After an eternity of painting, I have finally finished painting the Untamed Beasts warband from Warcry. And man, was that an effort. I seem to have a tendency to go for a higher standard with these sets, even if there are a bunch of chaff units in them. But, they're done, and in this post, I will show you my paint recipe for the Untamed Beasts.
With this set complete, I've now painted all of the minis from the first Warcry starter box, so I guess you could say I'm something of a speed painter. I've got the Iron Golems done, the Raptoryx, and the Furies, so if you want to see those done in my style, you can check out those links. Now all I need to do is paint all of the terrain.... at a future time. As always, no promises.
As with all of my paint schemes, I start off on a conceptual basis. Usually, this work is already done for me, as my typical Slaves to Darkness scheme is a blue metallic cover over snow bases. However, the sculpts tell a much different story. The lack of heavy clothing just didn't suggest a cold environment to me, so I decided to try something a little bit different here. The barbarian theme gave a nice launching point, with Frank Frazetta and Conan the Barbarian providing some choice inspirational pieces. Lastly, I wanted a different color than blue to create the "pop", and I opted to go for red in this instance.
Now with the concept complete, I need my materials/paints. I used a variety of paints, mostly from GW and Army Painter, but I used some cheap craft paints as well. The paints/materials used are the following:
I also used some playground sand I collected from, well, a playground, and my trusty Vallejo Grey Primer, which was airbrushed on. This is actually an important step to the process, but you could do the same with any white basecoat. The warmer of a tone you use here the warmer the skin tone will be. In keeping with the rest of the Slaves to Darkness that I have, just to tie them together a little bit, I went with a paler skin coloration.
The skin is deceptively easy. You take the Reikland Fleshshade (GW) wash, then coat the primed model on any surface you want to be skin. Try to keep it from pooling on the flat areas, there's a couple of instances where I messed that up. If you want a stronger skin tone, you can apply a second layer once the first is completely dry. This is essentially a glaze, so keep it light and focused on the recesses. You want it tinting the grey primer, not completely obscuring it. Once dry, that's it, you're done with the skin.
Next up we have all of the detailing. I started with a base coat of Dragon Red (AP) washed with Carroburg Crimson (GW). Once dry, I highlighted the edges with Pure Red (AP), focusing on the top edges of the red areas. The black leather was basecoated with Matt Black (AP) and I used a drybrush of Uniform Grey (AP) to do the highlighting, just make sure not to get too much onto the skin or red areas.
While I was at it, I used Uniform Grey (AP) to basecoat all of the fur. I then used Nuln Oil (GW) to wash it, and I used Ash Grey (AP) to drybrush on all of the highlights. The little chaos trinkits that were tucked away in the fur were painted with Gunmetal (AP) and washed with Nuln Oil (GW). I didn't want them to pop out too much color wise, so that's why I went with a silver color. If you want some better color contrast, a brass or gold would work well.
All of the bone was based with Skeleton Bone (AP). I used Soft Tone (AP) to give all of the bone a wash, but for any tooth like protrusion, I went back and glazed successive layers of Soft Tone (AP) to give them a darker hue. On some I used a gradual fade to give some gradation to the teeth, like in the above photo, and for others I used an even coverage. Dealer's choice for what you decide to use, but it gives some nice visual interest to plain bone. For the horns, I edge highlighted the ridges with Skeleton Bone (AP). On some of the highest points I used Matt White (AP) for a final highlight.
All of the leather and rope was based with, you guessed it, Leather Brown (AP), and then washed with Agrax Earthshade (GW). At this point the models are basically complete, but some of them have bit of skin hanging out beneath the fur. I used Tanned Flesh (AP) and Reikland Fleshshade (GW) to paint those. For some of the leather wrappings I used Chaotic Red (AP) highlighted with Dragon Red (AP), such as the bras worn by the women.
Two or three of the models have a little bit of chainmail. I'm not the biggest fan of this detail, as the whole model screams low tech and focuses mostly on bone, but it's there and needs to be painted. I started with Gunmetal (AP), the drybrushed Ryza Rust (GW) and washed it with Agrax Earthshade (GW). It makes it look old and tattered, and I picked out a few of the links with Shining Silver (AP) to drive that home even further.
Now that all of the humans are done, time to paint the kitty. Starting from the Vallejo Grey basecoat, I washed the whole model with Cassandra Yellow (GW). The mane is painted with Agrax Earthshade (GW), then the bone is painted as above, just with more white highlights to help differentiate it more from the mane. I used Soft Tone (AP) to paint the stripes and Carroburg Crimson (GW) to color the scars.
Finally, there's the basing. I agonized over this for a bit, but I finally went with a desert vibe, which is something I hadn't done before. I started with Apple Barrel Khaki and drybrushed heavily with Apple Barrel White. I even did this with the ruined scenery pieces on the bases. These I then washed with Soft Tone (AP). I didn't use any wash on the sand, as I didn't want to darken it. I then used various flakes of slate, uncolored, twigs, also uncolored, and grass tufts to give some interest to the bases. I'm really happy with them, and I'll keep this style in mind for the future.
And that's it, enjoy some glamor shots of the unit!
I even did a slight color filter on one of the pictures, and I think it came out quite close to the original Frank Frazetta style that inspired my style choices, so mission accomplished!
-The Space Dinosaur
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