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Hello all, I just wanted to show the results of my first foray into grey scale painting.

Though I love painting, I am so slow at it that it gets frustrating at times but I think I have found a solution to my woes . I painted all these dwarfs in just one day by grey scaling them.

For those that don't know grey scaling is painting by washes where you shade the model in black and white then add washes to colour it in.

To begin I started by spray painting my models white. This is actually very important they get a good white coat as you can see from my white dwarf model the undercoat wasn't fully white and it shows as the washes on the skin came out dark and my white dwarf looks black

Then you paint on the metallics. I thought about thinning it the metallics and applying it like a wash but its actually easier to paint it on at this stage then making up your own wash.

After that you wash the whole model in badab black. Once that is done you are ready to apply the washes. The colours I used were as follows:

Clothes: Baal Red
Leather: Devlan mud
Beard: Gryphone sepia
Cloaks: Thraka Green
Gold: Burnish gold with Gryphone sepia
Skin: Ogryn Flesh

It’s so easy and fast and gives good results. However the down side is that there is a limited palette of colours to use and the colours are a bit pale. However if you want a darker colour just apply another coat of wash until you are happy. I must say I found my new way to paint.

Its also quite cheap as you can buy the box of washes for 20% less then if you bought pots individually. However badab black runs out fast I used up 1 pot painting these dwarfs.

So what do you think of grey scale painting?

I was on a tight budgey with my dwarfs so nearly all of them came from the Battle for Skull Pass starter set. I have to say the plastics were quite poor and it surprises me after seeing the quality from black reach but I guess this one came out earlier. But in the end I got what I wanted a 2k point army for under 100 AUD.

First up are my iron breakers with battle standard, these just had the face cover added to them from the warriors box you can get them cheap on ebay I did thinge the armour and armour of all my characters blue with Asurmen blue to make gromril stand out.



Next up are my unit of dwarf warriors with the white dwarf as my general. I wanted their beards to be grey so they can also count as longbeards


two unit of thunderers nothing special about them


This is where poor conversion skills came in and the bolt thrower is just a cannon with a spear , I made the crew with the clamp engineers with hand guns and you can see the gun sticking out the back. I then used spare musicians as the third crew.


A pic of my characters, the middle one is my rune smith, I tried to make his runes glow a bight blue and also his weapon but its not working so i might need to go back and try another method. The others are just fighty characters.


A final pic of my whole army


Next up will be the Space Hulk board game I think i will grey scale the genestealers and paint the termis in a traditional style.

That is great results you got there. It makes a massive difference havign complete units painted and that is a great way to get good results. I am also like yourself and extremely slow at the painting......probable going to use this method on my R&F skaven

I actually like what you have done. My only suggestion would be to do something about your bases. The flat BRIGHT green really pulls your eye down to the base and away from the figure. You might consider getting some GW static grass (or pay the same amount and get a giant shaker worth through Woodland Scenics) and flocking the base. If you choose a nice neutral tone it could really make your troops stand out on the tabletop.

Awesome. I like the clean and smooth painting you're doing
You just need to do something about the bases.

These could have been craptacularly painted, and I still would have given you a "pure WIN" simply for the fact that you got an entire Fantasy army for AU$100. But the fact that they're painted and ready to hit the tabletop is a very cool bonus. I can't say gray scaling is for everyone, but you've done a decent job with it, and it's certainly better than no paint/sloppy painting any day of he week. Good job!

However, you absolutely MUST do something with the bases. A simple basing method of glue, sand, dark gray paint, and a light gray drybrush wouldn't take much time and would make the whole force look complete.

Nice painting!
i got a battle for skull pass set and the poor quality of the models annoy me evry time i paint them.

Yeah thanks for the advice I will be flocking them later on and I guess I should stop using goblin green but I just got used to it as thats what white dwarf used to do many many years ago.

Had my first game with my dwarfs and first warhammer game ever I have been painting for like 15 years but never got into gaming as I didnt know anyone else .

The game was against my mates dark elf infantry army and it was played on his realm of battle board which I have to say its excellent quality I know it was pricy and dismissed it for that purpose but its actually quite good and the best thing very light.

I assembled in gunline castle formation and basically blew him away We only played with the armies we had but I guess I had the advantage there.

Here are some pics

My set up


His set up


Last turn