Boss Snikrot

I'd never heard of this miniature until a client asked me to paint it for him.  When I Googled the name 'Snikrot' and saw the photos, my jaw almost hit the floor!

What first hit me was the size.  This guy is huge.  Standing next to a regular Ork Boy, he is approximately one-and-a-half times taller and three times as wide!

The next thing was the detail.  This miniature has so many characterful little bits and pieces that you can quite happily spend months painting him.  Luckily, it didn't take me quite that long to finish, though at around three weeks, it's probably the longest I have ever spent on a single piece in my life!

As you can see, this miniature comes in five parts; the main body, the rucksack, the two arms and the head.  I was very glad that he came in metal and not FineCast, as the potential for miscast on such a detailed model would be pretty high!

The big question, which plagued me for a very long time, was 'how much of the miniature should I assemble before I paint him?'

To most people, the answer is obvious.  But of course, most people's obvious answer will still be completely different from the next person's, depending on their own preference!

There are basically two schools of thought on the subject; if you paint the separate pieces, it's much easier because you can get into all of the parts of the model without worrying too much about other parts of it getting in the way.  However, if you assemble the model completely, it's much easier to get realistic highlights and shadows, because you can see exactly where the shadow of (say) the arm falls across the chest, etc.

In the end, I decided to compromise by assembling the body, rucksack and head parts (though I would come to regret attaching the head later on, when I attempted to paint his chest...).  Once this main bulk had been finished, I would then, I decided, attach the arms and paint them while on the main miniature.

Another reason not to paint and then assemble is of course the fact that there is always potential for a glue disaster, or for chipping / rubbing off any of the paint that's already been applied.  I would certainly have to be very careful when putting him together!

I wanted to keep the base relatively simple so as not to detract from the Ork himself. Also, as this miniature will be used for gaming, I didn't want to raise him up on a plinth of rock or anything like that, or else he'll be constantly towering over all of the cover!

('Who's that above those trees? Oh, it's just Snikrot again. Fire up the lascannon...')

I first coated it with play-sand, but this was very fine and lacked any variation, so I then sprinkled on some sand from none other than the luxurious sandy stretches of Clacton-on-Sea. Finally, to add even more detail, I sprinkled on some very coarse sea salt.

METALLICS


I started on the metallics by basecoating them with Boltgun Metal before adding the first shading pass.

I want these metallics to have a good solid 'iron' feel to them, so will be using a lot of blues to shade and highlight. The first shade was a roughly-equal mix of Boltgun Metal and Regal Blue, with a touch of Chaos Black and it was painted into the darker parts of the miniature.

After this, I finished the shading by adding more Chaos Black to the original mix and blended it into the deepest areas.

A lot of miniatures (and Ork / Orcs in particular) have a great deal of metal on them. In order to break up the metallics on Snikrot, I used two different colours.

For the bulk of the metal I used an iron-y blue colour, while the rest I made something more like a deep bronze.

As you can see from these first stages, I didn't mind spilling paint onto other un-painted areas of the miniature. I think that it's better to start painting a mini in a relaxed (nay, slap-dash) way. It sounds a bit odd, but I really feel like your mood while painting is reflected in the finished miniature. If you're tense and over-cautious, that'll come across in the finished work.

(Some of my best highlighting has been done while brushing the strokes to the rhythm of whatever I'm listening to on my MP3 player!)

Once the shading on the metallics was finished, I began highlighting them, firstly with a mix of Fortress Grey and Boltgun Metal.

Afterwards, I added another highlight to the metal, this time using a mix of Fortress Grey and Ice Blue. I followed this with an extreme highlight of Skull White on all of the 'hot-spots', before adding two extremely thin glazes to give the impression of reflection to the metal.

The first of these was of Regal Blue on Snikrot's right-hand side, followed by Hawk Turquoise on his left.

Finally, I re-painted the Skull White highlights, to bring them back up after the glazes.

I then basecoated the remaining metallics with Dwarf Bronze and, in the following few days, finished them using exactly the same colours and techniques as the iron, but using Dwarf Bronze instead of Boltgun Metal. This will hopefully give them the same tone, but having two slightly different hues of metal will add a little more interest...

You can see the results in this image (right).  At the moment, the metallics seem to look quite sharp and harsh, but as the rest of the miniature gets painted, the tones will become much more muted to the eye and will hopefully look fantastic - it's often a leap of faith when you're painting a miniature like this.  You just have to trust in your colour selection and, with a bit of luck, all of the areas will work together and compliment each other in the end.


When I paint, I try to help this by limiting my palette as much as I can, using the same colours to highlight and shade all of the elements of the mini.  This goes a long way towards tying the various parts together and giving an overriding tone to the piece.

BLACK


With the metallics now finished, I moved onto the black areas.


I began with a basecoat formulated from a roughly-even mix of Chaos Black and Regal Blue, before using several thinned coats of Chaos Black to shade into the deeper areas.

I highlighted in two stages, using - very simply - Codex Grey first, followed by Fortress Grey for the extreme highlight.

I find that the key to highlighting black isn't so much using lots of blends and clever mixes of colour.  Subtlety is the watchword here....

And so is patience.

Subtlety and patience are the watchwords.

I started by watering down the Codex Grey to roughly the consistency of skimmed milk and then I put the tiniest amount on my brush.  Even with just this small amount of paint loaded onto the bristles, I still brushed most of it off onto the palette until it was virtually invisible when painted onto the model.

I then painstakingly built up the highlights over many, many applications, brushing the paint on from the darker areas, towards the lighter ones.  It's important to remember that when you paint onto a miniature, the paint will be pushed along by the brush (rather than just applied uniformly), meaning that the colours appear stronger at the end of the stroke.  This means that, using thinned paint and lots of applications, a very nice blend effect is created, without the need for multiple paint mixes.

After this stage, I repeated the process with Fortress Grey to complete the effect.

LEATHER STRAPS

For Snikrot's straps, I decided to go for a muted red-brown.  The rest of the miniature would be quite dark in colour and, though I didn't want to go too bright, I wanted to make the straps stand out a little in order to break up the paint-job.

I began by basecoating with a mix of approximately 1:1 Scab Red and Calthan Brown, before giving it a thinned Devlan Mud wash.

I then shaded with pure Scorched Brown before adding a little Chaos Black to shade the deepest recesses.

For the highlights, I first used Scab Red lightened with a touch of Ice Blue and then I added some Kommando Khaki to the mix to bring up the highlights a little more.  Next, I applied an extreme edge highlight of Kommando Khaki.

After this, the straps still seemed a little too red, so I muted the tone slightly with a thinned glaze of Calthan Brown before re-applying the Kommando Khaki highlights.

Here (right), you can see the finished effect, just after I began to paint Snikrot's khaki trousers...

CAMOUFLAGE


I've never (to date) painted an Imperial Guard tank or any historical miniatures, so camouflage was a completely new and untested thing for me when I came to attempt it on Snikrot.


I must admit that I spent a very long time researching the subject, begging for advice from some extremely talented painting friends, trawling Google for images of camouflage patterns and scanning through reams and reams of painting tutorials.


In the end, I decided to just go for it and see what happened (which is, in my opinion, the only way to paint!).

After starting with a Regal Blue base, I 'blobbed' on some Fortress Grey, very haphazardly, followed by a darker mix of Codex Grey, Regal Blue and Chaos Black.  Finally, I randomly dabbed on a small scattering of Chaos Black.

I wasn't sure that highlighting and shading each of these patterns separately would look quite right, as I didn't really want the separate areas to be too well-defined - it was, after all, meant to be camouflage!  With this in mind, I shaded and highlighted all the khaki areas as though they were the same base colour.

I began with a Chaos Black shade before adding a 1:1 highlight of Ice Blue and Skull White.  I then added an extreme highlight of pure Skull White.

To tie the patterning together, I gave the areas two thin glazes, the first of Codex Grey and the second, Regal Blue.

Still not completely satisfied, I finished by applying a final 1:1 shade of Chaos Black and Badab Black to the recesses in order to reiterate the contrast.

TWINE AND STIKK BOMB WOOD

For some reason, I always seem to spend more time and effort on the smaller details of a miniature than the the most prominent areas!

I don't want to go into too much detail here, as the techniques used were all fairly basic, so instead here is a list of the various stages:

TWINE

• Basecoated with Graveyard Earth.
• Shaded with a wash mixed from Scab Red, Chaos Black and Scorched Brown.
• Brought back up to Graveyard Earth.
• Highlighted with Kommando Khaki.
• Second highlight of Bleached Bone.
• Extreme highlight of Skull White.
• Finally, the Scab Red / Badab Black / Scorched Brown mix was re-applied into the recesses.

STIKK BOMB WOOD

• Basecoated with Snakebite Leather.
• Shaded initially with Scorched Brown.
• Second shade of Scorched Brown / Chaos Black applied.
• Highlighted with a 1:1 mix of Snakebite Leather and Kommando Khaki.
• Second highlight of pure Kommando Khaki.
• 'Grain' painted on with thinned Skull White before a Snakebite Leather glaze was applied.
• Re-applied shading layers.

SKULLS / TEETH


As with the other 'fiddly' bits, I'm not going to dwell too much on the skulls and teeth - partly because I lacked the foresight to take many photos of the process, but mainly because I covered the technique in a previous blog post.  Here are the basics:

• 1:1 Scorched Brown / Codex Grey basecoat
• 1:1:1 Scorched Brown / Chaos Black / Badab Black wash
• Codex Grey on all but the recesses
• Highlight with Fortress Grey
• Highlight with Dheneb Stone
• 2:1 Dheneb Stone and Skull White
• 1:1 Dheneb Stone and Skull White
• Extreme highlight with Skull White
• Devlan Mud painted into the recesses

With everything else completed, I could finally move on to the part which I always look forward to the most...

THE SKIN

I've been experimenting quite a lot recently with different styles of orc skin, from cold blue highlights to warm, bright yellows.

This time, I wanted to try out a darker, more realistic tone which would fit really well with the gritty feel of the rest of the miniature.

As with most of the orc (or should that be ork?) skin techniques I favour, I began with a solid basecoat of Goblin Green.

Following this, I added Regal Blue to the green and painted it into the recesses.

I finished the shading by adding a small amount of Chaos Black to the mix and applying it to the very deepest areas.

The highlights were done in two simple stages.  First I used a thin mix of Goblin Green and Kommando Khaki, before then using pure Kommando Khaki as an extreme highlight.

To 'smooth out' these layers, two very thin, identical glazes consisting of a Regal Blue / Scab Red mix were applied consecutively.

I used the above glaze to add the reddening which can be seen on Snikrot's lips and spine, applying it over several thin coats.

To highlight, I added a touch of Kommando Khaki and Skull White.

Finally, I glazed the areas with Scab Red.

This very simple touch goes a great way towards making Snikrot a living, breathing character, rather than merely a painted metal miniature!

Finally, to finish the main body off, I painted the 'eyes' Regal Blue, Ice Blue and Skull White (for the blue) and Scab Red, Blood Red and Skull White (for the red).

And that's pretty much it for Snikrot.  I'm really proud of the way he's turned out and can honestly say (to date) that he's one of the best pieces I've done.  The arms were painted using exactly the same techniques as the rest of the miniature, so I won't waste your time by reiterating what I've already said, but if you do have any questions about them or anything else, feel free to leave a comment below!

If you want to see the finished article, check out his gallery here and, as always, don't forget to...

The Horror! The Horror(s)!

Having just finished work on the first wave of Beastmen for the 'Pink Horrors' - the latest of my Blood Bowl teams - I thought that they'd make a great subject for this instalment of the Flare Blog.

Blood Bowl teams are probably my favourite of all things to paint - they're fantastically characterful and a great opportunity to relax and add humour and fun to your miniatures (quite frankly, anyone who takes their Blood Bowl team too seriously shouldn't be playing Blood Bowl!).

But who are the Pink Horrors?

Having spent the last few years playing a Wood Elf team, a team which relies on pace, agility, and not getting punched in the face(!) I decided that my next team should be something of a departure from this.  Don't get me wrong, I love playing with the Green Glade Hackers, but as the word 'blood' is in the very name 'Blood Bowl', I thought it might be nice for this to refer to my opponent's team's, rather than my own...

So that's why I decided to go for a Chaos team, a team which is almost the exact opposite of the Wood Elves.  They are slow and clumsy, but wow - they can be vicious!  And with a bit of luck, they will smash, rip and tear their way up the Chelmsford Bunker's CBBBL V league later this year...

But of course, I need to get them painted first!

(And this is how I started...)

METALLICS

I began, as I begin most miniatures, with the metallics.

The main reason for this generally is that for a lot of metallic methods I will employ a great deal of washes and drybrushing to create various ageing effects and, as any painter will know, drybrushing can get very messy!

For the Horrors however, I didn't use drybrushing as I wanted the metals to look a little more prestigious and new, but as the pigmentation in many of the metallics I use is so strong, I find  it's much easier to fix errors if colour paints are accidentally slipped onto metal parts, rather than hiding metallic slips on colour paints.

I used the following method for the gold and silver:

2:1 Burnished Gold and Dwarf Bronze mix as a basecoat (gold areas only)

Chainmail basecoat (silver areas only)

Scorched Brown wash over all

Pure Ogryn Flesh wash

3:1 wash of Devlan Mud and Hawk Turquoise (silver areas only)

Re-apply basecoat on both silver and gold

Burnished Gold to highlight gold areas and shade the silver areas

Highlight gold with Chainmail and silver with Mithril Silver

Weather joints in metallics with Hawk Turquoise followed by Devlan Mud

SKIN

The blackened skin was a much simpler affair.  Being the largest area on the models, it seemed like the most logical place to start, and it consisted of nothing more than the Chaos Black undercoat, blended up to Graveyard Earth.

Though the colours were simple, the skin was probably the most technically difficult part to paint because what I had to keep in mind throughout was that nothing should diminish the brightness of the pink, so I had to make the Graveyard Earth prominent enough to define the features while scarce enough to make the skin appear almost completely black.

On the test model, I originally made a bit of a mess of things, trying to add various blues and washes into the mix, but quickly realised that I was just over-complicating matters.  In the end I was compelled to paint the skin Chaos Black once more and begin again, this time with the much simpler method!

PINK

The pink was the colour I most looked forward to doing as it was what would define the look of the team.  On the players themselves, I kept the pinks solely to their furs, rather than anything else such as cloth or straps, etc.  Too much would have been, well, too much.

I used the following method for the furs:

Basecoat Dwarf Flesh

Wash with Baal Red

Wash with Leviathan Purple (recesses only)

4:1 Dwarf Flesh and Red Gore mix for initial highlight

Dwarf Flesh as a further highlight

1:1 Dwarf Flesh and Bleached Bone as an extreme highlight

Finally, re-apply the Baal Red wash to add definition to the recesses where needed

CLOTH

Again, to keep the pink as the most eye-catching colour, I went for a very understated dirty-white for the cloth.  I think it looks simple, but rather effective:

Firstly, basecoat with Graveyard Earth

Blend up to pure Kommando Khaki

Bleached Bone as an extreme edge highlight

Pure Devlan Mud washed into the recesses

Again, with simplicity in mind, all of the belts and cords and other embellishments were painted the same colour, but using a more basic three-colour technique of Graveyard Earth for the basecoat with a highlight of Kommando Khaki and an extreme highlight of Bleached Bone.

It is worth mentioning that, though a brilliant colour, the pigment in Graveyard Earth can be very weak and it is extremely important to apply several coats of this at the start to ensure a good solid base to work from - or else there is no chance of achieving a smooth, un-patchy blend.

BONE

The bone was painted using a tried and tested method which one of my favourite painters, Anja Wettergren, used in a tutorial for painting the Crux Terinatus of a Blood Angels Terminator.

I 'borrowed' this once for a miniature I was working on and completely fell in love with the method and tend to use it on most miniatures somewhere.  It is worth noting that it's stated purpose is to give the effect of ancient stone, but I find it substitutes for bone just as well!

1:1 Scorched Brown / Codex Grey basecoat

1:1:1 Scorched Brown / Chaos Black / Badab Black wash

Codex Grey on all but the recesses

Highlight with Fortress Grey

Highlight with Dheneb Stone

2:1 Dheneb Stone and Skull White

1:1 Dheneb Stone and Skull White

Extreme highlight with Skull White

Devlan Mud painted into the recesses

BASE

To give the team a 'darker' feel, I decided to use cobbled, resin, bases to give a 'dungeon-floor' effect to the players, rather than that of a bright and sunny grass pitch.

Though the effect looks quite complex on the bases, they are all painted with a series of drybrushes and washes:

1:1 Codex Grey and Graveyard Earth base

1:1 Wash of Devlan Mud and Badab Black

1:1 Fortress Grey and Graveyard Earth

Drybrush Fortress Grey

Wash with Thrakka Green

Wash with Devlan Mud (with extra dabbed onto the centre of the stones while still wet)

EYES

Finally, the eyes were painted Skull White and washed Baal Red.  After a white dot was added to the eyeball, Asurman Blue was washed around the eye area before pure Baal Red was re-applied to the eye itself.

DEAD FLESH

The only think left to paint now were the few displays of dead flesh dotted around the team (mainly on the Re-Roll Counter, right).

The method I used was as follows:

1:1 Tallarn Flesh / Rotting Flesh

Thinned Baal Red wash

Thinned Leviathan Purple wash

The basecoat was then re-applied and blended up to pure Rotting Flesh

And extreme highlight of Skull White was added.

The blood was simply thinned Blood Red, followed by a 1:1 mix of Blood Red and Chaos Black on the more concentrated areas, with a gloss varnish finally added to give that extra 'shine' once a protective matte varnish had been applied to the miniatures as a whole.

And that's those guys finished!  Though with a Minotaur and some Chaos Warriors needed (and with four more Beastmen lined up for the bench...), I think I'll be back in the pink very soon...

If you want to see pictures of the team so far, visit the Pink Horrors section of the Flare Image Gallery!

Sergeant Nero - Painting the Mantic Orc Flagger - Pt.2

As you may have guessed from the title of this post, this is the second part of the article charting the painting of Mantic Games' Orc Flagger miniature.  You can read the first part here.

So where was I?

Oh yes...

DAYS SEVEN AND EIGHT

The Flagger's cloak is split into two parts, the large mane at the top and the shorter hair making up the majority of the cloak.  Having finished the mane already, it was time to move onto the main cloak.

Now, everyone has their weakness - Superman has Kryptonite, a Cyberman has gold, Nicholas Cage has acting.  My weakness is fur.  Don't get me wrong, I can paint it, sure - but I certainly have to put a lot more effort into it than anything else on a mini.

I don't mind admitting that in the end, I was less than happy with the back of the Flagger - I had intended for the cloak to be the fur of a lion or some such big cat, so I plumbed for a sandy-yellowy-brown for the main body of it.

Sadly, though painted relatively well, I found that this colour was completely at-odds with the palette of the rest of the miniature - but having already painted it three times and being aware that there was scant time for perfectionism (being more than half-way into the competition time limit already), I had to grit my teeth and just let the cloak lie.

If time allows in future, I would be sorely tempted to re-paint the cloak a dirty grey-blue.  In retrospect, I actually think that this would make the flaming-orange mane look even better.

DAY NINE was the point in the competition that I had really been looking forward to since the start - the Orc flesh!

This stage is where a miniature goes from being a bit of metal with some (hopefully) nicely-painted bits on it, to being a living, breathing character.

I always like the flesh of a miniature to shine out a little bit brighter than the rest of it, so I always tend to err on the lighter side of caution.

For this reason, I basecoated the flesh with Goblin Green, using lots of thin coats over the Skull White undercoat, rather than one thick coat.  It takes much more time to do, obviously, but the amount of detail this preserves is well worth all the effort!

Though in terms of area, the skin was a relatively small part of the miniature, I spent a total of almost six hours working on it to get it right.

At the risk of repeating previous posts (Mantic's Goblin Sneek springs to mind...), the skin was shaded and highlighted with lots of blue tones, giving the flesh a cold look that would fit in well with the snow-themed base that I had planned.

I added a touch of Liche Purple and Necron Abyss to the original green, painting very thinly into the recesses over several coats, adding more Necron Abyss for the second, deeper, shading pass.

It's important to note that (though everybody has a different way of blending), you don't need your paint to be wet on the mini when you blend, nor do you need to continually alter the shade seven, eight, or nine times to get a smooth transition between your colours.  All you need is thin paint and a lot of patience.

The trick is to have your paint so thin that when you put it on, you virtually can't see it (seriously).  As long as you make sure that you don't 'pool' the paint on and that the area is completely dry before you add more, after fifteen, maybe twenty extremely thin applications, the translucency of the paint will have done all the hard work and you'll have a really nice, smooth, blend.

(Meanwhile, back at the Orc...)  I painted the highlights in two colour stages; a 1:1 mix of Goblin Green and Ice Blue and then finally, pure Ice Blue.

DAY TEN

With all of the 'main' work done on the miniature, it was time to begin work on the actual design for the banner.

It was very easy to get carried away on the Flagger himself, without realising that the actual flag was just as important!

The image on the the right shows the banner after I 'pencilled-in' the design using a thin coat of Skull White, to give a strong, light base for the design.

Inspired by the flaming mane of hair on the cloak, I decided to opt for something similar on the banner.  Rolling flames, crashing like red waves across the banner... perfect!

Or so I thought...

I got about half-way into painting the 'flames' when I realised that I'd made a huge mistake with the design.  Even though I hadn't done any highlighting yet, I could tell that the design just wouldn't work.  The red and the blue just clashed terribly and the flames became lost in the undulating banner.

That was annoying to say the least.

The outline in the first picture seemed to be rather prophetic, as you can see from the finished banner below!

White worked so much better than the red because it actually dominates the flag, rather than clashing with the background.  It also is more in-keeping with the overall snow theme of the miniature.

I've not done a tremendous amount of freehand banners, so this was definitely a learning experience for me, but a welcome one all the same.

DAY ELEVEN

By now, the banner and the Flagger himself were finished, so all that remained were for me to finish off the last few bits of the base, and of course glue the banner to the main miniature.

The snow on the base was applied in three very thick 'gloopy' coats to allow it to 'flow' over the sides of the rocks, rasther than just cling to them like a thin layer of dust.  I basically mixed PVA glue with an equal amount of Skull White and applied it only to the horizontal surfaces, being careful to avoid any areas that would have been shielded from snow-fall.  The addition of white to the PVA is very important as the glue on its own will dry transparent and the resulting look is more grey than white.  Afterwards, I liberally coated all of the snow with Citadel 'Ardcoat to give it a realistic shine and take away the dry, powdery look.

Finally, to finish off, I painted on the blood splatters.  These were simply done by painting thinned Blood Red onto the affected areas before adding Chaos Black to it and then painting this onto the areas where the blood would be the thickest.  Finally, more 'Ardcoat was carefully painted on to give the blood that tell-tale glisten.

And that's it!  One Mantic Orc Flagger!

You can take a look at the finished model in the Flare Gallery if you want to see more pictures of the finished miniature.  Please let me know what you think!

And of course, if you want to know more about Flare Miniature Painting, you can...

(Oh, and in case you're wondering how we did in the competition... WE WON!!)

Sergeant Nero - Painting the Mantic Orc Flagger

I think that painting any miniature well is a challenge in itself.  Though it may be less so for 'gaming' miniatures, even if you're just throwing on a base and a couple of highlights to get an army on the table, nobody sets out to paint a miniature badly - Lord knows, you pay enough money for most of them, why wouldn't you want them to look as good as is realistically possible for the purpose which they were intended?

Yes, painting miniatures well is a tricky.

This fact is even more true when the miniature in question is painted for a competition.  After all, it's not just you who is judging the final piece, or your client - it's your peers, and I think that those are the people you set out to impress the most.

Of course, all of this is a lot easier if the miniature is a good one, and at the moment I can think of no better miniature than Mantic Games' stunning Orc Flagger.  It's a fantastic mini with so many different elements to have fun with - battered old armour, large areas of orc-ish skin, flowing cloth, matted fur, and (quite frankly) a ridiculously massive sword which balances the large banner (a canvas in its own right) perfectly.

I had just two weeks to paint and base this model, a time-limit set by the competition which made the excitement of working on it even more intense!

It was February 29th and the Chelmsford Bunker's BunkerBrush2012 competition had begun...

DAY ONE

Before the competition began, entrants were allowed to clean up their miniatures and undercoat them, thought (obviously) no other painting was allowed.

Due to the size of the banner, I decided to paint it separately to the main body of the Flagger, though I did attach the sword arm.  I find it much easier to assemble as much as you can of a mini before painting as long as the parts don't make it too difficult to paint into the deeper parts of the model.  This helps when trying to shade and highlight the miniature, as well as making it easier to keep the colour scheme consistent.  (At this point, I'd like to apologise for the poor quality of the WIP images, as they were taken in what can best be described as 'a great hurry' under 'poor lighting conditions' and usually while I was waiting for something to dry...!

I began by painting the armour as it was one of the largest areas of the miniature.  Unlike a lot of painters, I would rather paint skin tones last as I find it helps me to make sure that these are the most eye-catching areas of the model.  It is vital that the face, above all things, stands out.

I don't mind admitting that I'm a painfully slow painter at the best of times and given the short time available to complete the Flagger, I opted for a bit of an experiment over any sort of 'straight' attempt at non-metallic metal (NMM).

Instead of using a colour base for the armour, I actually used several thin coats of Boltgun Metal paint, but, crucially, I then shaded and highlighted not with other metallics, but with standard acrylics instead - always, though, keeping a touch of Boltgun Metal in the mix.

By DAY TWO, you can see how this was coming along.  To shade the armour, I added Scorched Brown and Blazing Orange to the Boltgun Metal and painted those into all of the darker areas, adding Chaos Black for good measure when painting right between the armour plates and at the base of the sword, etc.

I then highlighted in three stages, adding Ice Blue to Boltgun Metal, the using just Ice Blue, then adding Skull White to that, and then painting the 'hottest' areas of reflection with pure Skull White.

At the end of DAY THREE, the iron armour was all but complete and I moved onto the bronze, beginning the base with a mix of Shining Gold and Snakebite Leather, before shading and highlighting in a similar way to above (but mixing Necron Abyss to shade and adding Bleached Bone to highlight)...

By the end of DAY FOUR, the metallics were finished and Sergeant Nero was beginning to take shape...

After this photo was taken, and in a fit of caffeine madness at around half-one in the morning, I decided to basecoat all of the deep-blue-black areas with Necron Abyss so that come the fifth day, I was ready to run as soon as my feet hit the ground...

DAY FIVE

While all this was going on, I had been taking some time in-between various stages to construct the base for the Flagger.  Sometime, sadly, fantastically-painted miniatures can be let down when the ground beneath them fails to live up to their splendour.  That's why I started to create the base almost as soon as I started to paint the model that it would sit under.

The rocks were all stones that came from my garden, and the sand came from my daughters' sand-pit (excitedly sprinkled on by none other than my eldest!).  In fact, apart from the base itself and the Battlefields Highland Tuft from The Army Painter, I didn't need to spend any money (so far) on the base.  Painting it all was a very relaxing distraction from the rigours of the faux-NMM armour of the Flagger, as it was painted entirely using various stages of drybrushing and washes, and nothing more.

By the end of the day, I had also managed to all-but-finish the blues on the main miniature and the banner section, with just one or two more layers of highlighting needed where they most caught the light.  

The shades and highlights on the blues were very simply done by adding varying amounts of black to the Necron Abyss for the shades, while highlighting up to Ice Blue (again).

I find that it really helps with the look of a model to try and use the same palette throughout the paint job, always highlighting and shading with the same colours in order to cement the coherency of all the separate areas.  Ice Blue is my colour of choice for the entire Bloody Hells army, as I feel it lends a coldness that works brilliantly with the snow-theme of their bases.

It was now DAY SIX and, time allowing for any problems or delays, I was half-way through the competition.

I still had no idea whether or not the mini would be finished for the deadline, but as most of the model had some paint on it, I managed to convince myself that everything would be fine.

After finishing the relatively small leather areas, I pressed on with the 'mane' of the cloak and the cloth, opting for quite a bright orange colour to counter the dull blues and browns of the armour.

It was the end of the next day by the time I had gotten this done to my satisfaction, and, looking at the shock of flame-coloured fur, burning like a halo behind the Flagger's head, I decided that his name would be 'Sergeant Nero'...!

The orange itself was based with Bestial Brown and highlighted with Blazing Orange.  After two washes of Ogryn Flesh, it was highlighted with Dwarf Flesh, then Bleached Bone before receiving a very thin Baal Red glaze.

So far, I was very excited about the way that Nero was turning out, but also knew that unless I could make the banner (almost half the area of the miniature!) look just as good as what I'd done so far, the model simply wouldn't work...

I felt that perhaps it was time to think about the Flagger's... um... flag!

CLICK HERE TO READ PART TWO!

Little Ronnie - Mantic Games' Goblin Sneek

Now I've finally got a few minutes in-between waiting for various stages of a competition entry to dry, I thought I'd post up the work-in-progress images of Little Ronnie to show you all how he came together.

What I love about this miniature is that it manages to capture so much character, yet it is so utterly simple in its detail.  There is no clutter, no needless over-embellishment, just a great character, perfectly realised.

I'm sure the first thing you'll notice is that I painted the miniature based, and in fact, painted the base first.  There were a couple of reasons for this.

The first was a time issue.  As it was a relatively small miniature, and the base was going to be as simple as the goblin himself, I decided to paint both as one whole piece, allowing me to get a quicker result, but a great one all the same.

I painted the base first because there is always a danger of rushing this type of simple base at the end of a job because when you're so excited about the actual miniature, the base can sometimes become something of a secondary concern.  Painting it first means you are still fuelled by that initial excitement, and of course there is nothing worse when you've painted a fantastic miniature than making a disastrous slip with the brush while doing the base!

I decided on a white undercoat for Little Ronnie, which is a bit of a break from my normal Chaos Black spray.  I wanted to really go to town on the blending, meaning lots of almost water-thin coats of paint.

Even over a white undercoat, the purple robes you see in this image took between ten and fifteen coats of Hormagaunt Purple Foundation before having a good solid base to work from!

I then added some Necron Abyss Foundation and painted it into the recesses using the same thin mix, finally adding some Chaos Black to this before doing the deepest areas.  After that I simply worked up the highlights, blending up with a mix of Hormagaunt Purple and Bleached Bone, before finally blending the edges with pure Bleached Bone.

It's very easy to get carried away trying to blend, adding a little bit more highlight, then a bit more, and a bit more, and so on.  I found from this miniature that this really isn't necessary.  As long as you keep your paints extremely thin, you can complete an area - shade-to-base-to-highlights - in just five stages.

Finally, I completed the sleeves and hood in a similar manner with an unobtrusive dirty-white.

It's always down to personal choice, but I always prefer to leave skin until last.  Many painters agree, but an equal number would disagree too!

Because faces are the focal point of the miniature, I like to leave them until the end so that I can gauge the skin tone when compared with the rest of the finished miniature.  With that in mind, I painted the leather on the goblin, simply as it was the next largest area.

This was basecoated Bestial Brown and then shaded with a little Liche Purple and a lot of Scorched Brown (with the addition of Chaos Black in the deepest recesses).  The highlights were blended up with Snakebite Leather and (again!) Bleached Bone.

To try and keep a universal colour-scheme that held the miniature together at the end, I tried to use some form of purple in all the shades and equally, Bleached Bone in most of the highlights.

After painting the remaining detail on the Sneek, I finally got to paint the flesh, which was what I'd been looking forward to since the beginning!

I went for a Goblin Green basecoat as I wanted the skin to stand out brighter than the rest of the model, shading it with purples and blues (Liche Purple and Necron Abyss) rather than going for a straight dark green.  This is because I think that adding different coloured tones to the skin makes it much more real and more pleasing to the eye.

As for the highlights, these were gradually blending up from the basecoat with just Ice Blue. Normally, for Orc-ish skin, I would use a yellow for the highlights, but for this particular Orc army, based on snow bases, I have used Ice Blue throughout to give the flesh a much 'colder' look (both literally and figuratively!).

And, aside from a few fingernails and a couple of red eyes, that's it!

If you want to see more pictures of the finished Little Ronnie, get over to the 'Bloody Hells!' section of the Flare Gallery to see him in all his diminutive glory!

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please feel free to leave your comments below, or email Flare Miniature Painting directly!

Next time, I'll hopefully be able to show you the finished Orc Flagger that I'm currently working on for the Chelmsford Bunker's BunkerBrush2012 competition!