It all began when I wandered into GW Edinburgh a few weeks ago, on the off chance that Dave would be working, and hence, the chance for some banter and to see if his man-breasts had gotten any bigger. Alas, he wasn't in, but since it was the 25th Anniversary weekend for Fantasy, there was an auction on. Having seen a beautiful 1500 point Biel-Tann army go for £50, it got me thinking...

I generally tend to be quite hesitant to try out new methods of painting, or even work with certain colours. This generally leads me to have a rather bland army, as I'm loathe to try to do anything special for my HQ models, or even tanks. With seeing an army of them before me, I'll admit, Biel-Tann have always been, in my eyes, 'cool'. They're an army that I'd love to play at some point or another, but for whatever reason, I don't. It's probably the thorns on the blasted vehicles, and the smooth transition of greens that they have...

So I filed that away as a 'maybe next time', and thought about what I had done to 'break the cycle', and that was paint yellow. Ok, it was only a Space Marine helmet, but I liked it, and it didn't cost me my soul, so all was well.

And then I thought about, since I was coming to the end of my trek through BoB, that I might like to paint something for the sheer hell of it, even if I didn't collect a full army of them. Putting two and two together, I realized that since most folk wouldn't see them, I could push the boat out a bit, and paint something that I've never managed to do... paint skin...

Which led me to pick up this fellow, and give him a bash...











Incidentally, yes, I'm well aware I didn't paint the eyes... I didn't want to step too far outside my comfort zone...

And if anyone could tell me what sort of static grass/flock would look good on an urban base, just to break up the 'greyness' factor, then that'd be much appreciated...

So... thoughts on how I done? What could I have done differently? Would you like me to try and get an army of these together? Are my photo's any better now that I'm using a light-box? Dare I say it... 'well done's'? More photo's from different angles?

F*** me man, hes amazing! That gold is superb! Really well shaded and highlighted. The only thing I can see if your wanting some crit, is that the blue could do with more depth, its the only bit that looks flat, the rest is top notch, and that skin tone is bloody amazing! And all these years you harked on about how you can't paint skin! You can now by the looks of things!

What he /\ said.

Maybe try some snow flock, but any green or brown flock or static grass will go with an urban base.

I luuurve it.

Perhaps some thin streaks (tee hee) of Graveyard Earth over the wood on the rifle.

Apart from that, top notch. Great success!

How did you paint the base?

SC

Put some Greaveyarth Earth on the base
Pfreck gave me that tipe with my vossies and it looks good with city fight
And the model looks very good
keep it up

Cheers Ba®tman

I really like what you've done with the model.

The skin looks well detailed and suitably weathered for an old veteran, the gold is amazing and the white looks good. The blue may be a tad too light but thats probably just me used to the blue on mine.

Can't wait to see a full squad of these :)

Cheers for the comments so far folks! I kind of messed up with the blue somewhat, but I've got it looking better on the other two Vostroyan's I'm currently painting. Plus, there aren't that many raised parts on the cloth sections, as it's quite a static model pose wise.

SC very kindly sent me a few photo's of a Vostroyan he'd painted some time ago, with the wood streaks visible, so I think I'll quite happily nick that idea.

And cos' he asked nicely, the base is a 50/50 mix of Chaos Black/Codex Grey, followed by Codex Grey drybrushed, and then Fortress Grey dryrbrushed.

I'd skip the blue clothes for some reason to me blue doesn't work well with the model, Vosties always look better in browns, reds, or mute greens. But if you like blue then just ignore my ramblings

Ilike the Vostroyan paint scheme, the blue works really well, but just needs one more highlight I thnk. Nice work on the gold though.

I like the mini, but I'm wondering about the white fur on his hat - I'm assuming it is a succession of greys up to white. Would it be better to use more creams rather than greys?

The fur was greys highlighted up to white. I chose this as I knew I could do it, and it would fit in with the model's other white garments.

I could quite happily see myself doing different coloured fur-hats for different squads though, so if you've got a recipe for the cream colour, then feel free to tell me!

I'm a bit hesitant to try to highlight the blue anymore than it is already though. If I can get my current colours painted a bit better, then I'll settle for that. I don't want it overpowering the gold, just as a nice contrast.

Again, cheers for the critique though!

Not actually tried it myself yet, it was just that I have done white fur on a few of my space wolves and working from grey looked a bit odd compared to real examples of white fur - creams/light brown was going to be the next experiment

For what it's worth, definatley add just one extra highligh to the blue, but don't use a colour straight from the pot. Add a dash of white to the last level of blue you use.

The darker the colour, the less white you need to make a subtle shade change.

But..... even with the blue looking slightly flat (though far more than acceptable in my book for an army model), you've still done a great job!

well I can only see the one picture, but its looking good! very Napoleonic imperial (the so called old... :D )guard. and so consequently its brilliance must go up a few notches. B)

Hey, great model, although I wonder why you said that you didnt paint the eyes, it looks as if you did, but you painted them to look like he was squinting :ph43r: :unsure: :blink:

that model is top notch fella! Really like it, as for C&C maybe a bit more contrast/ colour on the hat? Seems a bit dead.

As for not being able to paint skin - yea right, pull the other one ;)

Well, again, thank you for the comments! Nice to see that painting that model wasn't a complete waste of time ;)

Right, I took on board what everyone said, which was more or less, add some further highlights to the blue, as well as some wood grain effect to the lasgun, both of which I've now done.

So here's some pictures of the model, alongside the two other PIP models that I also got in the blister. Hopefully this way, you'll get a slight idea of what a squad or two of these guys would look like. Have to admit, they're a joy to paint, so hopefully, you'll see me painting a few more Vostroyan's over the coming months!

Oooooh. The faces look awesome! It all does, I want a new log.

Grizz's Vostroyans.

SC

You've just made me want Vossies... <_<


Tepok

Looking great. These guys will look amazing on the table. The extra effort on the bases just makes the mini :)