I’ve been busy trying to get through the remaining miniatures needed for the 100 target I have in the 1 Million Miniatures challenge. I left the last post at 36, and with just over a month left I needed a bit of a speed boost. Luckily for me I found 29 of the most speed paintable miniatures: Ghouls!
So why are they so speed paintable? Well they’re mostly organic materials, which lend themselves really well to airbrushing and washing, which are two elements that help you get far fast. On top of that, they’re mostly one organic material: skin!
To get these done fast, I leveraged my airbrush to get a terracotta colour base coat, followed by a dead flesh zenithal (from above) spray. I then picked out bones, fur, leather, stone, using contrast paints, and painted over the metal areas.
I then airbrushed some acrylic floor polish all over them (an old military modelling trick – basically a cheap way to get gloss varnish). Once that was dry (helped along with a hair dryer), I did an all over oil wash with a mix of terracotta, magenta, brown, and a blueish grey to get a brownish purple with some red accents. Again I helped it along with a hair dryer before wiping the oil off the raised areas with some makeup sponges. I then applied some texture paste and grass clumps to the bases and left everything to dry/cure overnight.
The next morning I did a brown acrylic wash over the bases, painted the base rims, airbrushed on some matt varnish and painted on some blood effects on their mouths and hands. Overall painting time was approximately 4h split over the two sessions ~2.5 hours before the overnight drying session, and an hour or so for the final touches. So nice and quick for 29 models!
I quite like this kind of painting, it’s quite cathartic to just glob oil paint all over your models knowing you can clean them up after. There’s not too many models you can do this to however. I did do something similar in the past with acrylic washes for the Goblin Town models, but I think I like the oil route better, it’s more controllable and the extended drying time is actually really helpful when doing so many models.
I also tried out my new Dark Eldar scheme on some Wyches:
They’re probably a little rough for my liking, so I might take my time a bit more on the next batch, but they still look nice at table level.
Anyway that adds a nice 34 extra miniatures to my tally, taking me up to 70 total which is a much more comfortable place to be with little over a month to go in the challenge. Let’s see what catches my fancy next!
Lair of the Lagomorph 
Impressive, Nic! 🙂 They’ve all come out really well! I must admit I have more luck with enamel washes than I do with acrylic ones!
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Thanks John! I like enamel washes too, they’re a bit more tidy than oils, but a bit less working time. It’s a nice middle ground and I use them quite a bit on individual models. I tend to save oils for bigger jobs mostly because the cleanup is much more.
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I really like how the Ghouls turned out! People usually use sickly green colors for them and reddish tones make them look more disgusting and vile, as they should be.
For the Dark Eldar, I wonder if going back and pushing the highlights will make you like them more? I think the skin can be brighter, especially on the faces to draw the viewer’s eyes there. The armor can have more extreme highlights too but that will take a lot more effort than adding highlights to the faces in the usual places. Either way, I think they look very nice and anyone would be happy to field them in a game of 40k! They’ve got that menacing look that Dark Eldar should have but with different colors than most people use which I think is very commendable.
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Thanks Jeff! I really like going for those reddish tones for ghouls, they’re meant to be alive after all and I like to make sure they stand out from the zombies!
For the dark eldar I’ll have to play with the skin a bit more I think you’re right. For the armour, I tried saving time by putting down the first highlight with a drybrush, but that tinted most of the face of the plates which meant the highlight I put on after was much less contrasty. I think either a black wash or just bite the bullet and do the 2 highlights like I did for the first set.
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I think the fact that they have a little red in their skin makes them look even more unsettling and more like us humans too. I’m glad some of the ideas I threw around help. I do know what you mean about the armor. It is time consuming to get that looking nice. It isn’t like the face which is more forgiving and quicker to do. I’m sure that’s why GW likes to edge highlight their Dark Eldar armor so much!
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