Throw the dog a bone
Another in the rather random series of how i paint stuff. The idea as always is not to produce competition winners but to get something which looks good in a reasonable time and at a competitive price. This last is important to me as a commission painter!
As an aside I spray lots of Vallejo Model colour which is made airbrush friendly by adding the Vallejo flow improver.
As always I start with Badger black primer sprayed on to get a nice base then here on the bone guys I start with the basic cloth layer. I always airbrush the main colour(s) to get some nice blending/highlights as quickly as i can. Here im using a VMA dark sea grey with a tiny bit of VMC chocolate brown. It looks really light in this pic as the phone camera has adjusted for the black undercoat, the real colour appears later..
This darker version of the actual colour I want goes Everywhere! Then I start adding a bit of white and build up the highlights on upward facing surfaces to get contrast with the darker under surfaces. I also make the upper body a bit lighter than the lower.
Bone time. The designer of this set really went to town on bones. The idea of less is more never occurred. More is not nearly enough seems to have been the motto with bones literally everywhere. I use VMC german camo dark brown on everything which will be bone or wood or leather at this stage to make it stand out and be easier to see and paint.
For the bone i then start with VMC flat earth and highlight up through vmc desert yellow and dark sand. I dont use white as I've never seen actual white bone except on GW skeletons. This is a frustrating stage as its easy to miss the odd bone tucked in the fur or under the armpit....
Somehow i seem to have based the guys at this stage which is very odd and I can only assume I was basing some other guys.
Next was the VMC burnt red on the sashes and quickly go over any german camo brown which had been covered accidentally in bone colour. Flat earth also added to wooden shafts and rope.
Burnt red highlighted with VMC vermillion. As you can see i had even at this stage missed some bones on the left shoulder of the guy in front. So many bones!
Literally cant remember what I had added in the photo above.....
Now it was the fur. Im not a fan of dry brushing and only ever dry brush fur as there is no more efficent way to do it. I never dry brush to highlight as it feels both a bit cheaty if somebody has paid me to paint their models and it often leaves a chalky onbvious effect which then needs glazing over to remove. Having said that fur has to be drybrushed. Step one is to paint the dark base colour - here a dark grey.
Then i drybrush a couple of progressively light shades with the lightest dry brushing being on the upper edges for contrast leaving the darker areas in shadow ..sort of.
Back to the browns. On the areas of leather its my favourite colour VMC flat brown used to highlight the german camo brown. here it wasn't necessary but on larger leather bits vmc orange brown can be added to highlight further
Finally its finishing off all the bits. For hair i pick any 3 shades of darkish brown and randomly paint 1/3 of the group in each. this is highlighted by a sort of edge highlighting of the strands and just painting in a few strands in a lighter colour. Its impressionistic but works. The rope was highlighted with desert yellow and a desert yellow flat earth mix was put on the upper surface of any wood. Snow was added to the bases along with the occasional dark brown tuft and thats the job.
