Painting Guardians Daffrid Style - Daffrid

I don't pretend to be the greatest painter in the world, but I do think my models are good enough to grace the table tops around the land without causing snorts of disgust.  What I'll show you is how I get my models up to battle readiness by using some fairly simple transferable techniques which don't take that long to do (and don't require a greater selection of paints than the Tate Modern), in truth I usually do one or two stages a day which takes less than half an hour leaving lots of lovely free time for constructive things like going to the pub or downloading videos of monkeys falling off logs.

Stage 1:  Clip and clean the models and stick um all together.  For plastics I normally remove excess flash (i.e. the plastic liney bits) by dragging a scalpel over them, this isn't a cutting action it's a scrapping action.  For models like this I only ever glue one arm in place as this means the torso is easily accessible and consequently easier to paint.  Next is the familiar task of undercoating the models with good old Shadow Gray (I find it a happy medium between Black and White, i.e. not too dark not too light).

Stage 2:  I paint the torso and forearms and leg fins in Jade Green (only available from Vallejo now, in their Game Colour range), for this I find you don't need to be that fussy and the paint should be watered down to a milky quality.

Stage 3:  I drybrush the painted areas with Jade Green (3 parts) mixed with Skull White (1 part), for this I use an old water colour brush, as the hairs are fairly soft and splayed.  To drybrush; gently stub the brush into the paint mix (don't wet the brush!) and then wipe most of the paint off on a piece of paper, (to test if I have too much I brush it over a finger nail if only a light haze is left it's spot on).  

Stage 4:  The next stage is similar to ink washing (only done on the cheap), simply mix the Jade Green with some Chaos Black and then water it down like crazy (1 part paint to 5 parts water), then just brush it all over the green areas, because of it's watered down nature the pigments naturally gravitate to the groves and help the plates/joins stand out.

Stage 5:  Then comes the second major colour, in this case Codex Grey darkened with a little Chaos Black, this is applied to the rest of the model, bar helmet and weapons.

Stage 6:  Again inking on the sligh is done with a watered down mix of Codex Grey and Chaos Black when dry this is then drybrushed with neat Codex Grey.  Note for the Grey areas the ink~drybrush is used rather than drybrush~ink, as finishing with inking leaves the area darker and finishing with drybrushing leaves the area lighter.

Stage 7:  Chaos Black is applied to the weapons, before drybrushing with a mix of metalics/grey/white. Finally Scab Red is applied to edges on the blades and the gun.

Stage 8(a):  I paint the areas on the helmet which will end up white with a base of Elf Flesh.  White is my least favourite 'colour' to paint as it tends not to sit well on top of dark colours so the Elf Flesh acts as a lighter base to build from, after it's dry two or three watery coats of Skull White are applied.  Finally the eyes are painted Scab Red and the helmet plumes based with the same colour in preparation. 

Stage 8(b):  In the cases where those silly space elves have forgotten their space hats, their faces are first block coated in Elf Flesh then washed over with Dark Flesh, the eye sockets are painted Black.  I then re-highlight (ie proper controlled painting) the ink washed parts with Elf flesh again before adding the whites of their eyes and the little stripe of Black that form the iris/pupil. 

Stage 9:  The spirit stones are covered in a layer of Bestial Brown as a base before being covered in Burnished Gold, the stone itself is painted Scab Red, with the odd bit of detail such as a white light 'splash'.  The helmet plumes are then water inked and highlighted with darker and lighter shades of Red/Brown which irritatingly doesn't show up on the photo. 

Stage 10: Basing, I opt for a simple base with a colour that acts as a contrasts to the model.  For the texture I use a sand and small stone mix glued in place with help from a nice spreddy tool I made from a tea stirrer stick (as shown, whilst not necessary for these, I find the pointy end immensely useful when getting glue in and around a model's feet in a slotta-base.) The whole thing is painted Snakebite Leather, washed with a mix of Bestial Brown and Dark flesh and highlighted with a lightened Snakebite Leather.  

Stage 11: C'est fini, aprés touch-ups of course.

What I've shown here isn't particularly hard since mostly it's the repetition of the same techniques over and over again, you may have also noticed my liking for simple colour schemes and a limited palette, this is two pronged, firstly it is cheaper on the wallet which enables you to buy more lovely models and secondly I think bold contrasting colours look better/more striking on the board since you don't spend the whole game with your head 2 inches from the table top, and yes OK I'm a smidgen lazy.

In conclusion thank you for reading, if you got something from this guide then mission accomplished, if you think you can do better then prove it and submit an article yourself ; )

Happy Gaming, Daf. 

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