Small(ish) guns never tire: Dwarf flame cannon and cannon

Dwarves are a bit like Pringles, once you pop, you can't stop (painting them). I can't complain about it, as I'm really enjoying going over the models I have (ranging from antique eighties dwarves up to very modern ones. I recently completed two rather difficult semi-modern dwarven models: the last release (for now) of the Dwarf Flame Cannon and a plastic Dwarf Cannon from the old Battle for Skull Pass set. Here they are.

Ready. Aim. Fire!

I've always liked Dwarves and I've been meaning to paint an army of them for years. Funnily enough I only realized I needed a flame Cannon in my life while playing around with Total War: Warhammer 2. My preference would've been the really classic one with the huge wooden barrel. Unfortunately you need to play the lottery to win it and a lack of infinite funds puts that model out of my reach (for now). I could afford a more recently sculpted second hand flame cannon and it has a charm of its own.

I faced one of these when AoS was quite new. It burned my freshly painted Thanquol and Boneripper of the table in one shot. Rolling two sixes with two dice should be banned ;)

Painting the model was a bit of a nightmare. Excepting the wheels the cannon itself is made out a metal on metal with bits of metal stuck in between. Applying the brush basically turned it into a bland blob of metal. I tried to paint the top of the gun with an orange glow effect. It looked awful. Not like a hot glowing barrel but like a cannon painted orange. Into the dip it went...

I painted the three crew members separately from the cannon. As they sat on my Window Sill of Shame for quite some time, I can still see the corks beneath their feet when I look at the flame cannon.

Before my second attempt I took some time checking out internet for photos of painted versions of this cannon and it seems most fellow hobbyist have had similar problems with this model. The original 'Eavy Metal box art of the cannon featured green painted parts to break up the monotonous metal. It sort off works, but at the same time I do not like it. In the end I decided to go for three metal tones: steel (Vallejo Metal Colors , Decayed Metal (Scale Color) and Dwarven Gold (Scale Color). I took quite a bit of time on the wooden wheels, simply because they are not made of metal. I'm reasonably happy with the end result, and I have to add that it does not photograph as well as I'd want it too. Now to find some rules so I can actually field this gun in the future.

This cannon turned out to be very hard to paint. I'm extra chuffed with the result because of that. 

Speaking of difficult to paint models. Here's the Dwarf Cannon that was part of Battle for Skull Pass. As with a lot of the semi-recent GW Dwarven line this model is quite a challenge to paint. A regular model cannon sits on a wooden gun carriage. This makes it easy to differentiate the barrel and the carriage. This Dwarven gun (and most other artillery from this period I suspect) is made entirely out of metal. As with the Flame Cannon this makes it quite hard to turn it into a model you can read after its been painted. If you follow your instincts and paint the metal parts metal it turns into a metal blob on the tabletop. I briefly considered just giving the carriage a color (metal can be painted after all), but with the golden inlay that looks odd too. 

Looking back, I might've placed the Dwarves more towards the front of the barrel. But I just like the classic look of the crew standing at the back of their gun.

After a bit of fumbling around I finally decided to paint the cannon itself black. If you look at classic ship's guns they tend to be painted black too (I suspect to avoid rust). I applied Black Templar Contrast paint to the metal barrel and it worked okay. Then (on a whim) I decided to drybrush the contrast paint with a light silver. I am quite happy with the result. The barrel stands out from the carriage while everything still has the metallic look that fits with the model. 

Now all we need is an opposing army. 

The last step was adding weathering and filth to the wheels. This was necessary to make these stand out from the carriage. I think a bit of a rust looking wash and adding mud past from the base made this work out quite wel. I finished the model by painting the Dwarves. This mostly involves painting beards (I'm getting better and better at that, and will add some words on beards in a later post (there are still plenty of Dwarves on my paint station)). I'll finish with a tiny detail. A lot of Dwarves from the late nineties, early 'aughts seem to have metal bracers on. I think that looks odd, as if they've just escaped from prison. I decided to treat the metal cuffs on these models as regular cuffs and painted them white, like the rest of their shirts (Karaz-a-Karak has blue and white as its scheme). I think that worked out quite nicely. With that, I'll close off this blog post. On to more painting!