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To help with this, I've also primed half the figures in black, and half the figures with leather brown, both by The Army Painter, just to help give it some variety, about half of each sculpt in either color. For the Night's Watch Recruiter, simply prime him black.
For the recruiter, give it an additional drybrush of a lighter grey from the top, focusing on the head and shoulders and thighs, just like in the Sworn Brothers and Veterans tutorials.
For the rest of the models, you have to match up the washes with the right colors, for example with my Dornishman above, I used black on the browns and metals, but soft tone on the light colors like yellow and dark sand.
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| by CMON Games |
"See if the King and His Hand Have Some Scum in the Dungeons They'd be Well Rid of..."
Welcome back, Westerosi! Today's going to be a little different, because today we're going to be painting one of my favorite units from A Song of Ice & Fire, but using the term "Unit" is a bit of an overstatement. We're painting the Night's Watch Conscripts.
The problem is that the conscripts themselves are... Well... Just that. They're conscripts. They're a ragtag group of people who have either JUST signed up, or more likely, just got DRAFTED into service from the various dungeons and slums around the kingdom. This means that they don't have uniforms yet. They don't have training yet. They're one step above a bunch of schmucks.
So, what are we gonna do...?
Welp...
1. Gameplan, Prep, and Prime
Okay, so there are two different forms of in-game art that I'll be drawing some inspiration from, the unit card:
And the unit box cover art:
As you can see, there's no real theme here between the two, and why would there be? So in addition to these guys, we're going to be taking some inspiration from some of the other units we've been painting, such as the Starks and Lannisters, and incorporating some of their colors into some of the models, along with maybe a Dornishman here and there, since I'm crossing all of my fingers and toes for them to be announced as the next faction.
I've got a lot of paint up here, but I'm not going to be using all of it on every model, because in theory every model's going to be a little different, but I'll break down some of the important colors:
Vallejo
Basic Skin Tone, Red, Chocolate Brown, Flat Earth, Orange Brown, Dark Sand, Hull Red
Citadel
Castellan Green
Army Painter
Wolf Grey, Plate Mail Metal
Hand Made Modern
Goldenrod, Slate (Standard Grey)
This should be enough to mix and match various colors of sleeves and shirts to create a nice non-uniform look.
2. Basecoats
Okay, guys, so I can't REALLY give you a step by step method for these guys, because, well, they're all going to be different! So I'm going to give you some tips, and kind of show you what I did to get that idea of them being a motley crew of rapscallions.
You're going to start off with a drybrush of your dark sand on your leather brown minis and a drybrush of grey or slate on your black minis. This will help catch a good amount of the details, and give us a very rudimentary highlight for some portions of the minis.
For the recruiter, give it an additional drybrush of a lighter grey from the top, focusing on the head and shoulders and thighs, just like in the Sworn Brothers and Veterans tutorials.
When we move onto painting the basecoats, remember, thin your paints with equal parts water.
After that, paint all of the hands and all of the faces of your models with your basic skin tone. Due to the dark priming colors, you'll probably have to apply multiple coats in order to get even coverage.
For the rest of the models, we're going to be trying to do a variety of colors on the clothes to simulate some of the other houses' colors.
For the Starks' representative I used the ironically named wolf grey and some dark sand to color the tunic and sleeves.
Here is my Lannister recruit, done with a little bit of red and white on the fur.
And I even decided to include a Dornishman from House Martell (because I want that to be the next faction SO BADLY) by using a little goldenrod and dark sand on the hood.
If you are trying to recreate the look of the unit card, however, simply paint your black minis with a little bit of chocolate brown on the hood and the sleeves.
Now, if you want to do the box cover art, use some orange brown on the collar and some castellan green for the sleeves and tunic.
You can leave the pants with just the drybrush that you initially performed, which will save you some time. But once you're finished with the clothes, you can move onto the detail work for these guys. I started with the rock that this model is standing on, painting that with your slate grey.
Next, you'll paint the handles of your weapons with your chocolate brown. Nothing too fancy here, just try to get an even coverage.
After that, you'll take your dark sand and paint the wrappings of the weapon handles, and for the recruiter, the straps of his flail and the scrolls sticking out of his man purse.
Here, you can see there's a small amount of wrapping on the blades of the swords that you should color with the dark sand as well.
Once the weapons are finished, take your hull red and paint all of the leather, which means the belts and satchels.
Round off the basecoats off by using your plate mail metal, unthinned no water, and painting the blades of the weapons and belt buckles along with the metal studs in the belts.
And the VERY final thing you'll want to paint will be the hair and beards. This is completely up to you, but try to match the hair color with the house you're trying to emulate, for example using orange brown on my Stark above.
Once all the basecoats are finished, it's time for shades!
3. Shading
Okay, so here's what we're using today: Dark Tone, Strong Tone, Flesh Wash, and Soft Tone, all by the Army Painter.
We're going to start off with the flesh wash over the skin, hands and faces, of all the models. Just a thin layer of wash to deepen the details of the skin.
For the recruiter and the card art model, you can simply use dark tone everywhere...
But for the Starks, I used strong tone on the blue to give it a little more depth and color. But at the end of the day, it's really up to you and how you want your models to look.
Once all of your shades are dry, we can move onto highlights!
4. Highlights and Finishing Touches
The first thing I always start with for highlights is the skin. Using your basic skin tone, paint the forehead, cheekbones, and nose to add a highlight. In the model above, you'll also paint the bottom lip as well.
You should also take this time to paint the hands, specifically the knuckles and bones running up the back of the hands.
After that, you should highlight the tunics and hoods with whichever color you initially based them with. An easy way to do this is to paint top down highlights, for the shoulders and sleeves in addition to any folds in the clothing, making sure to avoid the areas that were darkened the most by the wash.
For the model above, make sure to avoid painting the seams in the tunic, as you don't want to just paint over the detail.
For the front of the box colors, such as the above model, you'll actually want to highlight using a mix of castellan green and dark sand, to give you a slightly lighter green to make the highlights pop, because the green itself is not a dynamic enough color to make the highlight pop on its own.
You can also use your flat earth to highlight the handles of the weapons by painting a line across the top of the handles, or any of the chocolate brown portions that you've painted, such as the hood and sleeves of the above model.
Now would also be a good time to use your dark sand to highlight the wrapping of the weapons, along with the rope of the recruiter's flail.
The last highlight (other than the hair) is to use your flat earth and highlight a few of the edges of the satchels and leather pieces on all of the models. Just paint the outermost lines of each form, and you'll have some really dynamic looking messenger bags, however, you don't HAVE to.
5. Take Your Vows... Or Not...
That's it, Westerosi! Like I said, a little different than what we're used to, but hopefully you guys still found this helpful. Again, this and all of my other A Song of Ice & Fire tutorials can be found on my blog. Again, if you find my posts helpful, I humbly ask you to consider becoming a Patron. It's only $1 a month, and it helps me bring you quality ad-free content on a regular basis.
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