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Monday, February 8, 2010

Painting an Egyptian Part 2

After leaving off with Part 1, I still had weapons, shields, head gear, and bases to finish. Well, some sneaky Hittites must have stolen all my spears. (I can't find them, hopefully they are in my Hittite box) Still, I was able to finish the shields and head gear so I will stick the spears in part 3.

Step 1a: Shields Back

To make life easier I normally paint the backs of the shields before I put them on. For this I used GW Bestial Brown. When dry, I inked it with GW Devlan Mud.

Step 1b: Shields Front

For these shields I decide to go with a cow hide pattern. I used brown for this batch as I didn't have any black ink. There were more phases to painting the shields then any other single item for these Egyptians. Painting time for each of the phases was fairly quick though some extra time was needed for some of the phases to dry. The images go from left to right.



Stages of Shields


  1. Base coat shield with Vallejo Bonewhite. (5 minutes)
  2. Dab Devlan Mud for cow spots. (2 minutes)
  3. When dry, dab Bestial brown over ink spots. Leave a bit on ink uncovered by brown. (2 minutes)
  4. Dab Reaper Woodland brown in middle of ink spots. Then quickly go back over cow spots with Devlan Mud. Use it to blend browns. (5 minutes)
  5. Prepare brush for a dry-brush of white. Then dab white over cream areas. (3 minutes)
  6. Paint boss in middle of shield black. ( 2 minutes)
  7. Paint bronze over black, leave a bit of black for black lining. (2 minutes)
Step 2: Head Gear

Highlight and Head Gear

Next to do was the head gear. But before I could do that I needed to do the final highlight on the linen. The images go from left to right.


  1. Figure from last step.
  2. Highlight the linen with white. (4 minutes)
  3. Paint red stripes on head gear with a brick red. (9 minutes)

Shields and Head Gear Finished

Part 2 Wrap-up:

These guys are almosted finished. I just need to attach and paint the spears, put on the basing material and spray the protective coat. I will cover that in part 3.

Acknowledgements:

My friend Chad came up with this cow hide technique though I adapted it a bit for my own style.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Painting an Egyptian Part I

Right now I'm in the middle of a big project involving ancients and currently I am painting up Old Glory New Kingdom Egyptians. After I read a post on the TMP about mass painting ancients I wondered exactly how fast (or slow) my method was going to be. So I decided to time myself. Now I’ve not bothering to time priming, basing, assembly, or protective coating. But I will time painting. I’m not being overly accurate here. I look at the clock when I start and finish for 10 figures.

Now to make this actually a useful posting and give me a reference if I ever have to duplicate this effort in a year or so, I will include a list of the paints I used and the steps I took.

Step 1: Priming
Primed white with Krylon white primer
Step 2: Linen
Linen painted with Graveyard Earth

Normally I paint 'inside' to out. I start on the flesh and work my way to the weapons. But here, since I was going to be using dry brushing on the linen only, that is where I started. Basically I did the messy bit first.

Stages of Linen
Moving from left to Right: 
  1. I base coated the linen with GW Graveyard Earth. (15 minutes)
  2. I dry-brush the line with an off-white. Here I use Vallejo Bone White.
  3. (5 minutes)After letting that dry (time not counted), I ink the linen with GW Devlan mud. (5 minutes)
  4. After letting the ink dry (time not counted), I dry-brush the linen again with the bone mixed with white. ( 5 minutes)
The linen will be finished with a final highlight at the end. This will let me cover any mistakes.

Step 3: Flesh
Moving from left to right:
  1. From last step.
  2. I base coat the flesh with GW Tallarn Flesh. (18 minutes)
  3. After letting that dry (time not counted), I ink the linen with GW Devlan mud. (4 minutes)
  4. After letting the ink dry (time not counted), I highlight the flesh again with Tallarn Flesh. ( 8 minutes)
Flesh Finished.
Part 1 Wrap-up:
Not bad progress for one hour. Of course, I can't sit for an hour straight painting. I have to get up and move around. So that makes this a day project. In the next part, I will paint the weapons, shields, and head gear. And I hope to finish up in part 3 with basing and protective coating for the whole unit. This will include the previous 10 I had painted up.

Acknowledgements:
The painting scheme used here is based on one from my friend Adam. It is the scheme he used to paint my Hebrews for me minus an extra flesh highlight. I skipped that highlight to make my Egyptians a shade darker then my Hebrews. The Hebrews Adam painted can be seen elsewhere in this blog.