Pinktaco's army: Almost done with my steg aka the red beast

Hi

So not only am I new member of the forum (I've been lurking for some weeks now), but I'm also new at painting.. well sort of. The first time I painted must've been 12 years ago, when I had a Vampire Count army, so most of my painting skills are long gone and they weren't that good to begin with.

Anyway, painting an army and being at least somewhat original about the color theme quickly became a challenging task to me. Mostly because I personally wanted to be satisfied with both the colors and the actual painting. Since my skills wheren't/aren't up to snuff it was quite frustrating at first.

After several tries of painting and then repainting on a few models I have now gotten (most) of the colors the way I imagined my units to have. It took a week or two with experimenting, but now I'm able to paint units at a decent speed.
I'm now actually satisfied. I realize that nothing of what I've painted so far is neither perfect or without flaws. For instance today I had painted several saurus warrios in one go and when I wanted to paint the weapon and other details I realized one of the saurus still had a white thumb Stuff like that is something that still haunts, but it'll get better with time.

Since I realize that core units like saurus warriors shouldn't take up a lot of time I also came up with a method that suited me. I don't think it's what most people do, but it's simple and for the most part I'm happy, although I still struggle getting both the chests and top of the heads the way I want.

What I do is first to spray my models with a white primer. I then use the bloodletter glaze all over the unit followed by Zamesi Desert on the scales and the head. Finally I give the whole unit - including the scales and the head - a wash of carroburg crimsom (after this I paint weapon and stuff like that). It's incredible easy for me and I can manage to get decent shadows on the figure. The only issue is that the crimsom wash can at times be difficulty control (especially at the top of the heads on my saurus) and I have no clue how to actually highlight.

So uhm yeah. My thoughts behind the color theme is that I wanted the saurus warriors to be red, I then tried a couple of different variations for the scales until I finally tried out the zamasi desert washed with carroburg crimsom. It gives the scales a brown-ish color oppose to just a different nuance of red, which I tried at first. I also wanted to keep the colours simple while not making it too dark, which is why I'm using the Auric Armour Gold since I felt Gehenna's Gold made the unit too dark. I'm still experimenting though and I plan to wash Gehenna's Gold over the parts that are painted with Auric Armour Gold.

Anyway here are some pictures of what I have made so far:

The 8 units seperated are newly painted











I haven't painted more, but more will come. what you'll probably notice is that some of the models have white grass on their bases. That's because I've bought ALL my units used and the person who I bought it from had put grass on it. In lack of knowing better I just spray painted the whole units with base and everything. I dunno if I can use a knife to get the grass off.

Also I still haven't painted any of the shields with the exception of one or two. I'm thinking of giving them a green color to make them green with gold, to make them stand out.

My salamander:





what I still need to paint is:

25 x Saurus Warriors
24 x Skinks
08 x Saurus Cavalry
05 x Temple Guards (old models and one of them is missing both arms :/ )
01 x Stegadon
01 x Salamander Pack
01 x Terradon
01 x Krog-Gar unit
01 x Saurus Old Blood on Cold One
01 x Skink Priest

I've bought all of it used which is also why it may appear rather random, however it was quite cheap (1/4th of original price).

What my plan for the near future is to:

Get more paints - a lighter color for teeth/claws, a blue color for eyes (I think), some greens for the shields and maybe a yellow.

Paint the rest of the saurus warriors and then go on to the skinks (the skinks will probably be purple coloured, dunno about the scales yet). After that I don't know if I'll paint the stegadon or the cavalry. The idea is that my whole army will be painted in red colors of some sort.

Buy the 7th edition army book since I got a 6th edition along with the other stuff I bought.. and get the rule book.
Buy another salamander pack, a slann and later on some temple guard and a scar vet on foot.

So yeah.. this is what I have so far. I'll move to a new apartment with my girlfriend come May, so I'll try and paint as much as possible. Hopefully I can paint another 15 saurus warriors before then. When they're painted I'll have 35 units of saurus warriors painted and I'll have to consider whether or not I'm done painting those guys or if I'll just move on with the skinks and get back to the saurus whenever I'm up for it.

Right now I'm excite to see how the green shields will turn out and whether or not I'll completely mess up the eyes. I also happy to finally see a whole regiment of 20 units together since I just finished 8 units this weekend. I'll try and take some more pictures at another time.

Any words on what I can do better, what you like or any other suggestions are obviously welcome. I still haven't figured out what to do with the bases.

 

Re: Pinktaco's red/brown/gold army (a newbie's contribution)

I'll be getting some new paints today, so hopefuly I have time to make a couple of new units and paint their shields. I'll probably paint 3 different shields (with different colors) and upload the result.

@Poqenichi - unfortunately I'm not able to do that since I've bought it all used. The previous owner has assembled pretty much all of what I bought from him, with the exception of the stegadon.
I have, however, considered more skinks, so I suppose I'll be buying that too, soon.

@newscales - I think you're overestimating my talent, but thanks a lot anyway I'll take a few more up-close pictures of individual units when I get the time. The pictures I've currently uploaded aren't really the best to be honest.

 

Re: Pinktaco's red/brown/gold army (a newbie's contribution)

I actually tried that at first and I realized the Freiburg crimsom was on the white would give my units a pink-ish color that, with more layers, became purple-ish. Not the color I was aiming for. Which is why I now go white > bloodletter > crimson.

Anyway I actually painted the shields green on 3 of my saurus and turned out alright in my opinion. Blue eyes is also great although it's a bit hit and miss with actually painting the eyes properly. I'll upload some pictures when I can.

 

Re: Pinktaco's red/brown/gold army (a newbie's contribution)

While painting the shields was a pain in the ass (especially the backside on the shields) I like the green color. It's something different compared to the red color. It isn't the best paint job I've done, but it'll do for now. One thing that annoys me is applying the gold color. It requires 2-3 layers to cover the white paint beneath it and it's a time consuming process. Isn't there something to do about it or am I just supposed to paint over and over with the gold color until I'm satisfied?

Also, while it's not that visible (on the pictures) I've washed with the more brownish gold at certain parts to make the details pop out. The result is sort of hit and miss, but eventually I'll get the hang of it.

 

Re: Pinktaco's red/brown/gold army (a newbie's contribution)

DELETE

 

Re: Pinktaco's red/brown/gold army (a newbie's contribution)

Yeah I had some weird issues. I fixed it now,

 

Re: Pinktaco's red/brown/gold army (a newbie's contribution)

I Will try that. Thanks

 

Re: Pinktaco's red/brown/gold army (a newbie's contribution)

Using yellow seems to work. I still think it's a pain to paint with the gold paint, but I'll live. I'm not exactly thrilled with my work on the shields, especially because I had to paint 20 of them, so I sort of rushed through it. It's also a rather time consuming process to paint on the inside of the shields when it has already been attached on the saurus warriors.

Fortunately though I like the green color along with the red and gold. I find it to be a nice contrast despit that the green is a dark green. I also looks much better when you can actually see the whole unit of 20 saurus instead of just a couple of them.

Since my education has taken all my time I haven't been able to paint much and I'll soon be moving, so I might not update as much I want to in the next couple of weeks.

My next project it so paint another block of saurus - I have 16 saurus just waiting.

When that's done I'll move on to skinks and probably paint on the stegadon in the mean time.

 

Re: Pinktaco's red/brown/gold army (a newbie's contribution)

tell how it goes. I've been having minor troubles with the green on the shields and I heard yellow is a difficulty color to apply properly - no to discourage you