Monday 15 September 2014

Blood Bowl - Elves Progress

With so much going on at home it's been quite restrictive for hobby activity. I was sat there with a curtain pinned to the roof of our 'den' trying to keep out the dust from the building work but I would still see clouds billowing up from the 12" gap between the hanging drapes and the floor. So I boxed up most of the stuff on my hobby table and covered the remainder with a plastic bag. Meanwhile I thought the Blood Bowl Elves are actually quite near to being finished. I only had the bases, skin highlights, orange highlights eyes, hair and any little details to do and they were done. The hair and bases alone were the biggies so I set to...



The brown planet basing is very much similar to my red planet basing, just replace Vermilion with Burnt Umber. At this stage I'd washed them and already put the first highlight on. It's not so much of a drybush as wet brush/polish. The artists acrylics are designed for painting on canvas so when you try and put them on tiny gravel the opacity is minimal. It becomes more like a tint than paint, the more you work the drybrush the more paint actually gets removed!



Of course that encourages you to load more paint on which can spoil the effect so the best bet is to re-highlight with the same Burnt Umber upon completion of the first set of highlights. Successive coats bring out the true colour and provide the hoped for effect.



I then mixed in some Bonewhite to make it lighter for the highlights. I also added the orange highlights on the towels, some more highlights on the black armour with white spotlights in certain areas where light would catch.



Once again I do this mainly around the edges. It helps mitigate drybrushing brown on the already painted miniature and adds a shadow area under the model for a small element of realism and means the contrast between the model and the area he's standing in is greater and thus enhances it - or so I keep telling myself.



So next up skin and eyes and picking out the Bonewhite chips on the bases. You may have notices I'm also painting a Frank N' Stein star player, and a referee, just for giggles. There's the purple haired catcher, who is a legacy painted model, I may add him as a Star Player too, hence the purple hair. I also have a kicker who is not even undercoated and a Treeman who hasn't even been bought. I'm actually looking at this guy from Willy Miniatures


But I also like this one from Reaper, which is half the price :) and twice the size :) but probably completely impractical for game play :( which is a shame as although it isn't as appropriate as the Willy model I really like it.


Other than that there are quite a lot of options but I'm not enamoured by most of them and some are ridiculously expensive for something worse looking than these two options. Anyhoo, "game on!"

3 comments:

  1. Interesting point on dry brushing "around" the edges so the center of the base is darker, and mimicking the shadow of the mini. I....I never thought of that. I always try to do the bases first, because I find it so difficult to reach under the center of the model...now you are telling me they generate shadows? My god. This and forced focus from Johns work...weathering from Justin....

    I should probably just start a new army from scratch :).

    If you couldn't tell, love the way your bases came out on the elves.

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    Replies
    1. It sounds like you already are! The Elves will be even better withe the Bonewhite chips in place. Just need to find time to paint them!

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  2. I vote for the Willy model. It looks awesome.

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