Clarence Harrison - Welcome back! My next few posts will follow along as I paint a mounted Warfare Miniatures officer for my Williamite army - not every brush stroke, but I will discuss the various techniques I use. Although this is a personality model of St. Ruhe, it will serve admirably for me as the Duke of Wurttemberg who commanded the Danish brigade of King William III's in Ireland during the Glorious Revolution. Unless noted, all of the paints mentioned in this article are from Games Workshop's Citadel range - as if the names won't give it away!I've skipped the undercoat stage in the photos, but I normally always work from a black undercoat. In the case, I painted the undercoat with a brush using Citadel's Imperial Primer because it was raining this morning... I normally use a spray primer if possible. The black undercoat serves as the deepest layer of shading because I try to leave a thin black line showing between different sections. In the first photo above, you can best see this between the officer's sash and coat, the glove and handkerchief at his hip, and the gold saddle trim and the brown of the horse. These black lines may not be suitable for a display model, but they provide definition for a wargame model that helps the details stand out on the wargame table.
Let's run through the main colors I'm using... the face has been painted with Bugman's Glow, the coat and saddle blanket with Khorne Red, and the Horse with Mournfang Brown. These are all from Citadel's BASE range which have a high concentration of pigment which allows them to cover well over a black undercoat even when thinned with water. The sash is one of the exceptions and has been painted with Wargames Foundry Orange Shade 3A to match other Williamite officer's I've painted in the past.
The nest step, and one I normally only use on personality models, is ink washes. These darken the base coats and naturally flow into recesses providing an extra layer of shading and defines the details with minimal effort. The face and all of the metallic gold details are washed with Reikland Flesh, the coat with Carroburg Crimson, and horse with Agrax Earthshade. I don't use washes on the white areas because it just makes them look dirty to me. For the most part the Citadel SHADES dry matte, but if they pool you can end up with some shiny patches - A quick layer of matte varnish will take care of this problem.So that's it for starters. The main thing to concentrate on at this stage is neatness and getting clean, even fields of color. Feel free to ask questions as we go along. The next post will concentrate on the layering process and I'll talk a bit about blending techniques.