Yesterday I started on three Gretchins, one with a black base coat and a traditional dark to light green skin highlighting technique, the other two with grey base coats and more experimental flesh painting. I couldn’t leave well enough alone so late last night I did another wash, this time of Gryphonne Sepia on just the two grey primered models.
The first color I wanted to test painting over grey, was of course white. The easiest way I know to get a good white over a black base coat is to use Astronomican Grey then paint white over that. So that is what I did to the black primered gretchin. Actually the first thing I did was fix up the base coats, the black model required a lot less touchups than the wash heavy models. The final thing I did to this model’s trousers was to paint a tiny bit of Gryphonne Sepia into the recesses and creases. I may do another quick white highlight.
The better primed grey Gretchin, the one without the squig, also got white trousers. I just went straight Skull White over the primer. It didn’t work too well. I pressed on and mixed up a thinned down wash made from Codex Grey, this was applied liberally to the pants. This had to dry for a bit, so it was time to type and wait. After that I’ll definitely be painting another layer of white on the pants.
The next hardest color to paint over black is yellow. This has gotten easier due to Iyanden Dark Sun. I used that right over the black. Over the grey I opted for Golden Yellow. This is an older pot that Owen gave me. It is a good darker richer yellow, but it is best to use it over another color even orange… However it went right over the grey OK… We’ll see how it looks after a wash and some highlights.
Next for the black primered model was a coat of Golden Yellow, for the grey primered model I went with a thinned down orange wash made from Windsor & Newton Orange Ink. Next for the black primered model was Gryphonne Sepia wash on the yellow bootie. I did a highlight of Sunburst Yellow on the other bootie, this is an even older GW paint pot. Finally I got out my Badmoon Yellow paint pot and painted that on both booties. Neither is winning any prizes, I still think for painting yellow it is best to start from an orange or brown basecoat.
The next color I wanted to try was Orange it also benefits from a Foundation color, but can still be a tricky color to get right, not as tricky as yellow though… I think the wooden part of the autogun will be orange on both models. You can see how the undercoat makes a difference on how a color looks when just using a single coat.
The next color I used after taking the photo was Blood Angel Orange, that’s right Orange! Paul Taylor traded me this pot for some color I had doubles of back in the 90s. It is pretty thin and actually darker than Macharius Solar Orange so maybe it should have gone on before, but it doesn’t have near the amount of pigment or covering properties. After that was dry it was time for Fiery Orange which is a really useful color for Ork players as is Macharius Solar Orange as you can use it to make nice rust washes…
I actually bought a new bright orange, called Fire Orange from Reaper Master Series line of paints so I used that for edge highlights next. I still was feeling like it could be better so I used Golden Yellow which is a pretty dark yellow. That’s enough sometimes I don’t like to use Yellow to highlight Orange or Red but sometimes I do… Next up are metallics which is where a black basecoat has an advantage over white but not necessarily grey.
I put Boltgun metal straight from the pot on various parts of the three Gretchin then took a photo. One of my new gritty metallic recipes is to cover boltgun metal with two new GW washes first black then mud. After they have dried I paint highlights on with Chainmail or Silver. For these models having already painted parts of the models orange, white, and yellow I have to be even more careful with the washes. I don’t come from the new school where you just slather the mini in magic wash.
I think that is about all that is going to get done this evening. I’ll try to work on them more tomorrow. Writing the tutorials and comparing the color combos makes things go slower. After a few more colors bone, brown, black, and grey plus possibly blue I’ll be mostly done and just blitzkrieg through.
Musk's Miniatures 
One thought on “Continuing the Gretchin”