HOBBY: Warmachine: Painting Gun Mages Pt. 1
I’ve painted up another batch of reinforcements for my Mercenaries. I’ve done enough dwarves for the moment, so its time for some Gun Mages.
You’d think someone would have revoked my Highborn card by now for putting off painting a unit of Gun Mages for this long. Well there’s no time like the present. I begin by drybrushing radiant platinum over the gray basecoat. his and most of the other paints I use are from he formula P3 range. Next, the metal gets a wash of my usual metal wash: a mix of 2-1-1 Agrax Earth, Nuln Oil, and Guilliman Blue, thinned down with a few drops of water with a few drops of matte medium added to make sure it still binds properly. I usually use GW inks. Then I jumped the gun and moved onto the face before I remembered there was still some metal left to do.
These gun Mages do have a little bit of armor on the shoulders and chest. I give these a basecoat of about a 50/50 Umbral Umber and Exile Blue.
The blue is drybrushed with Hashut Copper (GW).
This is washed with that same metal mix from before. There are some gold areas in a few places as well. These are basecoated with Bloodtracker Brown and drybrushed with Rhulic Gold.
After washing the gold with Agrax Earth, I go back to the face. The Ryn Flesh basecoat is shaded with Bootstrap Leather. In a few areas I add some deeper shadows by mixing some Umbral Umber and Beaten Purple into the Bootstrap Leather.
I clean up the faces by going back in with some Ryn Flesh and evening everything out.
I start off the hair with Bloodtracker Brown. Then I wash it with Agrax Earth. While I wait for the wash to dry I start off on the pants, giving them a basecoat of Gun Corps Brown.
Next, the hair gets some highlights of Moldy Ochre. I also add some shading to the pants with a mix of Umbral Umber and Beaten Purple.
I finish off the hair with some final highlights of Menoth White Highlight. Meanwhile the pants are finished off with some Hammerfall Khaki. For the interior of the coat I went with Thrall Flesh shaded with Bloodstone.
Next it’s on to the tabard, which gets a basecoat of Skorne Red. I want to make sure this bold accent color is echoed somewhere else on the model, so I also paint the collar red. The ribbon on the other side of the hat gets some red too.
The Skorne Red is highlighted with Khador Red Base, and shaded with, once again, a mix of Umbral Umber and Beaten Purple.
Next, the coat gets a basecoat of Coal Black
Which, of course, is highlighted with Trollblood Base and shaded with Thamar Black with some added Bloodstone to give it warmer tone.
And then there’s the tricky part: all that blending. Here’s my blending explanation again, pretty much cut and pasted from my last article in case you missed it: I mix up a decent amount of a transition color and add a bit of matisse drying retarder. What I mean by transition color here is a tone that will transition two of those thick bands of color you saw in the previous picture together. So to blend the basecoat into the highlight we’re talking about like a 50/50 Coal Black/Trollblood Highlight mix. This is applied between the two different areas of color, and while its still wet, I clean off my brush, load it up with some of the original color and blend it into the transition color. This is definitely something where trying it yourself and experimenting will help more than any explanation I can write. I also mix a little bit of underbelly blue in with the Trollblood Base to give my highlights a little extra punch in a few places.
~ And that’s it for part 1. Check back soon for the second half.
