Weekly Waffle #368 – Half the Hearth
22nd February 2025
Demi Squad
For this week’s Weekly Waffle I have stayed with the Leagues of Votann but moved away from command units. This week I’m bringing you the core of any force, the line troops. In the case of the Leagues these are the Hearthkyn Warriors. And in keeping with these hardy, if somewhat short of stature, warriors I’ve only managed to finish half of the squad. But such is there prowess in combat I’m sure they will serve the Leagues well, at least until next week when I hope to have the rest of the unit finished. I didn’t want to rush things as I’m enjoying my painting at the moment so I’m just getting as much done each week as a I can.
The process for painting these guys wasn’t much different to what I have done with the command units. I started off with a Vallejo German Red Brown Surface Primer. Which is what I have used for all of my Leagues of Votann so far. I think it helps to give the oranges more impact that you get painting them over black. It makes the whole model a little bit warmer. I then give everything an all over coat of burnt orange before doing I tend to refer to as and under spray of very dark brown. This is basically just turning the mini upside down and then spraying all of the areas that will be in shadow in the brown. Then I flip the min back over and go back over all of the areas not in shadow in the burnt orange again. The final step with the airbrush is to do a zenith highlight in a bright orange focusing on the front of the mini along with the head and shoulders. I did up to this stage for all of the minis in one session. Just because it’s quicker doing everything in one go up to this point.
With the airbrushing complete this is where I decided to break the next stage down and effectively paint two batches of five minis. The reason I did this was because I didn’t think I could finish ten minis in the time I had available this week, and I wanted to have something completed for this week’s update. So going with two groups of five gave me what I considered to be an achievable target.
The work with airbrush is really quick but the next stage in my process is the exact opposite at the moment. It involves painting all of the none orange areas in a very dark grey. In my case I use xxxxxx. I used to use black but I watched some general painting tutorials on YouTube and something that came out from a lot of very good painters was that that they rarely use straight black and white. Apparently it looks more realistic going with very dark and very light greys. Leaving black and white for just key spots in the very deepest shadows or catching the harshest light. I’m not sure I really do this justice but I do think it looks good and it’s something I’m going to carry on with. Because you really don’t want to get any of the grey on the orange this stage takes time to keep things neat. I am finding that the more I do the quicker I get but it still takes and good chunk of time. All things considered I think this is probably the most time consuming stage in the whole process.
I then use a very thinned down mix of the dark grey to do some panel lining and shading of the orange which I find makes the orange stand out more. The dark grey areas are highlighted with progressively lighter grey, which I do carefully with a damp dry brush. I’ve found this gives me a good balance between the speed I can paint the mini without sacralising the quality too much. The end result of these stages is to end up with a mini that is ninety percent of the way to being table top ready. It just needs a few extra details finishing off. But this doesn’t include the head / helmet. Which I have been doing separately.
To pick out the details I just use some thinned down contrast paints to give a tint or filter to the kit I want to look different. So I use a dark yellow on the weapons and some of the equipment pouches. I deliberately wanted to steer away from metallic colours with these. Almost as if they have access to materials not commonly seen by other forces. Then I do the same process with different colours for things like grenades. Again different colours for different types. They are little details but think they make a big difference.
I’ve then added a couple of decals, one is the generic Trans Hyperion Alliance marking on the left shoulder. Then a simple unit number on the right shoulder. These aren’t big things but I do think they take the mini up a level. Not only do they look good but they are a very practical way of distinguishing the unit on the table top. No getting squad one mixed up with squad two.
But the key here is what do you think of them.
You can see more Leagues of Voting miniatures at my gallery here
As I mentioned earlier I’ve get the rest of the unit partly painted and my goal for this week it finish off this squad. I’ve got some travel for work planned in so I’m going to have to make good use of time to make sure I have this squad fully finished for next week.
I have to say that even though some of this work is a bit of production line I am still enjoying painting them. The mojo is still there and something that I think is really helping with this is that I feel like I’m improving as a painter. Nothing big but some simple things like being a little bit faster and more accurate. Noticing where things need a bit more shade or another highlight. I’m not necessarily executing everything right at the moment but that feeling of getting better is helping me to want to keep painting.
Anyway that’s it for this week. Next week as I’ve said I will be focusing on getting the rest of the squad finished and then I’ll start on something new. I might take a slight pivot, staying with orange but going back to some Necromunda minis and then I may have to line up some kill team. But either way I will have an update for you next Saturday so until then I hope you all keep safe. Enjoy whatever you have planned for the rest of the weekend and the week ahead, and I hope to catch you back here again next Saturday morning.
