Gondor speed paint
Lat week I rashly decided to run a Gondor force in an upcoming game. This wasn't rash due to any Gondorian shortcomings but was very rash due to me not having any Gondorians painted save a solitary banner guy. I needed 18 guys. The decision was Sunday morning and the game Tuesday morning leaving me...Sunday to paint them up!
Decided to go speedy and to be honest I could only have done this with Gondor or Uruks as they are basically 2 colours. Here is how I batch painted 18 of Gondor's finest, maybe not the finest actually but certainly 18 of Gondor's good enoughs.
Black primer then a coat of a much darker gunmetal than appears on my phone camera. This was VMC black with VMA aluminium and airbrushed on less than carefully. This will be the shade colour.
Then a much lighter version of the same mix highlighting the upper areas but leaving room for an even lighter set of edge highlights later. Metal weapons also had the effect you see on the sword sprayed on here rather than brushwork as i do when i don't want silver spray scatter.
Below the whole gang in their two tone armour. This is medieval tournament melee formation....
VMC black then was blocked in again over everything which was to be 'black' - very little is ever actually black but its the basecoat for later work..
Using my better airbrush with the finer needle I then dashed around adding vma engine oil grey on creases and in a fade from the top down on shields as you can see below. This is my version of black.
Next I wanted some different colours than black and silver so decided straps would be a nice warm brown. first coat is vmc dark german camo brown then highlighted with vmc flat brown and finally a bit of vmc orange brown with the flat brown. I like the colour contrast.
Faces were then added using my usual flat brown - cork brown - flat flesh combo. There isn't a great deal of face to work with really with this style helmet which again sped things up. Also as you can see below i've added the edge highlights on the armour which was why the armour was kept darker than necessary or this would be lost. Winsor and Newton series 7 size 1absolutely brilliant for edge highlights.
Wood for bows was painted as usual with vmc dark brown - flat earth and flat earth mixed with desert yellow. Highlight sprayed on again for speed.final grey highlights were added to fingers and quivers as below.
To break up the colours i went with a brass colour for hilts and pommels and final silvery highlights on the chest tree decorations.
Finally the shields were finished off. this took about an hour of the total 5 hours painting as there is no room for error when painting details on a shaded background. Its really hard to match colours to cover mistakes when the base shades across a range.
Total time spent painting about 5 hours. Basing was my usual quick and cheap method described here https://www.firstcommissionpainting.co.uk/single-post/basic-basing