Weekly Waffle #362 – Vertically Challenged
11th January 2025
For this week’s weekly waffle we are back to what I would consider to be normal. Or at least as normal as I ever get. I’ve had a nice relaxing break and then back to work and it’s straight back to the carnage. Lots on with lots more in store. But I’m setting my store out nice and early by using my lunch time to get a bit of extra hobby time in. But to be able to do this I have had to make a couple of small changes. My desk can quite often be quite unorganised so I’ve got a couple of plastic boxes to keep different projects organised.
I mentioned last week that I was going to steel Al’s idea of having a couple of different projects on the go at the same time. Hence the plastic boxes. So I went through my pile of shame and picked out some squats. Ok I know officially they are the Leagues of Votann but they will always be Squats to me.
I bought the army box when they first came out and I was full of enthusiasm abut that crashed and burned when I couldn’t decide which of the Leagues to paint. It was a case of I like the fluff for this one but the colour scheme for this one and I just kept going round in circles. So much so that they never made it out of the box and have sat lost and forgotten at the back of my pile of shame. Rather fitting when you consider the history of Squats in the 40k universe.
Anyway I was rummaging through some boxes and found some minis that I had already built but hadn’t painted. So that was a win for me because I start work on them straight away. I already had at the back of my mind that I was going to paint them orange but that was about all I had. Having just watch a Ninjon video on YouTube about his latest Golden Deamon project inspired me to get started with these.
Now just to avoid any confusion right up front I’m not looking at these as some sort of super painting challenge. No it was simply that he said he had started his latest project without being sure exactly how he was going to paint it. He had some broad ideas and was going to work it out as he went. And that is what I have done here.
Quite often I get bogged down by needed to work out exactly what I want to do at every stage which results in me not getting anything started let alone completed. So going with all of that new year new me sort of thing I decided to just dive in with these guys. But rather than overtaking myself when I had no clear picture of what they would look like I decided to work on a couple of them.
It was at this point that I thought I would have another look online just to see who other people had painted them. Mainly to get a feel for blocking in the colours as opposed to trying to find a colour scheme. That was when I realised what I actually had were the Necromunda Ironhead Squat Prospectors and not a squad of Hearthkyn. Not a problem because the colour scheme is going to be the same. In fact in some ways there is more chance of these guys actually appearing on the table in a game of Necromunda than there is of me finishing a full army for 40k.
Getting back to the paintingI know I wanted them to have a warm colour scheme so instead of priming them in orange I used a red brown, Vallejo German Red Brown to be precise. Ironhead Squat Prospectors. Trying to get into the mind set of getting the foundations right. I then took some steps out of what I learned at the end of last year starting my Infinity project. I used the airbrush to apply an all over orange. Then went back with a dark brown revers zenith to get all the shadows before going back to a zenith of the original orange. That took care of most of the orange for me. I just did on more zenith highlight with a bright orange concentrating on the front and shoulders of the mini where I wanted the light to be strongest.
At this stage it all looked a bit of mess but I decided to just crack on and see who things ended up. I then used a very dark grey to paint over all of the bits that weren’t going to stay orange. I didn’t really know what colour they were going to be but I knew I needed to have some contrast. Once that dark grey was on things started to look a lot better. The dark areas simple highlighted with a few shades of grey and things were looking good.
To make the weapons stand out a bit more I gave them a wash with a watered down yellow paint. Just to give a tint to things and make the weapons look just a little bit different to the rest of the dark equipment. With just these simple steps I thought I had something that would look nice on the table top. But I thought they were lacking something.
This is where the colour wheel, or in this case the Adobe Color web site came. It is basically just an online colour wheel that lets you play around with different colour options and combinations. I started with an orange and looked for a good contrast colour. The dark grey I had already used was an option but it also had a light blue, which is basically a much more saturated version of the dark grey. So I decided to use this for the helmets. Just so that there was another pop of colour that would help them stand out on the table top.
Adobe Color also has a combination it calls squared so I could keep the colours I had already picked. Then it gave me a magenta / pink and a bright green as two other colours that would work with this overall scheme. I diced to use these sparingly. Taking the magenta for any lenses, such as the shades on the helmets and screens on some equipment. Then just a couple of bits of detail picked out in green. Just because I had the option.
Basin was where things got a bit funny. I had always intended to add them to winter effect bases but all of my other Nocromunda mins are on the same industrial ones. In the end I decided to stick with my original idea. Mainly because I thought it would look cool but also because I thought it was more practice for my Infinity minis. Who are also going to be on winter bases.
In the end this approach of having an outline and then just adapting as I went along I think has worked really well. I would be very happy to place these minis down on a table top, even there are only two of them at the moment. But what do you think.
That’s it for this week. I feel like it is really positive start to the year without going crazy and trying to change the world. I have more Infinity to be working on and I have the rest of the Prospectors to finish so there is plenty to keep me going at the moment. It’s obviously still very early doors but I feel things of just rolled on from last year and I’m hoping to keep the content flowing for as long as possible.
Until next week I hope you all keep safe and enjoy whatever you have planned for the weekend and the week head.
