Kroot Hound Tutorial [Image heavy]

[Tinweasel]

One "dead-colored" Kroot Hound finished. I like the way it turned out...

Initial WIP coloring following Skull White primer coat, wash of several colors, and initial mixture of paint. The spines were washed in black, but I decided against a darker color for them and lightened 'em up in the finished version:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/bwride/kroot_hound_1.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/bwride/kroot_hound_2.jpg


Final version, with the initial greenish color lightened and highlighted a notch or two, the spines in a nice, pasty-looking bone color, and the tongue a happy shade of dark bluish-green:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/bwride/kroot_hound_3.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/bwride/kroot_hound_4.jpg

Final final version, with the base done and a few touch-ups here and there. (For example, the bone and metal trinkets on his spines...) I like the way the ground cover turned out, likewise in using colored background paper it brought out the true coloration a bit more:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/bwride/kroot_hound_5.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/bwride/kroot_hound_6.jpg

(It still looks a little glossy in places since I was using inks to mix up some of the color and to line-in around some of the details. I haven't yet sprayed 'im with sealer. Still too damn cold out to spray here.)

[Fiend]

Nice one, looking good so far, smooth flesh and all.

Natural choice for the belly would be a pale brown. Natural choice for the mouth would be fleshy. They are just kinda animals after all.

[nyyti]

Good good, I agree with Fiend but there's one thing I must say. The EYESS... Sorry but I just go wild when I see a model without eyes (they could be red or torquoise).

[Tinweasel]

At this point, the eyes aren't painted yet. Heh. Good call, though. All I've done is put a faint wash of black over the eyes and the back spines. They were previously white with a wash of green/grey, which is what I used as the base color of the model prior to highlighting up the green/grey/white to the current color.

[Alien Egg]

great job!

[Gorkamorka]

Red eyes, man! But other than that, real nice one, even for a WIP.

[Cobsy]

I agree with Fiend on the belly. I'd go for a pale browny pink. For the tongue, I reckon a lightish blue or some sort of reddy/pink. Looking great so far!

[Dragoncurry]

Muy excellente on the bag. I like it. Keep it uppp

[Tinweasel]

The model's finished. Just figgering out what to do with the base. I'm thinking a few small rocks, a layer of cornmeal and/or fresh kitty litter, and paint... hey, what can I say, I'm cheap!

[Dragoncurry]

Fresh kitty litter lol. Not bad man!

[Tinweasel]

While I'm thinking about it, if anybody is interested in how I was actually painting this (I mean in terms of color ratios and such) I could probably write something up. I was jotting down all the info so I could use the same coloration for the rest of the Kroot army I eventually plan to finish up. This guy is just the first stage in my plan for world domination... or at least a decent looking mass of painted minis on a shelf somewheres.

[Coobix]

There really good...

[Dragoncurry]

Do you play TT? Or are you just painting them for show?
In fact I would love to see how you did it. I wanna get some soldiers of the dead from lord of the rings and their color scheme is similar to the kroot color scheme.

[Tinweasel]

@ Dragoncurry - ideally I'd like to play TT, but there's nobody that I know of that plays the game and it hasn't worked out that I can get to the nearby hobby store on the day when people allegedly show up to play 40K. At this point I'm painting for the sake of painting, but I'm doing the miniatures in a way that I can replicate 'em. In other words, I don't think they're contest-winning work since I could be putting a lot of time and smoothing into 'em, and while they're better work than what I'm doing for most of the Macragge set miniatures so far they're also an easily replicable scheme. The scheme for the flesh color is very similar to the Army of the Dead scheme also, I think, but they used more white for highlighting than I did so their stuff ended up a paler color. Same idea, though...

* I'm not sure how they match up with anything in Citadel's current paint line, but I'm using very old paints for the most part. From what I understand they're a little different than the new formula by their current (different) paint manufacturer, and some of the colors I believe have changed. (The old Citadel formula is now made by Coat D'Arms, I think?) For example, I'm using Striking Scorpion Green which was part of the Ork and Eldar Paint Set - it's similar to "Scorpion Green", but it's got a bit more of a yellowish tint to it.

* I'm spraying everything with Citadel White Primer - I personally like the brighter colors and I've found it's much easier to painting down areas I want dark than to paint up areas I want light from a darker basecoat.

* I also use a mixture of clear acrylic floor wax, dry time extender, and water to thin my paints. Got the stuff in a pre-mixed bottle, and I just use small syringes to mix stuff a drop at a time as needed. For simplicity's sake, I'll just call it "the Mix."

* I use a flat white piece of tile for a palette and the GW starter paint/miniature set plastic tray with round basins to put my wash mixtures into. The colors I use aren't always necessarily exact, since I add paint by the drop and throw in a few more drops of white or grey or what have you, depending on how I think it looks. I tried to post my general scheme, though, and I think it's pretty much on the mark.

The Hound Skin:
I started by putting a wash of 10:1 Mix/Codex Grey over the whole miniature, especially the skin areas. Some folks said they liked the look of the "saddle bags" in the initial pictures - I had to chuckle since they were simply white primer with a wash over the top.
The first layer of paint was a dark shade, and as it turns out I more or less completely covered all the flesh so I'm thinking I can skip the wash in future. I used 1:1 Codex Grey/Striking Scorpion Green thinned a bit with Mix.
I highlighted all the skin with 1:1:1: Grey/Scorpion/Skull White and roughly 4 parts of Mix so as to thin it out so it was translucent. I went over all the areas of the body except for the darkest crevices and the stuff underneath limbs. I did, however, put a few thin touches on some of the highest areas of "dark" parts, like knuckles and smooth areas of the legs.
This is about where the 1st pics (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/bwride/kroot_hound_1.jpg) were taken. Nothing painted but skin, although I did put a wash of Black over the spines since I was thinking they'd look good dark - I reconsidered after the fact.
I went back over most of the areas once with a 2:1:1 blend of White/Codex/Scorpion again thinned a bit (4:1 Mix/paint?). I went over the extreme highlights a few more times with the same blend - since my paint is translucent it lays down more when I go over it. I also control how much paint I deposit on the mini by how long I leave the brush in the paint puddle on the palette - a quick dip and it's a very thin shade, a longer soak and it's the true color.

The Spines and Underbelly:
I had to backtrack to lighten the spines again, but if I repeating from white primer these would be the steps:
A wash of 10:1 Mix/Brown Ink over the spines and underbelly for shadowing.
I layered 1:1:1 Brown Ink/Bubonic Brown/Bleached Bone roughly 4:1 Mix/paint over most of the raised areas, only leaving straight Brown Ink in the deepest recesses. For the spines, this was just a layer. For the underbelly, I think this ended up being more or less the final base color.
For highlights, I used a 4:1 of Mix/Bleached Bone and applied this very selectively to the mid-range raised areas. (For example, on the underbelly I only touched up the areas closest to the sides and left what was under the Hound unhighlighted.)
For final highlights on the spines and blending the color of the spines out towards the tips, I added a drop of White to the Bone. I might have touched up a few places with pure White, but for the most part all the spines were a 1:1 mix of Bone/White
The Leather Stuff:
I lined-in with 1:1 Brown Ink/Mix along all the areas where the skin met with leather/metal, touching up a few areas around the spines as well where I felt the dividing line needed to be darker. I also lined in some of the detail, putting a wash/glaze of sorts over the depressions in the leather and the stiching on the "water jug" and pouch.
I layered 1:1 Brown Ink/Bestial Brown over all raised areas of the leather, aside from the deepest depressions that were already as dark a brown as they could possibly get.
This essentially brings me to the 2nd set (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/bwride/kroot_hound_4.jpg) of pictures (although the tongue was painted at this point.)
I added a drop of Bleached Bone to the Brown Ink/Bestial Brown and went over the highest edges of the leather and a few extreme highlights on smooth raised areas like the folds of the pouch and sharp edges on the water jug.
The Tongue and Mouth:
I painted the entire mouth and tongue area Black
Aiming at the time for a bluish color to the tongue and mouth, I layered a 2:1 mix of Black and what I can only assume is Electric Blue (since it's an old paint and doesn't appear to match up to any current colors.)
I didn't think the bluish color looked so hot, so I put a thin glaze (12:1 paint/Mix) of Snot Green over the tongue and mouth. In hindsight, I guess it would work out to be a 2:1:1 blend of Black/Blue/Snot Green, but I did add a little something to lighten the mixture for the facing-outward sides of the tongue and the raised "tendons" at the base of the tongue.
The Metal
This was the easiest and least involved area of color, by far. I painted 1:1 Brown Ink and a "gold" paint over all the metal areas. I've no clue what color the gold paint is exactly, but it's not Shining Gold and it's got more of a brown/green tint than Burnished Gold. I think Burnished would be the closest color, though.
The highlights for the metal were 2:1 Gold/Brown Ink. I essentially added another drop of gold to my palette and painted it over the top along the highest edges of the metal bits.
This brings me to the 3rd set of pictures (#1 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/bwride/kroot_hound_5.jpg), #2 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/bwride/kroot_hound_6.jpg),) although like I said the metal and mouth were painted in the 2nd set. I tweaked a few things, added some highlighting to the trinkets on the spines, and painted the base. Hrm, I forgot to mention the eyes. The eyes are essentially White, lined-in with Brown Ink and given a thin glaze of Yellow Ink so they turn out to be a very very bright, almost-glowing yellow.

All this may or may not sound really involved (hell if I know, but looking back over things here it looks like an essay!) I usually start with certain colors, add in drops of other colors, and because I have a healthy dose of dry-time extender in with my Mix almost everything I do ends up being wet blended to a certain extent. I also intentionally "cut" my paint a little thinner than most folks, so I can paint it on translucently and get gradual layering of colors, depending on how much paint I load on my brush. I'm a big fan of controlled washes, and I usually use these for shadowing effects, usually highlighting back up to and beyond the original color depending on the color I'm aiming for.

And yes, if anybody has read a few of my other posts elsewhere, the base is decorated with fresh non-clumping kitty litter and cornmeal. I tried out a new color/method for painting stone (for me) and it's got a yellowy-white tint to it that goes well with the miniature as a whole, I think. That's maybe for a different post, though...

[Dante]

:clap:

I like your stuff. Very organic looking.

[Dragoncurry]

You should copy paste that into the tips sticky at the top before this thread gets buried in a few weeks. If you want I could copy and paste it in there with your permission.

[Unforgiven1977]

Very nice work indeed. Very smooth. I wouldn't change a thing. Good call on the kitty litter being fresh. Unfresh would just be bad. j/k. I would love to see a whole group of them painted like that.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v219/unforgiven1977/unsiggy.jpg

[Fiend]

Nice one, good painting, looks suitable organic. Grey tongue is a little odd though?

I actually prefer the "greener" pictures even if they are innaccurate, I just like that colour more.

[Tinweasel]

Hrm, maybe the colors are a little off. Looking at the pictures on a different monitor, I know the color of the tongue is more in line with the 2nd set of pictures. The tongue and mouth turned out a really cool bluish-green. Ah well, I don't know how much I can adjust with my photo setup since I'm using the overhead lights in the dining room and a couple white flashlights in addition to the flash of the camera. Not exactly fancy, but the pictures end up detailed and reasonably well-lit, so... with the 3rd set of pictures I shined the flashlights directly at the mini, whereas the 2nd set was a bit more indirect - I suppose I still have room to play around with it a bit, as I'd like to get the colors as accurate as I can.

@ Dragoncurry - What am I to be copying and pasting exactly?

[Tinweasel]

Updated the final images of the finished Kroot doggy in the first post. I also adjusted the color balance a bit, too, so it's a bit more representative of the actual miniature colors than the previous pictures were.