Troll Slayer 1 = Finished. Expect the others to be finished in the coming week or so, hopefully.
Painting guide for those curious:
First thing was base coating the skin. Did GW Bugman's Glow. Immediately redid all skin with Cadian Fleshtone. Next, painted the hair with Jokaero Orange. Next, washed the entire model with Reikland Fleshshade, being really particular with how it settled on the skin.
Doing the first layer of skin tone I feel gives it a much better overall look, more realistic than doing just a base and then the wash and then layering. Skin doesn't really deviate color-wise all that much in shadow vs. being in the light compared to metallic things like armor, so re-layering and then adding a final hightlight in the manner I did gives a much more natural skin-tone.
Finished the skin with a re-layering of Cadian Fleshtone, then a final highlight of Kislev Flesh. Hair was highlighted with Troll Slayer orange, roughly 3 coats. Added a final highlight using Fire Dragon Bright.
The kilt was basic Ultramarines colors (MacCraggae, Altdorf, Calgar blues all in that order). Wash was applied after the basecoat. Just used Nuln Oil. Pretty simple.
All the brown was Rhinox Hide, which is a super dark brown. Didn't even give it a wash, just went straight to Mournfang Brown to highlight and called it a day.
The Gems were the basic bright reds in the GW line (Mephiston -> Evil Suns Scarlet -> Wild Rider) with an additional blip of Screaming Skull in the bottom left and a little dot of pure white up in what was the only dark part left. Finished it off with a gloss finish. They look so good in person.
The trickiest part of this guy was me experimenting with making his claw scars on his left side stand out. I thinned down a red glaze with some medium as opposed to water, then went over the whole thing. Did the same thing with a purple wash, thinning it down a LOT with some medium so it's barely even perceptable. Then, I again thinned down Kislev Flesh but this time with medium, again, rather than water so there'd be a bit of soreness of red poking through. Looks great. Definitely stands out and looks like a fresh still-healing scar.
If you're wondering why the right leg looks a little less defined, this guy was a miscast! I had to do a *lot* of hacking and cutting to remove a giant block of pewter that was still stuck to him, and in the process it killed a bit of detail on his beard poking through that side of the axe, as well as part of the fluff coming out of his boots. If you didn't notice this was the case, my painting worked! If you did notice, well you've got great eyes and hopefully you at least can applaud the effort. Looks better than the giant shapeless block tumor that was growing there.
Also, just in case you're wondering what he's standing on, it's a helmet that still contains the head of the poor sap who was originally inhabiting it. Hence the blood effects on the axe and all around it's severed neck. Don't mess with Stumpy here- you'll get the axe.
