Workshop Wednesdays: Multi-Metal Mixes

Wow. It’s been forever since the last Workshop Wednesday. I’ve been burnt out ever since Gencon, and it’s been months since I picked up the brush.

But you’re not here for whining and excuses, you’re here for minis! And painting! So on to the good stuff!

The last time we saw the fennblades, they were part of an assembly how-to. This time round, I’ll go into one small part of how to paint them. I suppose you could paint them all the same way, but I don’t think the Trollbloods are into identical uniforms and whatnot. I imagine them to have different armor, passed down from the generations… that sort of thing.

How do you get different metals then? You COULD use different metals, but buying 6 different shades of silver or gold is a bit too much. A much easier solution is to get your base colour of metal, then add inks or shades to get that difference at the end.

For example, these fennblades have the same shade of silver (we’ll fix that in a bit). How’re we going to ensure a different shade for their gold?

I just added some green ink into the original gold. That gives you an interesting oxidized copper look, or a ‘blighted gold’ look if you have a Privateer Press colour reference.

We can instantly see the difference between the normal gold fennblade and the blighted gold.

A step further would be to ink the metals differently. I inked the fennblade on the right with your traditional mixes: Armor wash on the steel plates, brown/black ink mix (or Devlan mud) on the bronze. The fennblade on the left got your ‘rusty armour’ treatment: a wash of your favourite red-brown (I used darkflesh this time round) for your steel, and a copper-patina wash using a mix of enchanted blue and goblin green. Amd TADAH.

That’s a quick way to differentiate the metals between your models. Now paint up your minis with different skintones, add some embellishments and you get some pretty gorram unique models at the end of it. (I’ve also got my own trollblood skintone formulas to mix it up a notch, but that’s another story for another day.)

Hope you guys like the return of Workshop Wednesdays! Is there anything mini-hobby related that you guys are interested in? If you have anything, please ask away!