Report from the Hobby Front Line
Filed Under: Hobby
This year’s war against the grey is well underway.
This pair are recent additions to North Star’s official Frostgrave range, who I picked up along with a copy of their new female soldiers plastic kit late last year. I love them!
They represent my second, much more successful attempt at the technique I said I wanted to get the hang of in my hobby goals post.
First, I primed them black using my airbrush. Then I airbrushed a very light grey from above. Then I left them in a drawer for a month or so. When I was finally ready to paint them, I started by completing the ‘value sketch’. This just meant going in with black paint in recesses the airbrush had missed, while bringing up the brightness on areas like the face with white paint. I also did all my edge highlighting in white at this stage – it’s really nice to be able to do this step earlier on, when the cost of mistakes is much lower. At the end of all this I had a greyscale representation of the final result.
Then I began glazing, that is, applying paint that has been thinned down to the extent that it only tints the layer beneath. In my previous attempts at glazing I used Citadel Lahmia Medium, but this time I tried out Vallejo Glaze Medium. I was able to do this for most of the models apart from the skin and metal parts. Both required a thicker application, and I had trouble mixing the medium with these paints without them getting runny. Finally I needed to apply washes and highlights to these areas the old-fashioned way for them to look right.
Having done these I strongly want to do more minis this way. It’s so fast and freeing. No painstaking application of basecoats, no time-consuming layering process. I estimate each model took little more than an hour of painting by hand. Amazing.
Also painted this weekend: a tracker and her dog! I’d zenithal primed the dog and it’s quite small and simple, so it went quickly, but the tracker longer. I’m really pleased with how my colour choices turned out, especially the lovely warm crimson-shaded leather parts. (Skrag Brown, shaded with Carroburg Crimson.)
The North Star Frostgrave range is fantastic. Diverse and characterful, even the wonkier sculpts have a certain charm. And it keeps getting better - there’s a plastic Wizards kit on the way :D
Other than these I’ve painted a few scraps of terrain, made a start on the Chosen Axes, magnetized some bases, organised my bits and pieces, and invested in a spraying booth for my airbrush. 2019 is off to a flying start.