Mid-Summer Madness – Session 6

Before painting the details and highlights on the Red Skulls, I primed the next unit, the “Winged Skulls”. The reason for this is that I use black colored gesso to prime metal and resin figures, while using black paint on plastic figures. The gesso needs time to cure as it shrinks and bonds to the surface of the figure. I’m anticipating I will finish the Red Skulls spear unit today and will start the next unit tomorrow.

The first task to perform before applying any highlights is to apply any washes to the figures. The old school method was to apply a wash to the entire model – this is also where the “dip” guys immerse their figures in “dip”. Now days, I just apply a wash to places that need it. In the case of these figures, I apply a dark brown wash to the leather and the face of the helmets to further define where the eyes are.

The next step is to highlight all of the metals where the light will be most reflected. I used Vallejo Steel to highlight silver and Vallejo Glorious Gold to highlight the brass parts.

To make the red really pop, I create a glaze of one drop of Vallejo Orange Fire, one drop of Liquitex Glazing Medium and four drops of Daler Rowney Fluorescent Pink Ink.

Finally, I go through each figure and correct any mistakes or messes I’ve made and put them aside to dry a couple of hours before I apply a matte varnish.

After the matte varnish has dried for a few hours, I flocked the bases and the unit is done. Tomorrow, I’ll photograph the completed unit and create a blog post which I’ll link to the THW forum and the THW Facebook Group.

I spent 3 hours on the project today bringing the total number of hours spent on Dark Elves to 20.5. I completed 12 models today.

On a side note, I got notification from Annie Norman of Bad Squiddo Games that my Kickstarter Pledge is being processed and will be shipped soon. Now I do have to warn you that if this Kickstarter arrives before the end of the month, the Dark Elves are going back into the box and the miniatures from the Kickstarter will take precedence! What Kickstarter, you may ask? Well, this one:

And in case you missed it, this was the first one: