HOBBY: Painting Trollkin Champions (and Warders) Pt. 1

6 Minute Read

Jan 6 2014

Time to switch gears from my Mercenary army to my Trollbloods.

After I painted up Boomhowler and Company it occurred to me that if I just painted up a third unit of champs I’d be able to field a pretty nasty Borka Family Reunion theme list (from NQ# 38). And of course I had a box of the new plastic champs just sitting around… So while I still have some more mercs to paint, I decided to take a detour and do some more Trollkin for a bit.

And since they’re so similar, I figured I’d knock out a unit of the new Trollkin Warders at the same time.

After the primer has dried, I paint pretty much everything with Bootstrap Leather. My aim is really only to paint the metals, but its just easier to use a big brush and get it on everything. As long as you keep the paint fairly thin it shouldn’t impair the detail. As with all my painting articles, all colors are Formula P3 unless otherwise specified.

Next I stipple on some Ember Orange.

Then it’s all drybrushed with Chainmail.

Then everything is washed with a special mix I use on metals: a mix of 2-1-1 Agrax Earth, Nuln Oil, and Guilliman Blue, thinned down with a few drops of water plus a few drops of matte medium to make sure it still binds properly. The washes are all GW. The goal of all these steps is to be left with weapons and armor that have a nice aged patina to them.

After the wash has dried I begin working on the gold areas, giving them a 1-1 mix of Bloodtracker Brown and Beaten Purple as a basecoat.

I drybrush the basecoat with Rhulic Gold, then wash it with the same metal wash from above.

The gold is drybrushed again with Rhulic Gold after the wash has dried. I addition a few of the more prominent details are picked out manually with Solid Gold.

Here’s a look at the back where a lot more details can be found.

Now it’s on to that Trollblood skin. To match GW’s Shadow Gray (I used this color as the base for all my Troll’s skin until they stopped making it) I mix Exile Blue and Beast Hide until I get a color that looks right.

I begin laying down the foundation for the highlights and the shadows. I add some Frostbite to my basecoat for a highlight, and for the shading I use this color:

It’s about a 50/50 of Umbral Umber and Beaten Purple. I use this mix for shading frequently enough that I have a pot of it mixed up if I need it. It’s always best to have some color in your shadows. Especially for something like this blue skin. The warmth of this tone, as opposed to just a Dark Blue, will make the model feel more organic and alive.

With the foundation laid down to give me a guide, I begin to blend the various tones together. Here’s my blending explanation again from the Boomhowler and Co. painting article I did recently. To blend, 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’s in between those thick blobs of color you saw in the previous picture together. 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 add a little more Frostbite to brighten up the highlights a little more since I felt like it was all still looking a little too dark in that last picture.

I do the eyes at this point. For the “whites” I use Ryn Flesh. It’ll make the eyes look a little blood shot. These guys all have tiny little eyes, so painting them was a bit tricky. If you’re still getting the hang of doing eyes it can help to do them before the rest of the skin. That way you can use what’s often called the “Raccoon Eyes” method. That way you can paint the skin over the edges when you’re done. Check out this article for a little more on painting eyes.

Then, to make these Trollkin feel even more alive, I’m going to paint their palms and lips with a mix of Beaten Purple and Hammerfall Khaki.

This purple mix is highlighted by adding some Rynn Flesh to it, and shaded with the Umbral Umber/Beaten Purple mix from before.

You can use this same color mix on the various scars and wounds on these guys.

The Warder leader is absolutely covered in them. Of course if you don’t want to bother going to this much trouble with the scars, you can just leave them painted in the same palette as the rest of the skin. Then they just don’t look as fresh.

You’ll notice I’ve taken some black and started going over the various quills and… well I guess we could call them scales but it’s pretty clear trollbloods aren’t reptiles. Knobs? Well at any rate, while I don’t plan on finishing these areas off quite yet, defining them now helps me get a good feel for how everything really looks. Its hard to know if the skin really looks right if there are a bunch of skin colored lumps poking out everywhere.

For these and any other areas where I use black, I always use a black that I’ve toned with another color. Usually it’s this black, to which I’ve added a lot of Bloodstone (a deep red/orange color).

If I want a cooler dark tone, I have this: a mix of Umbral Umber and Exile Blue. Of course it doesn’t hav eto be used just for shading. Sometimes I’ll just use this as a navy blue tone. But for now lets get back to the painting.

There are a few areas of cloth under the armor here and there on the shirt and pants. I like to keep the tones on my Trollbloods fairly natural, so I use a base of Hammerfall Khaki and immedialtely go over it with some Agrax Earth (that’s A GW wash again). These areas are a bit difficult to make out here; look at the base of the torso and on the legs. Don’t worry they’ll become clearer in the next few shots.

I go back over these areas with more Hammerfall Khaki.

Then I blend some Menoth White Base in with it as a further highlight.

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~ And lets cap off part 1 by giving the Tartan a Coal Black basecoat. Come back and look for part 2 soon.

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Author: Ben Williams

Ben Willimans is a Professional Painter and Columnist at Bell of Lost Souls. He has been involved in the hobby and art side of miniatures and the tabletop gaming industry for over 20 years. He has won multiple national painting awards.

Game Tutorial Miniature Painting Trollbloods Warmachine-Hordes