Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Back to South Africa - Warlord Games Natal Native Contingent

Hello!  Long time since my last post, for which I apologise (workload and 'real life' creeping in!).  Here are some quick pics of the Natal Native Contingent I've been working on;




Painting has been a big change from all the medievals / WW2 I've worked on lately, with much more skin on show, and some pretty dynamic poses to work around.  Normally, when I work on very animated miniatures, I leave off the arms and legs until painting is complete.  This time though, as I was keen to see how they went together (I've not worked with this kit before) I assembled and primed them all in one go.  This didn't prove to be a hindrance.


As you can see, the colour scheme is pretty simple - with the key colours being red / black / white.  I studied the required skin tone at some length (both real images of modern South Africans, and other painters' techniques for handling southern african skin tones), before settling on the shade I've used, which is a slightly-darkened Games Workshop colour called 'Rhinox Hide'.  A small amount of black added to it (not too much - black tends to swamp other colours), and then further darkened with washes of a darker brown.  I used a red oxide primer, rather than black / grey / white as I'd normally use (say on medieval Europeans), as I've found it gives a warmth to the skin tones, and helps convey the idea of 'skin' rather than 'brown paint'. 



The choice of weapons and heads is pretty good, though not as varied (in my opinion) as you would get with an equivalent Perry Miniatures set.  Varying pose slightly, and using both black and brown for shields and other dress items helped add variety and disguise the reuse of certain heads. The chap with the rifle (above) is hard to disguise though - I love this head, and used it several times!



It's just so expressive :)

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