Work in progress

I thought I might do a step by step on choosing and painting my chaos hounds / Giant rats for my beastman army.

First step was to decide on the models I was going to use. I knew I wanted around 3 units of 5. I looked through the GW models and nothing even comes close to the size I was looking for except the Huge Rats used in the Nurglitch plague army. There are 2 there, same pose and they run $8 a piece. Since I wanted 15, that would mean a price tag of $120 for 3 throwaway units.

After looking a little further, I found some very nice Reaper Barrow Rats that look great, there are 2 poses and I could get them for about $2 a model. So $32 later I have a set of 16.

I trimmed off their flashing, filed down their mold lines and then glued them on some cavalry bases. This is how I've used them for about a year now.

Then last Saturday, they finally hit the cue.
Next step was to glue sand and rocks to their base to match the rest of the army.

I then primed them white and they looked like this:


The next step is really the toughest. Where do you start painting?

I find it helpful to decide ahead of time exactly what I'm going to do. Now that doesn't mean you can't change along the way, but I try to plan out exactly how I'm going to paint a model or unit of miniatures before hand.

So here is my plans for the Giant Rats:
1. I want to stick with the same basic paint scheme as the rest of the army, so I'm going to do an undercoat of Flesh wash over the entire body.
2. See below for detailed description.
3. I then want to do any open wounds, open mouths and tongues in a dark red. I may also do some of the boils in a dark red as well.
4. Then a tan color that will hit the flesh and tails. This will be extremely watered down, to blend in with the flesh wash and let some of the red of the boils filter through.
5. Then I do white on the teeth, eyes, claws and skulls.
6. Do all the rocks under their feet with grey and maybe a hit of white highlight.
7. Then hit with a washed out flesh to highlight the tan skin and boils.
8. I hit the tongues with a bright red highlight and put pupils in the eyes.
9. Finally, I do the bases, the same color as the rest of the army.


Full description of #2 above.
The one thing I left out was the fur. This one has me puzzled and I have not been sure what to do with it. I'm terrible at painting fur and there is only one technique I've ever seen that looked good with fur. Drybrushing.

So I've decided to drybrush. I know some people hate this, but if done right, it can look really good on fur. Unfortunately, I suck at it. I've been working on my technique and I'm getting better at it. There are a couple things I've learned about dry brushing.
1. If your paint is too watered down, it will always suck. So you cannot water your paint down, like I usually do since I use a lot of craft paints.
2. If you pigmentation is too large in your paint it will suck. So I cannot use the normal craft paints I use. They tend to have large pigmentation and if you don't water them down well, they suck. So I've got some reaper paints. I've been using some of them for a lot of highlighting. I have a tan color, I'm going to try the dry-brushing with this paint.

Status:
I have now finished #1 above the base coating. When doing this, I use a large flat brush and just throw the flesh wash on there in broad strokes, just making sure of 2 things. First, that you don't miss anything and second that it doesn't pool up anywhere. I covered all 16 pretty quick.

Before doing each one, I double checked for any flashing, ecspecially on the nose and tail tips. I then bent each tail. Every model was only 2 poses, so they looked a bit too static. By going through and bending each tail carefully, it gives a much more dynamic look to the unit. You just have to be careful, not to bend too much or they will break.

Finally, I painted each one with the wash and they look like this:


Next step up starts tonight with the drybrushing. My goal is to finish all 16 with drybrushing by the end of the weekend.

Also in the que for Saturday is to work on the furies / cloud runners, base and prime them. I have like 2 arms to glue on, and then just tape over the flying stand, glue on the sand and prime. Should take about 30 mins tops.

Well, I'll let you know how the painting is going Monday.
Don't worry, I think I can find time to finish the battle report this weekend.

Have fun!!!