Hello guys, welcome back to Not Just Mecha, it s Marco here and today the keywords are
speed and quality! This video officially opens the Cursed City
cycle where I m going to speed paint all the enemies of the box!
Skeleton, zombies, vampires, and vermin are the four main themes but don t worry if don
t have this game or you are not into the undead legions and their creepy minions, because
I want to treat the steps, techniques and the general mindset of my speed painting workflow
as an open source model that you can apply to any figure or army.
I like the design of the box art that ties all the enemies under a coherent army like
aesthetic so I worked on the original colour scheme adding the dirt and grit that living
skeletal soldiers should have, creating a process that I can quickly run in assembly
line and easily replicate on the next models. The powerful red is the focal point, and I
built my steps and their relations prioritising its visual output and the general mood of
the unit; at the end I was able to keep the work on the thirteen models under the four
hours counting also the extra details on the leader of the Ulfenwatch.
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Let s talk for a second about basing this kind of projects! I suggest you avoid committing
to a powerful or very specific look. I keep my bases simple, and quite neutral because
these models are too many and good to be used only in a single boardgame and I know that
I m going to play them in at least 5 or 6 other rulesets, so I want to be able to mix
and match what I m fielding with other models in my collection without breaking too much
the coherency of their look on the table. I m usually a DIY modeller and I have my secret
recipes for different ground textures, but for armies and boardgames, especially if I
need something really simple like in this case, I like to speed up the work with pre
made products and AK interactive rough terrain has the perfect scale for flat, natural ground
still full of little movement and details that the brush can catch.
It dries in a matter of minutes and with its 250ml my grandkids will probably base their
miniatures with this same pot! Here s a big speed painting tip! These guys
are the dried-out corpses of ancient warriors and I think that the look of their equipment
should deliver the visual weight of time they spent buried. You can obviously paint that
information on the smooth sculpt but all those textures and effects are not very speed painting
friendly plus as I said at the beginning, I want my focus to be on the red capes and
that kind of painting can really steal the scene from them. My solution is to add a subtle
real texture to armours and equipment, so I don t have to fake with paint all those
little elements. The texture will take colours as part of the sculpt and it will make wonders
interacting with oil washes. A quick coat of black and we are good to move
to the serious stuff. To answer the common question about spray booths and respirators;
for the sake of speed, here I m in full army mode with my respirator on and the trigger
aggressively pushed and pulled, and you can see it from the overspray on the table. Usually,
I prime and spray in general like this, staying closer to the model and using more delicate
movements on the trigger and as you can see on the backdrop, no overspray! Decide if and
which tools you need to contain overspray depending on the quantity you produce.
White ink and the black and white sketch are for sure the main protagonists of this workflow.
I played the part of the snob painter in a lot of videos discarding the humble true zenithal
light in favour of posh dramatic angles, but the truth is that if you paint it in the proper
way the result can be mind-blowing. A zenithal spray mimics the vector and intensity
of the sun at noon so to unleash it s true potential you should use a powerful directional
spray able to create strong lights and equally powerful shadows. Too often I see a soft grey
scale instead of a sharp contrasting black and white: creating a quick and effective
contrast of values is the main reason why we use this technique, and you lose a lot
of drama and useful sharp separations if you soften the transitions too much. That s why
usually the best zenithal lights are made using spray cans that operates in a binary
on-off mode. Be careful because sometimes you have to fix
details like this spine that remains in black because of the solid undercut of a close detail!
I chose a zenithal light because the angle it s perfect to catch the movement of these
sculpts, its luminosity is great to boost the red, as you ll see the white solves the
tricky part of the scheme that for me is the bone, and its simplicity can be applied to
every other model of the set making the result uniform regardless of the figure size and
pose and easy to integrate into every other wargaming collection.
When it comes to paint red the challenges are similar to the ones of painting yellow.
You don t want to layer your way over a darker base because they immediately lose vibrancy
and luminosity and it s easy to lose their true hue in the highlights.
My solution, very effective especially for speed painting is to start from the most powerful,
luminous, and saturated tone I can create and work mostly on its deeper shadows so I
cannot lose the proper tone, using the value sketch to automatically create the modulation
from base tone and first soft lights and shadows. Inks and contrast paints are my choice to
set this kind of base in a single pass. These miniatures will not hit the board all
at the same time as a unit in an army and even using them as skirmish models I want
a bit of diversity in their levels of weathering and the look of their equipment, so I paint
some of the capes using the airbrush and some using the brush. I obtain two different finishes,
one smoother but paler because of the thin sprayed layer and one more saturated and with
the extra movement of the brushstrokes. To avoid stains, use a big brush fully loaded
and controlling a bit its movement, let the paint flow and do its job!
Have you ever heard of metallic contrast paints? Of course not! Because they don t exist, but
you can easily create your own! Phthalo green blue shade is the base of my recipe because
I want the colour of the armours to create chromatic contrast with the red of the capes
and the ink boost the general shine of the mix, then black to desaturate and darken the
hue, a fluid silver to introduce metallic pigments and their realistic metallic glare
and glaze medium to add body to the paint and make the suspension with the heavy metal
flakes more stable and homogeneous. You get a coloured metallic paint that when
used in thin layers is transparent enough to read the value sketch underneath but it
becomes opaque when it accumulates in details and panel lines creating definition like a
wash over a layer of metallic paint. I m sure that sooner or later we ll see this recipe
bottled in a GW pot! The fluidity of the mix makes it easy to apply,
spread and push into the details and its high saturation makes it tint the surface in a
single pass. Give it a stir every now and then to move the metal pigments that tend
to move to the bottom because off their weight. Same process for the pale bronze of shields
and other metallic elements using burnt umber as main source of colour. Again, I get a base
tone modulated by the value sketch and with already an extra wash like kind of definition
around the details. Three steps in one! A quick note on painting wood! Wood and old
weathered wood in particular, contains a variety of tones so don t stop to a flat coat of brown.
Here I layer the versatile Plague bearer flesh, the skin tone of Guilliman Flesh and a desaturated
green on top of everything to get the look the look I want.
The only step where I don t use transparent paints is painting the bases. I want a solid
look for the ground without all the extra definition created by fluid, translucent colours
that will only create unnatural visual noise able to easily distract the viewer from the
important stuff on the modes. Time for oils paints! A limited palette of
black for the general definition and heavy shadows, burnt umber to give life to the dead
bones and light rust for cool little details here and there.
I start with burnt umber adding mineral spirit until I reach the consistency of a dense wash,
fluid, but still able to maintain a good surface tension if I put a drop on the side of the
palette. The paint has to flow inside the details and
stay there and at the same time I want it to stain the flat areas even with a thin layer
so I have to adjust the consistency to find a balance I like.
And I simply apply it everywhere I see bones like the heavy wash it is. The timing is important,
and I start with the brown wash because I want it to stay on the models a bit more than
the others so I can make its impact on the white more intense and its bond with that
layer of paint stronger. The brown wash is made to add tones and definition,
but I want the black wash to also weather the parts it touches and create strong black
shadows. And I mean real positional shadows not the general shading of an acrylic wash
but proper, directional, contrasting shadows; you ll understand better this difference during
the cleaning stage. To do all this stuff I make the mix denser and more concentrated,
and I use a bigger cup because I ll use a lot it.
The target here is everything else on the model so I can simply enjoy the scary layering
of thick mass of black paint over a decent paintjob! Don t worry, there s always a happy
ending using oil paints! The main beneficiary of this layer is the
red cloth of the cape so don t save on the load of paint on these parts!
I give fifteen, twenty minutes to the oils to settle and the mineral spirit to evaporate
and I start cleaning the excess with q-tips moistened with a tiny bit of mineral spirit.
I use the q-tip like a reversed brush painting by subtraction. I clean the prominent parts
and I leave the paint inside details and all the areas where I want strong shadows, like
inside and under the folds of the red capes. I want a stark contrast in these parts and
using solvent instead of dry q-tips I completely erase oil paint from the areas where I don
t want it bringing back the original, saturated tones that becomes strong highlights next
to black recesses. This is the great difference and the main advantage of an oil wash over
an acrylic wash; I can get the same, actually, a more precise level of definition, without
darken and desaturate the whole surface and I can modulate its presence to create all
the smooth modulation I need from high lights to deep shadows.
Then I come back with the fluid rust tone to add precise little patches of warm rust
here and there on the armours and weapons. Back to acrylics to add an extra level of
weathering and character using the airbrush to create a soft layer of grey dust on the
lower edge of the capes. I paint the final light definition and little
interesting details using a contained and focused limited palette: two tones for the
bones, two for the red capes and a single colour for the sharp shiny edge highlighting
of the metal parts. Again, this is speed painting and I have to optimize even the little time
management of the pools of colours on the palette making it essential an effective.
I know exactly the question that is in you mind right now. But, can you paint with acrylics
on top of oils? Absolutely yes! When mineral spirit evaporates (a matter of minutes) you
can paint over the clean areas and when the external layer of oil is dry to the touch
(a matter of 15-30 minutes) you can paint also the dark areas but I m painting light
definition and details now and the oily parts are the extreme shadows so I don t really
need to add anything on them, and I can go on with the work without losing a second.
Because of the all the fluid, free flowing paints of the previous layers and the oils
now I have too much smoothness for this kind of characters so while painting the final
definition I give priority to interesting textures that break the gentle smoothness
with a ton of extra visual information. I use a ton of quick, and quite random dotting
and cross etching to create the pattern of the old fabric and mostly dotting with dense
undiluted paint to render the dented roughness of the bones where I concentrate the work
around the facial details of the skulls and all the little elements that need to stand
out a bit better like the hands. The work is even simpler than on the capes!
I have already a modulated tone, a super sharp dark definition and the sensation of grime
and dirt from the oils so I focus my attention to the dry, gritty texture of the old bones
using only high values and few touches of pure white.
I highlight the metallic parts using an irregular mix of lines and little dots on the edges
and every sharp angle. The sculpt is super clean but it doesn t matter because in the
eyes of the viewer the painted information has always the priority and if you break a
sculpted straight line faking an irregular edge with paint that look becomes the reality.
Creating definition through textures you kill two birds with one stone! You get the information
of the shape of the edges, but you also add character and storytelling. All this with
the advantage that you don t have to be super neat and precise, and the most hated step
of miniature painting becomes super quick and super funny!
And here s the final result! Thirteen models in less than four hours of work with a quality
that has nothing to envy to the official box art with actually more details and general
visual information. Again, even if the scheme is specific to these models, I wanted to put
the accent on the techniques and the reasoning behind every step so you can transfer the
general information and the bits you need to every other miniature. Next week I ll tackle
the zombies with a ton of tricks to create variety and complexity keeping the work super
quick, simple and stress free so if you are planning to paint a big wave of minions stay
tunes to find a ton of stuff to make your life much easier!