Super Dungeon Explore Vol. 2: Kobold Ironscales

Plenty of painting to show off today, even though I missed my goal of at least two posts a month. May should make up for it though. I painted the Super Dungeon Explore Ironscales so quickly I didn't even think to stop long enough to take pictures. That said, the steps were relatively straightforward.
I had a hard time conceptualizing how I wanted the Ironscales to look, which is why, I think, I just dove in and got them over with. The model is a bit of a challenge. Lots of hide and lots of armor and very little else. I knew I wanted them to look like they were bigger, darker and more dominant than the rest of the kobolds, but this left me with few options for their color scheme. Going with darker skintones meant I locked myself in to painting their armor in some sort of silver, as a leathery armor would be too monochromatic on such a large model.

For the flesh, I began with a basecoat of Vallejo Scorched Brown. I then highlighted with increasing amounts of Parasite Brown until the details started to stand out. Final highlights were done with pure Parasite Brown and then a touch was Parasite mixed with Bleached Bone. After that, the whole hide was washed with a 1:1:1 mix of water, sepia and umber wash. Once dry, I went back with Parasite Brown and Bealched bone and picked out the lightest areas. The eyes were painted white and then basecoated with parasite brown and increasing amount of sunburst yellow, with I final touch of white. The micron pen was used to pick out the eye slits.

The big part on these guys is the armor, so I wanted to do something that would look good over a larger surface that wasn't plain old silver. I started with a 2:1 mix of Armor Painter Gun Metal and Chaos Black. Vallejo black, at least my jar of it, has a distinctly glossy finish, so this had the interesting effect of making a very dark chrome look.

I decided that even the most heavily armored kobolds would have old and ratty armor, so I highlighted the armor with the opposite mix 2:1 gunmetal / black and I tried to make the highlights as sparse as possible, while still taking away the glossy finish. This looked almost like drybrushing, but was a lot neater and more deliberate. Next up, I washed the recesses of the armor with a 1:1:1:1 mix of water, sepia, flesh and umber washes.

As a final step, I played around with some weathering powders, rust and orange, to get the armor even older looking.

The Ironscales' shields were one of my only chances to add some color to the models. To tie them into the theme with the knuckleheads, their shields are a deep red and I opted to go with bone for the ornamentation on the shields. This bone look was achieved in several steps, beginning with a basecoat of Vallejo Snake Leather, which was highlighted with increasing amounts of Bleached Bone. Once the final highlights were done, the entire skull was washed with 1:1 water/sepia. As soon as this was applied, I went over the raised areas with a Q-tip, removing the heavy wash from the highest points and leaving it to pool only in the recesses.


A last minute decision was to go with bone swords for the Ironscales. I thought it would be fitting that, rather than simply having better weapons, the Ironscales would be more likely to carry weapons that were of a greater ceremonial importance. The bone swords were painted with the same steps as the shields and make for a nice matching set of weapons. Finally, I used some purple weathering powders on the darker parts of the sword. The look is very subtle and I'm not sure it shows up well in the pictures, but it adds a bit of 'Mystic dragon one sword' that I liked quite a bit.

With the Ironscales complete, I am almost half done with the kobolds, and approaching 1/4 of the entire SDE set. I'm gaining momentum with this project, so I'm sure there will be more new stuff soon.




More to come.

-Nick

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