Advances achieved

The army is growing!!

Well, not exactly a flow of troops, but I've finished painting five basic Dire Avengers. It has taken me ages, due to both the facts of still being under recovery from my broken leg and the damned colour scheme I've picked for them. It seems that I never learn…


I had first planned to paint them using the standard GW scheme, but then I had one of those moments of inspiration and decided to try something completely different. I wanted to give them a really serious looking style, standing out their elite role in the army, something generally obviated in favour of other aspect warriors; and at the same time I wanted to give them a monastic and sober look, in order to point out their courage and stoical attitude in battle. So these guys were going to have a very reduced pallete of colours, and a single contrast colour. And they weren't going to be painted in GW's style, but more in Rackham's, meaning softer highlights and different mixtures of paints.

So I started with a basecoat of Enchanted Blue, washed it with a mixture of Iyanden Darksun and Badab Black (those ink products are priceless for army painters, how have I been able to live before they were released?) and then repainted Enchanted Blue in most of the armor plates and progressively highlighted them with Hawk Turquoise (two highlights were enough for me). I painted the facemask, the crest of hair, the shuriken catapult and some other accesories with Chaos Black, and highlighted them (but the facemask) with Scaly Green, Scaly + Snot Green (50/50), and pure Snot Green. Also painted all the gems and eyes in green colours. Finally, I painted the clothes, ribbons and the two stripes-for-troop-integration in white for contrast. The result was different and good indeed, at least for me, although the miniatures turned out to be a bit too dark, and the highlight work is so subtle that it can only be appreciated at close range and not in the tabletop (a real pity, but hey, that's also something I've learnt with this experiment). Also, my camera seems to have problems to distinguish between blue and turquoise, and the pictures I've taken don't do justice to the paintjob, but that's something I can't change by now.

Finally, I Photoshop-ed the pictures in order to give them a cooler look. Well, at least that was the idea; I'm not an expert on photo edition. But again, I'm happy with the results :) Those Avengers look really menacing! Shake with fright mon-keigh, the true warriors of Asuryan are coming!

Hope you like those guys. Advice and suggestions are always welcome!