Back to Painting

Well, I'm sorely behind schedule on my plan to finish the Nyss Hunters for August, but I've made important progress. I finished painting Cylena from the unit yesterday. She was my prototype for how I wanted to paint them, both in terms of technique and detail level. My goal, like with the Cryx, is to paint them quickly without sacrificing quality too much. I think this result is a pretty happy balance. It was about 5 hours or so of painting on this model, which counts some experimentation time. Now that I have the process worked out, the others should go quickly. Here's what I did:

• Base: Cygnar Blue Base, wash black ink + flow aid, highlight Coal Black - This is done over a large portion of the model first, since most of the model is the black leather.
  
• Fur: MWH, wash CXH, re-highlight MWH - This gets this part done very quickly and provides good constrast and a slightly gritty look
  
• Cape: CXH, 2BB CXB, 2BB Black - I love 2BB; it gets the job done so fast now. Totally worth learning the technique despite all the initial frustration.
  
• Scabbard straps: MWB, shade Rucksack Tan, highlight MWH - Pretty standard formula for cloth-style straps for me.
  
• Flesh: Frostbite base (couple coats to make it smooth), wash blue+black ink + flow aid, minor highlights with Frostbite, hit eyes with MWH - I wasn't going to mess around with fancy flesh styles here. I wanted something striking, providing better constrast to the overall model, without having to do something complicated since the only skin these models really show is their hands and faces (and Cylena's belly). The hair got a cleanup afterwards of just a single coat of black paint (no highlighting action here).
  
• Sword hilt: Bloodstone, Skorne Red highlights, wash Umbral Umber, minor shading with Armor Wash - Again, not looking for something elaborate, just fast.
  
• Sword blade/etc: base Pig Iron, then Cold Steel highlights then Quick Silver, and then some thinned black to shade. For all the armor trim I just used Cold Steel.
  

The key here for me was to avoid mixing paints. Things go alot faster on squads if you can stick to out-of-the-pot colors.

My next big task (in addition to painting the other 9) is to get working on bases. I've never done snow bases and figured this is a good opportunity to try them out. Gonna have to pull out some of the tutorial links and read up.

On a different note, my niece's visit was a blast. We did a ton of stuff and I needed a huge nap after she left. Here's a quick list of the week:

• Tons of shopping
  
• Santa Cruz Boardwalk
  
• The Dark Knight
  
• SF Zoo
  
• Fisherman's Warf
  
• Cold Stone
  
• Got sick with the flu (just me)
  
• Had a late night code release at work (while still sick)
  
• More Shopping
  
• Bennihana
  
• Walked the Golden Gate