Dice of the First Degree: Mulg and the Champions painted, and what order not to paint in.

Believe it or not, we have not the first hobby post of the week, but the second! Been some spare time this week to finish off these Champion Models, so I got after it. Been about a month and a half, two months on these guys here and there (Bouncing between them and the War Wagon), and I've got a few pictures along the way.

One of the things I'm experimenting with is painting orange first under the metal, looking for a rust look. The other thing is figuring out an order of painting. Originally, I just basecoated in black or white, laid down primary colors and went from there. Lately though, I've been tackling one bit at a time and driving it to completion. Jarl, for example, looks fantastic on his bedroll and jacket, but nothing else is painted.

The other thing is what prime in. I primed in black, since that would be the skintone, but really, the Champions have very little skin showing. It would have made much more sense to airbrush them orange, and paint the black on later. As it is, I airbrushed them black, painted the armor orange, drybrushed the metal, then painted the blue and had to go paint the black over again as well. They're done now, but it was kind of a long process.

So first off, I primed them black with the airbrush and did basic highlighting. Then I did a burnt orange on the metal parts.

At this point, I drybrushed the darkest silver the Vallejo line has over the top of the orange, to accomplish a basic rust look.

Then I started highlighting, after a wash.

Then I did blue for the letters on the armor, for the Kithkar specifically.

Then edged around the cloak with my Insane Detail brush from Army Painter.

So, on the wrong order again. On my Kithkar, I was originally painting him with the Sons of Bragg, but they got bumped behind the Champions, and the Kithkar stayed with them. So, I already had painted the blue before I did the orange. With the orange, the idea was to drybrush over the top which is hardly a controlled method of painting. So I ended up getting paint everywhere, and had to paint both the blue, and black again.

But, I tell you what, it's all worth it. Mulg first. When I first glued him to his base, I faced him downhill, which was a horrible idea. He was incredibly top-heavy, and the slightest tip forward would topple him. He couldn't be on any elevation whatsoever. I finally tore him off and flipped him around.

Then the Kithkar. I love this guy. The model is amazing, the rules are fantastic. This guy is Madrak's bread and butter. I've seen him tear through a unit of Iron Fangs singlehandedly on Madrak1's feat, and I've seen him annihilate a whole unit of Warspears on Madrak2's feat. He clears up Fenns, he kills casters, he hunts solos, he's great. My wife bought him for me for the birthday, and she's regretted it ever since. He's also the only one in this series of pictures where you can see the light blue stripes on the tartan. Part of the problem I've been having painting the tartans is I've been going too small. So I widened it up a bit, and that looks really good, but you only barely can see the light blue stripes. I'm going to have to lighten them up even more, to stand out, and lighten the dark blue square because it stands out too much. Otherwise, I'm really proud of how this model turned out.