+ inload: painting dwarfs +

+ The dawi begin to assemble +

+ I can't decide whether this week has been productive or not. I was certainly hoping to have more done on my dwarfs – the background of which is being fleshed out on our sister blog The Tallowlands [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+] – but I got fed up with batch painting and decided to paint some characters. +

+ The good news is thus that I've actually got a few models done, rather than lots half-finished – and owing to the way Age of Sigmar seems to involve lots of individual characters, I think they should be fieldable as-is. +

Strong features reward traditional techniques.

+ Anyway, I'll chat more about the background and rules over on The Tallowlands; here I just want to talk about the painting. I often find dwarfs really fun to paint, as they have relatively large heads with bold features – great to play around with skin mixes, and to enjoy working wet-in-wet. Assuming they're not helmed, details like eyes are relatively easy to paint in. +

 + All of the figures I've painted recently have used the same colours as the basis for their skin: Vallejo Off-white, Citadel Averland Sunset and a touch of Vallejo Flat Red – the latter is a very intense paint, so you really need tiny amounts, particularly when using a quite subdued yellow like Averland Sunset. +

+ I didn't want to use many washes, as they can flatten the highlighting, and I thought the features of these figures were defined enough to reward good old-fashioned painting. I therefore worked up from a underlayer. For these, I just grabbed any brown I could find – so there's a mix of Skrag Brown and Doombull Brown. +

Variations on a theme – different combinations of the same mixes were used for the skin on each dwarf.

+ The three colours listed above combine create to create quite ruddy-looking tones, which can easily be varied by introducing more yellow or white, or by using a different underlayer. Very little of the underlayer remains apparent after painting, but it ensures there's a flat, even surface to cover with translucent layers, and a deep value in any visible recesses. In turn, this increases the contrast so you end up with a punchy result without having to go back with washes and so forth to strengthen the values in the shadows. +

+ Working wet-in-wet simply means that I'm working fast enough to wet blend on the surface of the figure. If you're struggling with the speed it's drying, a wet palette will help to keep your palette mixture workable, while retarding medium will slow the paint drying both on the figure and the palette. +

+ I tend to instead use flow enhancer medium to keep the paint workable. It only slows the drying in the same way water does, but it helps to prevent any brushmarks by aiding the consistency. This means that the paint dries relatively quickly – good for repeated layers – but has a crucial few extra seconds of working time so you can work back into it without creating physical texture: something that will quickly ruin the finish. +