Naggarond's Step-by-step Warrior Painting Guide!!! (31pics!)

[Naggarond]

Okay fellow dark ones.

This is it.

I know you have warriors. I love mine. The other day they got charged by a treeman, held their own, defeated it (hurray for musician) and ran him down. I know this doesn't happen every day. But I still love my warriors and their lovely Drannachs.

This is a step-by-step guide for painting a respectably looking band of warriors! You don't have to be a picasso, I know I'm not! Hope you find this useful and enjoy!!

Ready? Here we go!

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Start off by filing, assembling and undercoating the model as follows. It is useful not to glue any hands yet.



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Proceed with drybrushing any visible armor with boltgun metal. Keep the drybrushing light, but thorough. Armor consists of leg chain, breastplate, helmet and a couple of metal bracers on the arms. I also chose to paint some parts of the sword, like the hilt and the bottom of the scabbard. You do not have to be overtly careful, as we will correct any parts that metal paints have gone from the drybrush later on with chaos black. Do not do this until we mention it. There will be plenty more metal!



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Next, pick out the edges of the raised parts of the armour using chainmail.



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Pick out some details on the helmet as well as the bottom row of chains with Brazen Brass. This will act as a basecoat for the gold.



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No proceed to cover these parts with Shining Gold.



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Using watered down Brown Ink, wash the golden parts. Make sure some ink gathers around the parts on the helmets.



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Next, we need to highlight the gold. To do this add just a drop of mithril silver onto a substantial amount of shining gold. Just a little will do. See the photo.



Using the new gold, highlight the raised parts and the edges of the golden areas. Don't do this for the chainmail trim, as it supposed to be darker down there.



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Add just a tiny dot of mithril silver on the outermost raised golden parts. Do not overdo it. Just a hint will do.



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That's all with the armor. Now is the time to correct using chaos black on any areas we hit by accident.



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Using a mix of one part chaos black to three parts liche purple, undercoat all the cloth parts.



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Next, highlight these parts using a mix of one part Shadow Grey to two parts Liche Purple.



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Do a final highlight on the cloth using the same mix as the above, but add two parts space wolves grey.



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Highlight the scabbard and the grip of the sword, as well as the edges of the shoes with shadow grey.



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Then proceed to highlight these parts with a hint of space wolves grey.



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Now it's time for the belt accessories. Carefully drybrush these lightly with codex grey.



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Now highlight the belt accesories with Fortress Grey. We use a different shade of gray than the shoes and the scabard for variety and less dullness.



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Now do all of the above parts for the spears. For the cloth parts use shadow grey
highlighted with space wolves gray. For the metal drybrush boltgun metal and highlight with chainmail. Add a final highlight with mithril silver on the sharp edges. For the wood, basecoat with Scorched Brown and do a wash with bestial brown as a highlight. For the hand, basecoat with Dwarf Flesh, highlight with elf flesh followed by a final highlight on the knuckles with an mix of equal parts elf flesh and skul white. The end reuslt should look something like this. Do this for all spears now.




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Do the same for the left hands and glue everything on. Do the same flesh routine for the mouths.



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Add some gravel and flock of your liking.



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Now let's discuss shields. They are very easy to do. Just use very light brushtrokes one the scales. Remember this!



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First begin with drybrushing the back part with boltgun metal, then correct with chaos black. No need to be careful, this part will hardly be seen at all.



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Next, pick out the dragon with Mechrite Red (or scab red if you prefer). This will act as a basecoat for red. It is a good idea to leave some black recesses so that the end result has more contrast.



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Carefully pick the scales with scab red.



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Proceed with Blood Red on every part of the dragon, apart from the scales. After it dries up, highlight the little edges and the scales with fiery orange.




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Pick out the final edges with sunburst yellow. Do this crefully for the scales.



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Proceed to create a line all around the shield using Shadow Grey. No need to be careful. We will correct errors later.



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Now highlight the edges with Space Wolves Grey.



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Correct the shields with Chaos black and then glue them on. You're done!



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With a little patience, you get something that looks like this



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Now where did I put that Sacrifical Dagger...?




Hope you enjoyed and happy painting!!

[Cenyu]

Thanks a bunch for this well executed documentation, Naggarond.

[Mordru]

Nice, this should be very helpful for new painters. Everybody has there own ideas about how to do things in the painting department thanks for sharing yours.

[Ampao]

vote for sticky! Great job!

[Saedron]

Very simple on the armor, but it yeilds GREAT results!!! This is perfect for new painters- sticky vote seconded!

[Iyagd]

Good, simple, fast, effective.

Although none of them is piece of art, they look really great in mass. And it counts, becouse rank&files need look good in regiment. Really outstanding effect, good job.

Clear, large pictures of every stage, understandable even for dummies. Great step-by-step tutorial. Not only for beginners.

[Mdk]

This is indeed a great guide to get a tabletop quality army in no-time. Thanks for this tutorial Naggarond. I'll make it a sticky. Feel free to greate more tutorials like this .

Thanks, MDK.

[Emperorpenguin]

Excellent work Naggarond!

[Elipsis]

Excellent guide,which will be very handy!
For changing colours on the tunics would you still keep the mixing, say if you wanted red?

Oh yeah, definitely would like to see more painting guides, maybe other rank and file troops?

[Mr_piechee]

good stuff! would be nice to see more guides like this!

[Gnosis]

Excellent work. However I hope you don't mind if I unsticky this and add it to the Hall of Fame + Unit Tutorial sticky, this forum is cluttered enough as it is.

[Naggarond]

Thanks for your kind words. I am by no means an artist, so simple-to-do but effective painting is what I can offer. Glad people found this useful. Even some very limited talent like mine can do something that looks decent on this scale of mini.

Currently painting some Dark Riders, and a second RBT. if they work out well, I'll do a tutorial for them also.

Maybe even for the corsairs and a chariot when my order arrives We'll see as I've got some finals coming up in September.

Cheers and happy painting!

[Gnosis]

I have some additional critique for you:

- The gold. I don't think the dwarf bronze basecoat is necessary, you could try and eliminate that step to speed up the painting.

- The shoes. That's some very extreme highlighting on them, and with the basing added you can't see anything. I'd leave the second highlight out.

- Conversely, the skull on the banner could do with a highlight with white.

[Iyagd]

Well, damn, ooops sorry .

I think it is good within set limits. I agree that of course It could be improved in many ways (examples mentioned, more highlights, paints mixing, washing, building gold from brown etc), but it works for simple, fast, dummy resistant, effective step-by-step tutorial for table-top quality, basic level painting. I think that it is great base for more advanced techniques which may be applied in time. Also extreme highlight works well for tabletops, as minis are seen in mass from larger distance.

[Mr. anderson]

I think that this is the best way of painting core RnF models. There are so many of them that to me it seems not to be worthwhile putting too much effort into painting them. I made that "mistake" - and consequently, every time my sorceress uses her sacrificial dagger I feel sorry for the warrior getting killed because after spending so much time on the mini there has been a close personal bond developed ... but seriously - that unit looks great, the painting is neat and the scheme is effective. There could be a few slight adjustments (for example what Damnation said), and the highlights are a bit too extreme for my taste, but in the end I think that together the models make a solid impression, and its not like every model will be subject to a golden demon investigation ...
What I would add is that gluing the spear and shield arms to the model before you start painting does make the whole thing a lot easier to paint, especially the spears and the plastic glue has the annoying tendency do dissolve the paint when you glue the painted parts together. There may be a few spots which you cannot paint properly, but then again - those spots will hardly be noticed in the end and they'll work like natural shadows.

HUZZAH!

[Kinslayer]

I like the colour scheme you used and great idea doing a step-by-step guide on painting the warriors. Personally i would change some of the colours used on your pics, like the purple to the red for example, but its pretty useful anyway.

Nice work

[Dggrj]

Nice job! Glad to see the 2nd model wasn't an amputee at the end of the process

Your end results really do look like greater than the sum of their parts, fabulous looking unit in what must have been no time at all, relative to my slow painting.

[Toddums]

Just finished my first four models using this guide (just started my de army). I am very happy with the results, thank you for taking the time to do this!

[Carolus]

Thank you very much, will do some slight differences in colour schemes (mainly red instead of purple) but this guide will be very useful to me

[Blaqkheart]

This would be great as a sticky! I will be coming back to this many many times!

[Layne]

Yes, it probably should be listed in our best threads thread, rather than in a sticky, but no, one should never revive two year old threads. I lock it.