Or; How to Paint a Warrior of Chaos the Easy Way.
Last week I discussed getting started on a Warriors of Chaos army for Warhammer: The Old World using the new Slaves to Darkness plastics, and so this week I'm breaking down all the steps I used to paint them, as well as writing a de facto review of the Army Painter Speed Paints:
Let's skip the insufferable pre-amble present in most online recipes, and get straight to the point.
I batch painted the entire regiment in two batches of five, and chose a single model with good angles of sight to the different parts to be the focus of this tutorial. Beginning with a zenithal prime of Black and Grey (Rustoleum Black Paint+Prime and Citadel Grey Seer) gives the models immediate depth and definition. If the goal is to paint these fast and effectively with Speed Paints (and it is) this pre-shading does half the work for you.
With the gradients already established, it's straight in with the main colours; for this regiment it's Blue and Yellow. Partly because blue is a classic Tzeenchian colour, and partly just because it looks neat.
Yellow first, since it's easier to neaten up with the blue later than the other way around:
Picking out half of the shield, and a few armour panels in areas which seem appropriate. These are Chaos Warriors, so they're not perfectly uniform, but a few details I wanted to make sure were consistent; Each shield is split between the colours one way or another, each helmet has yellow on it, and there should be a balance of colours across the mini.
Blue then follows, across all the armoured areas not covered by the yellow:
I used a slightly larger brush for most of this paint job - how "neat" it looks has more to do with brush control and maintaining a good tip than it does with the size of the brush.
The Army Painter Speed Paint Starter Set actually comes with a good brush for this, that I found myself using for 90% of the entire process.
With the armour coloured, and the shield appropriately split, it's time to prepare the rest of the model for details.
The trick with most of mini painting, and especially with getting painting done fast, is to cheat. Rather than picking out every metallic detail and carefully shading and highlighting them, the plan here is to just fill them in black, and drybrush almost the whole model.
Black Legion is a Citadel Contrast paint, and I've found it works wonders to provide a near-black finish, but with a surprising depth:
I picked out everything that's going to be a bare metal, taking care to try and avoid spilling too much onto the olcoloured areas (although for a simple rank and file regiment I didn't bother cleaning any misplaced black, the next step will hide it well enough).
The plan for the whole army is to have a variety of colours used across armours, with different heraldries and designs seen on different units.
One of my first challenges with the scheme was making sure the entire force will look cohesive when finished - the plan is to achieve this with the use of the same "supporting" elements across the army - A black metal, similar leathers, cloaks, etc.
This black is the first step in that - and the next is the metallic drybrush:
Applied heavily on the black areas, to incite a more solid metallic look, and more lightly across the coloured armour, Sir Coates Silver (from the Two Thin Coats paint range) does a bang-up job of selling a bunch of painted metal, with texture and natural weathering across the model.
Pretty much any metallic paint would suit here, although I've chosen a slightly lighter shade of gunmetal, knowing a later shade will darken it back down.
This step is easily the messiest - if you're very careful you could avoid getting any of these colours on areas you're yet to paint, but I'm definitely not, so prior to filling in the details I took some Grey Seer (Citadel) base paint to neaten up any metal or colour spillages onto areas I was yet to paint:
From here everything fills in very quickly.
The Gravelord Grey from the Speed Paint set is one of my new favourite grey tones - shading down the fabric areas over the zenithal spray gives a really nice colour, and does a good job not pooling too much or setting as opaquely as many Contrast paints are wont to do.
The final details are the leathers and bones - boots, belts, and various other accoutrements are filled in with roughly appropriate Speed Paints (Hardened Leather and Pallid Bone):
A single coat of either of these covers well and picks out the final details.
Between the grey cloaks and furs, ruddy brown leathers, and weathered black metals framing each miniature, the whole army should come together to a single unified, colourful, and chaotic horde.
The last thing to add to the paint job for these spikey lads is an all-over brown wash.
I usually tend to limit washes to certain areas of models, to push shading or achieve certain weathering effects, but in this case I want to have a single unifying element across the entire mini, help define further some of the darkest recesses, and add one further unifying factor to the whole army:
Suddenly the bright colours are dirty and worn, leathers are stained, and cloaks have been worn and marched in, maybe for weeks on end.
Characters or centrepiece models could be worked on further from this step - highlights and detailed accentuated, the bone in particular could be lightened a few steps, and some texture applied to the leathers and fabrics.
But for rank and file troops, this is it - darkening down the colours of the armour on each different scheme planned will help none of them overpower each other in the table, and set a consistent tone across the army.
My brown wash of choice you can see above is the Battle Mud Wash from the Two Thin Coats range, but any brown wash would do, such as Agrax Earthshade from Citadel.
A couple of quick test bases for the army were done up, albeit departing from the speed paint range, and I've come up with an icy waste look I'm quite happy with:
Something I'm quite taken by is mixing some sort of weathering in with the tufts on bases - adding some wash, weathering powders, or in this case snow effects into the pre-made tufts does a great job of making them feel a part of the landscape of the base.
And with these done, all that's left is to glue the Warrior of Chaos onto his final home:
In the same vein as weathering the tufts, I brushed a small amount of snow across the bottom of the cloak, smattered some on the boots, and on the heavy bottom of the shield. Just helps to sell the idea that this warrior exists in the same world as his base.
And with that done, I've got a couple of reflections on the Army Painter Speed Paints - I'm having a lot of fun trying out a new paint set.
The starter set has a decent variety of bright colours, and I'm particularly impressed with the pigmentation in the Yellows and Oranges (used on a couple of lizard-skin details on some other models in the regiment).
They also layer very well, if you want to push the darker areas, a second layer of Speed Paint adds depth and darkens the area it's applied to.
I also found that they seemed more forgiving than Citadel Contrast paints when it comes to pooling and staining, which is definitely important for a new painter when the encouragement is "one thick coat."
That's not to say it can't pool and thicken, but it seemed less prone to do so, and would naturally thin itself across a model. Better yet, I didn't notice it pulling away from any of the highlight areas either, which can occasionally happen with Contrast.
One interesting issue I found was that the Speed Paint on my palette would occasionally reactivate if I were to add another paint on top - not a problem if you're using a wet palette, or a palette large enough to keep using new areas, but since I was working on my small portable palette it was something I noticed.
Not a major issue, as it never reactivated once it was on the models, but worth noting, I definitely had a few times where I forgot and found my Grey Seer with a strange yellow or blue tint.
Overall I'm a big fan - both sets of five Warriors were painted over the span of a morning, with the Speed Paints making it a smooth and enjoyable process.
The Starter Set is definitely a strong recommendation for anyone getting in to painting, potentially a more enjoyable experience than going straight to Citadel's Contrast range. Even the brush included in the set I found myself using for most of the paintjob.
For experienced painters, I do also recommend picking up some of the Speed Paint range to try out - I had a blast with them, and their subtly different properties to Contrast paints I'm sure means better painters than I could do some amazing things with them.
If you've got any thoughts on speed paints, or feedback on this tutorial-styoe post, make sure to comment down below!
Next up on the painting table is a Chaos Chariot with a Gorebeast, so a good chance to try a different armour scheme, as well as paint up some purple Lizard Skin - can't wait!