In a previous post I mentioned I had a “commission” to work on, well here they are. One of the guys at Bolton GNOME asked me to paint up some Guild Ball Morticians models for him in exchange for a model I was after (the ITS 2016 winners limited edition Morat Renegade). I didn’t get a brief of what Ben actually wanted, so I just painted them up with a scheme I would be happy to have myself. A friend of mine plays Morticians and has a nice monochrome paint scheme with the odd detail picked out in a bright green. The models look great and the colour popping really works well (check them out here). It’s something I have been itching to try out, so with that in mind I chose to try and limit my palette as much as I dared. They are not my models to experiment on after all (that’s what I intend my Butchers to be for when I get round to them). I decided that the models would be mostly black cloth, with a nice purple picking out some details on the model. The skin would be a pale grey and that the painting overall should be a quick to apply scheme that should not take me long to do.
The models were airbrushed VMC Black Grey and progressively airbrushed VMA Dark Sea Grey, VMA Grey Primer and VMA Light Grey. This was done to quickly give the models a base highlight to work from. I guess like a zenithal highlight but not as harsh, and it was intended to be more targeted than such a highlight. The black was multiple successive layers of thinned black paint, almost wash like. The layers were built up with most of the paint going in the shaded regions. The aim was to have a quick to apply black that didn’t need highlighting. I think it has worked quite well.
The purple is Sanguine Base, followed by Sanguine Highlight, and a final highlight of Sanguine Highlight mixed with a VMA White Grey. Then a thinned purple/violet ink to bring back the colour.
The white cloth was an afterthought, in an attempt to brighten the otherwise pretty dark models up. It is simply Light Grey, White Grey and finally white. The same colours were used on the Morticians Omega symbols, although they were always intended to be white.
Purple skin recipe was simple, and I was inspired by this post on the “From The Warp” blog. I used an almost dried out GW leviathan purple wash, Grey Primer and Light Grey.
The black hair was also very simple, and a recipe I have used before which can be found here on HCO. In addition to black it uses Coal Black and Frostbite, two colours I find really useful for some reason.
Skulls are a fairly standard bone recipe, Battlefield Brown, Beast Hide, Menoth White, Menoth White Highlight, and a wask of Strong Tone ink. The metallics are myrth silver (yes a surviving hexagonal citadel pot) with a nuln oil wash, and that really is it!
Wood was painted with Beast Hide and then the wood grain with Rucksack Tan. A thin purple ink was added for shading and then a thin chestnut ink to bring all the colours together.
The feathers didn’t work out as hoped. I wanted them to appear to have that colourful black look like Starlings (random google search image). They were painted like the black cloth, and then blue, purple, and chestnut inks were used to tint the feathers with colour. They ended up really dark, you could only really see the colours in sunlight. I had to go back and lightly dry brush a mid-grey onto the feathers to allow me to re-apply the ink to enable the colours to be seen. If I am honest I am not 100% satisfied with how they have turned out.
Basing was simply sand dry brushed progressively lighter browns, Battlefield Brown, Beast Hide, Rucksack Tan (for no other reason than they were next to me on my paint tray). The static grass was GF9 dark green, with the purple flowers coming from Tajima1.
I tried to keep a track of the time spent on these, but I failed in doing that as I’m very good at procrastinating. I estimate 20hrs work has gone into these easily (thankfully I am not a real commission painter and did not take the Morticians on to make money). I have to say that my favourite model to paint was Bonesaw, the sculpt is so good it almost painted itself. My least favourite was Obulus, unfortunately my feathery vision didn’t quite work out as I hoped, and I also had trouble with his face for some reason.
Here’s a list list of all the paints mentioned with relevant links:
- P3 Thamar Black and/or Vallejo Model Air Black
- P3 Morrow White and/or Vallejo Model Air White
- P3 Sanguine Base
- P3 Sanguine Highlight
- P3 Battlefield Brown
- P3 Beast Hide
- P3 Rucksack Tan
- P3 Coal Black
- P3 Frostbite
- P3 Menoth White Base
- P3 Menoth White Highlight
- VMC Black Grey
- VMA Dark Sea Grey
- VMA Grey Primer
- VMA Light Grey
- VMA White Grey
- Army Painter Strong Tone Ink
- Scale 75 Violet Ink
- Scale 75 Chestnut Ink
- Scale 75 Blue Ink
- Scale 75 Inktensity, I have actually bought the ink set rather than individual pots.
Wow, its only after seeing them written down in a list that I realise how many there is.
After all that I am sure my regular reader (plural is probably pushing it a bit) is only asking one question, and it is probably the same question I am asking myself…
If I painted a full Guild Ball team in ~20hrs, over two weeks, why are my Masons still not finished? A very good question! I’ll try and sort that out 😉
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