During last year’s Black Friday sales I treated myself to an upgrade of my 3D printer. I bought myself an Elegoo Saturn 2 printer. It arrived just before Christmas, but I didn’t get chance to set it up to the new year. The first thing I printed was the Brutefun Fantasy Football Lizardmen Team as a proxy for the Bloodbowl Lizardmen team. The Saturn 2’s build plate is huge in comparison to my old Mars 2 Pro’s build plate. In fact a whole team’s worth of models easily fit onto a single plate. There were of course a few teething troubles and a couple of failures. However the full team was printed, and the models are fantastic. Sadly those models have sat around languishing unpainted in the house since then. If you’ve been here before you’ll know that this is a fairly common state of affairs with my models.

One of the first printed models, a Brutefun Chameleon:

Now why did I choose the Lizards? All Brutefun’s teams are absolutely amazing, the dude is a talented sculptor. I could have picked any, being a patron, well I have no real idea I just figured they’d be cool to paint in nice bright colours – something I’m not very used to. With that in mind i figured it’d be interesting to give the contrast paints that are all the rage a go (they’ve been out years now, how out of touch am I?). Having read this article by Tale Of Painters, I decided to give the Vallejo Xpress range a go. I actually went all in and ordered the whole range bundle.

Of course nothing actually happens around here without some sort of kick up the backside happening. Enter the two Steves; Steve.W and Steve.E, gaming buddies of mine talking about playing Bloodbowl maybe even a mini league. The impetus was ignited to get on and do some painting of those awesome minis that had been lying around since December. They made it to being primed…

I even had a good mess around with the Xpress paints on a test Skink…

The body here is Carribbean Turquoise, the head frill is Martian Orange, blending into Cardinal Purple, and then Deep Purple. On the neck I messed around creating a rainbow by adding into the blend Orc Skin and Nuclear Yellow. Although I really cannot see me doing the full rainbow on the rest of the team.

These were undiluted straight from the pot Xpress colours. I quickly realised that I needed something to add definition to the models. To allow the Xpress paints to do their job. Diluting them as well would also go a long way to help too. After a discussion with the two Steve’s, I decided to give the white primed models a dilute wash of sepia, in this case AP Soft Tone…

It was then time to get on and do some painting. I sat down with the Skinks and started doing their heads. This time blending from Nuclear Yellow, through Martian Orange, into Cardinal Purple on the frills and from the crimson and into Deep Purple over the heads. I diluted the Xpress colours with some Xpress medium, about 50/50, and the sculpted definition really comes through nicely, along with the cheeky undershading provided by the sepia wash. I did have an issue blending over the top of the sepia. The AP Soft Tone left a slightly glossy finish, and compared to using the Xpress colours straight over the white primer, I felt this made their use a little more challenging.

Another thing the sepia altered was how the cooler colours turned out. This in hindsight was obvious but well that hindsight for you! The sepia shifted the Caribbean turquoise from a blue tint to a slightly greener tint. No big problem, and actually have applied a second coat of the turquoise it has brought back some more of the blue. Which brings us neatly to the last image, and the team’s current painted status…

I realise the last post was in January and this is now June but i’d like to say ‘thanks for reading’. Until next time…hopefully not another 6 months…have fun (some Brutefun especially).

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