and colour of both dirt and grass and the distribution thereof on gently undulating ground.

Many ways to go from here — ground shades, grass shades, cork, bark, plaster, twigs, grit, tufts, lichen, moss, coffee granules, tea laves, dried spices and much more in terms of sheer building materials.

Additionally, don't forget that you're the artist and the director of your little mini art piece. What I mean by that is that a selection of materials will be used no matter what you do, but applying them like a robot and trusting in the recipe to always deliver the result may limit you. My first component list (brown dirt, green grass) can be used for very sparse grass on muddy ground, or almost all-encompassing heavy grass coverage with the odd mud crack. You can vary the ratio on the bases, or go even further and let only some bases show the anomaly. Exactly the same components but with a big difference in execution and result.

Your vision and the context of your game environment and/or backstory can be your vehicles towards a nice basing scheme. For example, the army I'm building at the moment is one I envision to be campaigning in the hinterlands and rural areas of the Empire in damp weather. This has guided me in defining the basing scheme; the grass shade is deep lush green because the environment is quite humid, accented by the odd paler tuft on a raised feature, away from the soggy ground. The odd stone, boulder and log are embedded in the ground because the vegetation and climate would build up silt around such features. I've painted these features mixing in browns and greens to represent the discoloration that dirt and organic growths cause in that environment. I have a lot of lumps and bumps in the ground. If I swapped out the dirt and grass for paler shades, applied less grass, left the rubble more exposed and built flatter ground bits it would look more like an arid windswept plain with sparse vegetation because that's the character dirt, grass and ground take on under such circumstances.

Do you have a particular idea about what you would like to achieve with the basing? Or on the contrary, open to any suggestions as long as the results looks "better" than what you have? "Better" can entail so many things, it all depends on what look you're after to a high degree.
 
Gallivantes":323a60dt said:
For example, using a grit mix of sand, tiny ballast and coarser ballast glued to the base, painted dark brown and drybrushed medium brown before applying the grass on top in a more random and patchy manner.
That would be my advice exactly.

I think the bases of the Slayers look pretty good. However, I think that the flat, green surface that shows beneath the foot of the dwarf in the middle is something that I noticed right away. So just using the technique I have quoted, would make a great difference I think.
 

Subedai

Member
Very nice fresh paint jobs on these guys. Looking forward to seeing the army re-emerge in new glory!
 

Tuskerton

Member
Thanks for taking the time to share, Gallivantes. Having seen your bases in your 'A little bit lost...' thread, it's not boastful as they are pretty spectacular! :) . I particularly like the bases for the ogres.

I think that I want to aim for a dirtier look with the grass a bit sparser so it's more interesting. I saw that there was some more detail on your technique in your thread which I'll take a closer look at. I'll keep the same grassy theme for the remaining slayers for consistency and try something a bit different for the next unit.

LilBroGrendel- yeah, I didn't notice the missing grass on the middle slayer myself until I'd submitted the post. Will fix that! :)
 

Tuskerton

Member
Thanks for the link, Blue.

Yes, some good advice indeed. Looking forward to putting it into practice!

Cheers,
Tuskerton
 
i've been painting for about 4 years now, and you've just come back to it after god knows how many years away and are already better than me :grin:
 

Tuskerton

Member
@daddyorchips- I'm happy with the way they're coming out so far and glad I hadn't forgotten too much!

Didn't manage to get the last of the troll slayers finished this weekend due to some dry weather here in Edinburgh today and ended up gardening instead.

I also discovered that some of the last unit of dwarfs that I stripped seem quite badly cast and have very little detail on the faces. I've not decided whether or not to make up the unit with a mix of other models I already have or trawl eBay for replacements.

In the meantime, here's digital versions of the old unit standards that I'll try and recreate. Or, just print out if the necessary skill deserts me.

rcaLcsb.png


euvUCR8.png
 

Tuskerton

Member
Finished off another couple of slayers today and now just one more to do. I'm looking forward to putting the orange paint away from a bit.. While I decide what to do about the models I mentioned before,I stripped a canno and some crew and will tackle that next.

2afY6zj.jpg
 

Tuskerton

Member
I've not updated the thread in a while, but I finished off the last of the troll slayers a while ago. Here's a couple of photos of them:

iSFnNDQ.jpg

TA3ZlqZ.jpg


After that I decided to star work on a Marauder Siege Canon however I've not had a great deal of time for painting and I've still got one crewman to do. Here's the canon and crew so far:

WjQ7dbd.jpg


Currently working on the last crewman and one of the plastic Warhammer Regiments dwarfs. Looks like it should be quite quick to work through the unit of those!
 

Tuskerton

Member
Painting time has been scarce the last couple of months and haven't made a great deal of progress. I did finish the last crewman for the canon (which still needs properly based) and painted 5 of the plastic dwarfs. Painting them was a bit tedious, but as there are loads more to do I had better get used to it!

I also found some time to paint the dwarf model from Advanced HeroQuest who I always used as the figure for my general back in the day. In the spirit of this project I think I'll keep him in that exalted rank!

Here's some before and afters:

Q5Jrmiu.jpg
oS4IraS.jpg
tE17yw3.jpg


ZqUsaaP.jpg
KFTCtwJ.jpg
 
I love those before-and-after pictures. I like how the new paintjobs echo the ideas of the original paintjob but with greatly improved skills :)
 

Tuskerton

Member
Thanks, LilBroGrendel. That's really what I'm trying to do and have them looking more like I imagined them being all those years ago :)
 
Back
Top