Monday 22 July 2019

Warhammer Underworlds - Ylthari's Guardians - Big Build - TO DONE!

As everything is so disrupted at the moment and I had officially admitted to myself I'd entered a mojo recession I did the only thing I could do - bought more toys! Ylthari's Guardians have long been on my mind and I thought I needed something to try and kickstart my mojo.



All along I had plans to paint these at autumnal Silver Birch and luckily there are is a lot of art out there to help pin down that look. In fact too much because you can do the leaves yellow, orange, red or clearly a mixture. On top of that the Birch itself can be shaded in all sorts of ways from monochrome, to ivory or even turquoise shades. And that doesn't even take into account how to treat the ground, or how most of the Sylvaneth in the warband do not have smooth bark to do the little black marks on.


And Spider-Man, into the Spider-verse threw in this inspiration. Not that it helped pin down what I was going to do.


So I just went with what I was familiar with. Army Painter Skeleton Bone Primer zenithal highlight over Red Oxide. 


The bases look like they're covered in moss, but this will be orange on mine and I decided on red leaves to make them less busy looking. However, that does venture into the realm of Game of Thrones' God's Wood trees, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.


All the skin tones will be golden orange/yellow, as that will stand out quite nicely against the white bark I'll doing and is also the colour of the inside of a birch tree [or at least it was in one picture I googled].


Hair is all red, to match with the leaves, but there will be some Rhinox Hide in places to try and break things up and tie it all together.


I still need to do the little tree sprite holding the arrows here, I've no idea what colour to do them but even though they're all different little critters I'll do them all the same colour. The bases also got Trollslayer Orange on the moss, but I don't know what t do with the little puddle area in the middle...


I wanted to do the weapon material the same as his skin tone. Even though that should be 'soft' [because it's skin] I think the heartwood is the strongest part of the tree so it makes sense to also have it for the weapon. I may also paint the thing on his back bronzed flesh too, now that I look at it.


There are still a lot of questions to answer on colour choices so I'll be working on the horned guy a bit more to feel more confident in the direction before I apply it across the other three, till then BW shot!



 Big Build - TO DONE!


I builds it, I gets the badge!

2 comments:

  1. Yay for retail therapy! Not a fan of elfs generally but these are really good sculpts. Looking forward to the finished result.

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    Replies
    1. I bought these on the 4th July, I finished them last night! Despite visualising them constantly in my head for months the painting process was not without obstacles and decisions to overcome and doubts about my painting ability.

      Crippling doubt led to a number of nights without any painting progress whatsoever! Despite that I finished them with what I believe is some of the best painted miniatures I've ever done!

      Did I exorcise those visions in my head of what I wanted to achieve? Not entirely. Do I think I took my painting to the next level? Possibly, although I had been hoping to jump a couple of levels, which was not the case. I have an approach to painting and although I used new skills and techniques ironically I'd have probably achieve my vision with new Contrast paints with less effort and more accuracy...

      However, they are done, they are beautiful and I'd happily paint another set [in the future] to try and capture that vision and inspiration.

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