How Not To Paint: Otherworld Wolves

Welcome back. Since last I wrote I’ve been very very busy. As well as finishing four wolves, I’ve completed three PC/NPC characters and a foot of river, as well as finishing the basing on my Carrion Crawler.

I also have a new follower none other than famous composer John Williams! Well, maybe it’s not that John Williams, but new follower, Yay! *Waves*, right lets get on with today’s post.

To start I primed everything black and attacked the wolf to the base. To do this I added some white primer to the pins and touched the model to the base, then using my hobby drill I drilled through the base where the paint marks were, glued the wolf in place and then using snips I cut the pins down because they are longer than the base is deep. Next I defined each area of the fur using Dark Grey, Bloodtracker Brown and Dheneb Stone. I wanted to be reasonably accurate here as I will use this pattern to inform all my highlighting later, so as you can see the base coat is a lot neater than usual. Next I washed the whole model with Devlan Mud and then left it to dry. Using Blue Grey I added highlights to all the grey fur, this was done by painting straightish short lines approximately where they appear on the model. I could have dry brushed the fur but I generally dislike the result.  Next I added a lot of white to the Blue Grey and highlighted the whole section again. This time I was less worried about being neat, the point of these highlights was to show the edges and folds in the fur. This was then followed by the brown section. I used a mix of Bloodtracker Brown and Moldy Ochre followed by highlights in just Moldy Ochre. Again the second highlights were focused on defining the edges and creating a sense of movement, as can be seen with this model. Finally I highlighted the lower body using Dheneb Stone followed with highlights in Pale Flesh. The last stage is to add the washes. I used Dark Grey, Bloodtracker Brown and a mix of Pale Flesh and Sand and simply washed each section individually, making sure to give each area an equal coat. The washes were quite watered down so as not to lose too much of the detail work. Using Black I added the nose back in and made sure the mouth was still visible. Then I added a dot of Pale Flesh to each eye and he was ready to base. With the base I was going for a woodland feel, so I started out by supergluing some rocks and some branches to the base. These are just picked up from the park, but they work great. Then, using PVA (actually it’s super strength woodglue from the pound shop) I added the ground cover. This is a premixed pot of Gale Force 9 Earth, small rocks and GF9 Spring Undergrowth. The “pre-mixed” pot comes about through pouring all the excess bits left on the newspaper after building scenery into the same pot, but it does make a great base coat for basing. Next comes the foliage. Here I using “Tufts” from Noch Scenics and Weed Tufts from Woodland Scenics both of which are available through Antenociti’s Workshop. I also added some more Spring Undergrowth from Gale Fore 9, using the end of my glue brush to push it into the areas where I needed it. Finally, I added some summer-mix static grass from Javis and some Leaf Litter from DecorPlus. The leaves were added by putting superglue on the area that I needed the leaves, then I licked the bristles of an old brush in order to pick a single leaf from the pot (you get a lot of leaves for your £4.50) and put in it place. I recommend not using a good brush for this method just in case you touch the superglue by accident. And so there you have it, hopefully a great looking model and base. I would just like to make a comment here about the service with Antenociti’s Workshop. I picked up quite a few new materials from them for this project and I was amazed at just how quickly they arrived and how securely they were packed. I was very very happy with the service. And I think the products they supply speak for themselves, Don’t you?So, there you have it, a completed wolf pack and some pretty bases. Next week I’m going to bring you a How Not To Make Scenics post as I try my hand at Rivers…