WIP painting dwarves including khazad guard - Washes

Well, the Lord of the Rings may be dark and scary and the Strategy Battle Game might have (mostly) clean cut rules, but my dwarves all look dirty and manky now!


That's right, they've had their washes done and always look a little dirty afterwards. Fortunately, they also regain a lot of their miniature detail!


You can now see their fingers, definition on the face, cracks between armour plates, different parts of hair etc.


I used Badab Black on all the armour, rocks and pillars, Devlan Mud on the boots and other brown bits, Leviathan Purple on the, duh, purple, Asurman Blue on the turquoise and Ogryn Flesh on the skin. The beards got miscellaneous brown, black and Sepia washes depending on my mood =)

You can really see how dulled down the metallics are, great if that's what you're going for (which I do with goblins) but not so much for my well polished and oiled dwarves, obviously they get a second paint coat next.

For comparisons, here are the three Kings before and after. The skin and beards are the most noticeable I think.

 So now it's almost back to the drawing board =) Second coats of paint go on now, but not in the recesses. I leave the washed areas in the deeper folds of beards, cloaks, armour and skin and paint the original colour on the higher areas. That gives me a nice two-layered effect.


Mostly that's even enough to make them look really good, but I usually then put a further highlight layer on that (and sometimes yet another on the special characters).


I'm only spending a few hours a day on it and, as you can see, there will be 35 more dwarves ready to go in another week or so (if I keep at it). If you were a keen painter, had the time and a back and neck that didn't ache as much as mine does, you could knock this whole process off much, MUCH more quickly, obviously.


At the same time as I paint I watch DVDs, at the moment the History Channel's series on Barbarians (borrowed from the library) interspersed with Star Trek Voyager (borrowed from my brother). It's a great way to pass the time when painting easy bits, like slapping on washes.


Still not sure what to do on the dwarf king trimming bits yet, but had better come up with something soon!