Work in progress

Last night I got to finish up the last unit of hounds. I still have about 10 mins worth of dark lining left, but thats pretty quick and easy.

Here is how I went about doing them:
Started, by cleaning them up, trying to remove mold lines, etc..

Next step was to prime them. In this army I decided to use white as I think that it makes the end result look brighter. And in my limited experience dark armies don't seem to do as well in paint scoring. So I glued each rat onto a cavalry base and glued sand and rock basing on. Then spray painted them white. I use Krylon that I buy at Walmart for $2.50 for a big can. Real light spray going side to side. I usually do it from 2 angles to get full coverage. But you want to do it light enough so you don't cover up details.


After the priming, I needed to mix things up a bit. There were only 2 basic poses, so to give the unit a bit more animation I went through and bent the tails at different angles.
I then coated the model with a flesh wash ink made by GW. I gave it a healthy coat over the entire surface and made sure it hit every nook and cranny.


The next step I tried several times to drybrush the fur on the hounds. As predicted I failed miserably. I just could not help but either get the stuff everywhere or nowhwere. Eventually I settled on my craft paint Tan and did a light brushing over all the fur. Then went back with some watered down ink again to cover over the paint in the crevices, while leaving the paint on the upper part of the fur. The end result actually gave me the affect I was looking for and I was pretty happy with it.

After that I took the same craft paint Tan and watered it down to give a very smooth texture and hit the exposed skin. Not everywhere, I'd leave gaps between the fur and skin and in the darker crevises.

With the tails I tried several things. First I tried doing the tails in tan and flesh, but just did not like they way they came out. I did like just the ink look on the tails, but the ink would rub off the first time you touched them. So I ended up covering the tails in a tan and then going back over them in the ink. This makes them look pretty decent as it leaves the raised parts of the tail a bit lighter, while the crevises of the segments were darker. And the ink doesn't rub off the first time I grab the tails.

I also did a bit of detail hitting the skulls with white as well as the eyes, and teeth. I did the mouths and tongues in a dark red and used the same dark red with 1 coat around the base edge. I've found it takes 2 coats on the edge, so I do one early on and the 2nd when I do the rest of the sand.


The Giant rats are starting to look pretty decent at this point. So its time to start finishing them up.
Next step is to use some Reaper flesh color and hit everywhere I did the tan with a touch of flesh. You don't cover the whole area you did the flesh, but about 80% of it.
After that, for those with tongues and wounds, I use a bit of bright red on them for highlights.
I then go back to the dark red, watered down, and do the rest of the sand and a 2nd coat on the edge.
With some gray I hit all the rocks on the base a bit to make them stand out some.
And finally on the model I take some very dark brown ink, Reaper Brown Ink, and go back putting very thin lines on the model where it seems appropriate. This might be where some of the tan ran together, in the deepest crevises, such as the ears, mouths, between the toes, etc.. This has the affect of giving me 4 layers of painting. Dark brown ink, flesh wash ink, tan and finally flesh.

I think the end result looks very nice, well for me:


So the only thing left is to glue on a bit of green flock to cover most of the red sand, and if I get motivated I may even try some static grass as well. I've never done static grass, but I've heard its pretty easy to do.

Then you want to top it off with a coat of clear matt finish.

I'm thinking I'll be doing that this weekend just to protect them, as they tend to get handled the most of any models in my army besides my herds.
So if given time this weekend, I may spend a lot of time putting those finishing touches on my herds, hounds and Rat Ogres that I've already finished. Flock, static grass and clear coat.

So tonight I start my next project, my Cloud-Runners / Furies.

Until next time...