Wood elves: Painting Dryads

 
I didn't really feel like finishing off my Ironback Spitters today so I went and had a look to see what else was sitting there waiting to be painted (lots and lots of stuff), the Dryads caught my fancy today. 

I always planned on a Silver Birch scheme for them and after the first few coats went on, I was pretty happy, but I thought they needed something else. A quick google later and I realised that one of the defining features of Silver birch are the horizontal strips on the bark, after painting those on, i'm very happy with the outcome, now I just have to work out how to paint the rest of the wood elves lol, keep scrolling down for more pictures :).

Fully painted standard Dryad

The paint scheme uses the following colours:
Army painter Brown undercoat
Dry brushed I-KORE Mucous white (OOP) very VERY pale cream (closer to white))
Watered down GW Adeptus Battlegrey (OOP foundation mid/dark grey)
GW Badab Black all over (OOP Black wash)
Then I watered down the Mucous white a little and put some lines on the bare patches and blocked a little white in, then again with the Mucous white, barely watered down (to help flow) I highlighted all the raised areas.
Once finished I painted tiny black lines horizontally across the miniature randomly (but not the head).
Then I painted the leaves in Army painter Lava Orange.
Once dry I hit the leaves with a little Army Painter Quickshade (Strong tone).
The eyes and any carved swirls (none on the above miniature) were then painted with some watered down GW Warlock Purple (OOP

Dryad Heroine

 Anyone following my blog or threads on various forums from last year should recognise the above miniature, I converted her back in June of last year, finally got some paint on her. I'm KIND of happy with the paint job here, it's exactly the same as the dryad above, only used a different colour on some of the leaves (P3 Mouldy Ochre) and once finished I used a thinned down pink ink on all the "fleshy" areas. The sword is presently un-finished (just painted flat silver at the moment).

Reaper miniatures familiar

Painted in exactly the same way the little stumpling (my name for it) above will be joining the warband.

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Ironback Spitters (paint in progress)

 

Teedle deep and Tweedle derp about half way through the paint work so far, one coat of P3 heartfire orange (which has pretty poor coverage BTW, even over a brown undercoat, but it brightened up the model enough), one coat of army painter lava orange, one red ink wash, GW scorched brown, P3 Jack Bone (excellent coverage) and lastly Army painter Quickshade: Strong tone.

 

I need to go back over the guy's scales again as the covereage of the scorched brown was kind of .... well not great lol (painting in with poor light does that), so I need to make sure no orange is showing through, then some highlights, some varnish and i'll start on the back plates.

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Ironback Spitters

 

A Couple more minor conversions for my Hordes army.

Both these spitters had the horn on their chin removed and filed down to a neat angle.

One of them has been posed looking to his left (picture below) the other to be much more up-right, which involved removing some of the metal from inside his torso, and one of his back spikes.

Both then had greenstuff applied to cover up some of the blank area that was mean to be covered by their torsos and then some in the neck area (the one below has quite a lot as you can see, in order to get the "looking left" pose I wanted. 

Both these guys will be straight on the painting desk and will be getting a similar colour scheme to the terrortoise so as they could be used in the same warband should ever I manage to finish my Modheim rules or play something else :).

Cheers for looking

Maxxev

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Witch Doctor (Paint in progress)

Just a couple of shots of another model for my Gatormen still got to paint his tongue (and the snakes) and knife, plus some highlights and touch up here and there.

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Swamp Horror (no 2)

Barney the Squid

Couldn't resist getting two of these things, seeing as they are fantastic miniatures :P lol.I went with a completely different scheme on this one (another reason why i'm enjoying painting the minions) and I figured out what to do with all that space on the side of them, a bit of blobbing with some ink and I think it came out quite well :). Still need to varnish this one to take the shine off the purple ink but i'm liking him this far. I may have overdone it with the highlighting on the armour, can't really tell till after the varnish goes on, still might tone it down a little... not sure...

The eyes have only been undercoated so far.

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Croak Hunter

 

Just a minor conversion today, because I now have a number of croak hunters for my Minion force, I decided to convert a couple (only one so far), he's now been undercoated but most of the work was just chopping, bending and gluing, there was very little Greenstuff involved.

Here's the original model as from PP's gallery:

http://privateerpress.com/files/products/CroakHunter.png

Mordheim: Beastmen

The Albion Dark Emissary proxied for the Beastman Shaman

So this weekend just gone I found my Fiance's old Mordheim warband in the loft (well the painted parts of it at least). She never finished the warband (she paintes really REALLY slowly (e.g she takes her time lol)) but i've re-based what she did finish and will tidy them up for use in a new beastman set. As you can see, unlike me she is a fan of bright colours and extreme highlighting which will make it a challenge for me to add to this warband, but i'll give it a shot.

As you can see there are the odd chips here and there on the models (surprisingly few considering how she had stored them lol), I quite like the metal hooves though, might keep them that way and call the Warband the "Iron Hooves" or something like that :).

The unfinished Chieftain

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Swamp Horror

He's Still WIP, got a couple of teeth to finish off and decide what to do about the big grey patches on the side (I tried a smooth grey, didn't like it, so went with a smudged grey but I don't like that much either :().

Love this model, if it wasn't for this guy and the Bog trogs I could easily have avoided buying into another army *sigh*. Still I hope that the model can pull double duty in another game system one day.

It sure is fun to paint things in a completely different way / choice of colours than normal though, the minions in general with their varied model races / creatures are well, just enjoyable to paint :) (well the blindwater side at least, I was fed up after my 6th Brigand for Thornfall... lol).

However this picture was taken while the base was still drying (actually it still is) but since taking the shot the damn water simulation type stuff has shrunk a LOT (it basically now just looks like a wet base, rather than a couple of MM depth). :(, going to try another layer in the morning and hope for the best but with the rate of shrinkage so far I think it's going to need about 30 layers.

Hordes: Blindwater pact (Minions) Posse and Wrastler

Latest Gatormen to receive a paint job, the Posse and a Blackhide Wrastler.
I need to re-paint a bit of the posse leader as I failed to notice the gaping holes in him that required a fair amount of greenstuff work to fill.... lol.

So far I haven't converted any of the blindwarter figures but I have a couple of Croak hunters that will be converted and I want to do a bit of work to the ironback spitters before they I start painting them too.

So far i'm finding this army really easy / quick to paint, i'm loving the speed at which the army is coming together :).