No Regerts! Dwarf Slayers hop onto the table, tattooed and all...(and they bring some miners too)

Not that I want to brag, but I've managed plan a holiday's worth of days off (and survived the accompanying holidays as well). All the best to all of you and let's hope grandfather Nurgle tones it down for the coming year. With that out of the way, I'm currently (mostly) painting one offs and leftover armies cluttering up my paint station. This flow was interrupted when a friend gave me a box of spare left-over Dwarves. Rummaging through this kingly gift, I just had to paint these Slayers (and practice my tattoo painting skills in the process). Without further ado: Five Dwarf Slayers with No Regerts!

All that's needed to win battles is a bunch of insane dwarves wielding axes and sporting bright orange beards if you ask me.

Although I recall thinking them clunky and over the top at the time, I've changed my mind over the years. These lovely models just ooze character and all the insanity that is the Warhammer Universe. I would call them Troll Slayers, but a quick a quick hop over to Stuff of Legends told me there are a couple of Giant Slayers in their ranks too. Which reminds me, I should paint that new plastic Giant (that's old by now) and add him to my collection. Also I should get a lot more of these wonderful metal madmen to paint up.

I painted the tattoos by mixing a bit of skin color with blue ink and black paint. To tie in with the No Regerts theme, I actually attempted to paint the Chinese symbol for soup on the second Dwarf from the right's shoulder. That's a very difficult symbol to be sure (if Google hasn't lied to me and served up the rune for wisdom instead). Still a fun joke to share with my opponent when these guys enter the tabletop. The rest of the tattoos are just silly lines together. 

I spent quite a lot of time on the skin tone as I intend to improve my skin tone painting in the coming year. I think their pale bodies look okay, but the most important part of any Slayer is his beard. I considered going for a riot of punk colors, but looking at internet examples I realized I didn't quite like that look (even though there are some wonderfully painted examples of blue and green haired Slayers out there). I re-read the background in the old Dwarfs Battle Tome and discovered the Slayers paint their hair orange or red as sign of their shame. So there was an excuse to stick with the cliche. I decided to try going for ORANGE (for want of a better way to overemphasize the word for the color). I started out from a Jokaero Orange base, washed with Reikland Flesh Shade then drybrushed Troll Slayer Orange (that was a dead giveaway there), drybrushed very lightly with Fire Dragon Orange and Drybrushed even lighter with Flash Gitz Yellow (all GW paints, that doesn't happen all that often anymore). I didn't wash my drybrush between the steps as I think this helps mesh the colors together while drybrushing (also: I'm a very lazy painter). When the ORANGE had dried, I added a few subtle drips of Agrax in the deepest shadows to make the color truly pop. 

The Orcs delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness...Dwarf Miners! 

I also added this bunch of dour misfits to the unplanned Dwarf army. They are plastic Miners from the old Battle for Skull Pass set. I looked at the models and thought 'these can be painted very quickly'. I was wrong. Getting beards right isn't always a matter of drybrushing. For these I followed the few molded lines with a brush, steadily progressing to lighter colors. The work was worth it (I think). It helped get these mostly mono-pose models looking like a merry bunch of different guys. I still feel like I missed the mark on the candle flames (they look like custard puddings), but I currently don't really feel like trying something different. I've got so much more to paint and these Miners look good enough as far as I'm concerned. (It doesn't help that I keep thinking 'Miners!' every time I touch a model as I've played slightly too much Warhammer Total War on the old pc and its driving me nuts). 

Aside from skin tones I also got a lot more practice painting eyes. I still have a ways to go there as well... 

I had to shoot a few extra pictures (as the original one I planned for this post looked ghastly (tried a different lighting technique)) so here's a few more words :) I decided on blue gloves as I want to tie my dwarves together around Karaz-a-Karak and its colors are blue and white. I have a metal Thorgrim Grudgebearer in progress (that model is shockingly hard to paint) so I figured that's reason enough to go for that particular hold. These dwarf miners are mostly chainmail and beard so they must be city dwarves*. I had to find a place for a bit of blue and the gloves ended up being 'it'. 

(* As per Pratchett: "No-one knows why dwarfs, who at home in the mountains lead quiet, orderly lives, forget it all when they move to the big city. Something comes over even the most blameless iron-ore miner and prompts him to wear chain-mail all the time, carry an axe, change his name to something like Grabthroat Shinkicker and drink himself into surly oblivion.").

These mines are positively infested with dwarves! Send in the Skaven!!!

I'll finish up with a quick note on the gold. You can't talk about Dwarves without mentioning gold after all. I've been using Scalecolor Dwarven Gold as a base color for gold recently, adding some Agrasx on top then highlighting with more Dwarven Gold and a bit of silver on the very top (occasionally adding a bit of Sepia wash to tone the silver down). Currently I've added Green Stuff World Antique Gold to the mix. Its one of those pigment powders. I dissolve it in a bit of Vallejo Metal Color Gold and add it as a final highlight and I tink it  really makes gold pop out and look gold. The powder make your paint glint, even when adding a bit of mat varnish on the final product. With that, I'll close of for today and get back to my paint station. There's models to be finished here :)