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I've always prefered Dwarves to Dwarfs. Anwyays, I decided a while back to paint up some Dwarves as I've always loved them, across most formats of Fantasy. Stalwart and stoic bum kickers!

An eternal procrastinator however, I have only just gotten around to painting up my first test unit, with mixed results. Overall, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I'm very very happy with them, but there is definitely room for improvement in skill and colour scheme. I'd really love it if I could get a little C&C, but please don't feel obliged.

I've made a full post about the unit over on my blog here, but I've always thought it pretty bad form to tempt someone into opening a forum thread only to be greeted by a link, so here are all the images from the post, as well as the wording.









And the text from the blog post:

The throng from Karaz-A-Karak pours forth from their mountain hold... Well, 15 of them do anyway. And they have to do so without a musician, because I lost him. I've finally finished painting my first test unit for my Dwarf army for Warhammer Fantasy Battles. I have to say, I'm really happy with them too, but I'll let the images speak for me. Behold...
I struggled a little with the beards initially. The reason for this was because I was trying to pick out individual strands of hair using the side of my brush, and it lead to the lines looking jagged and unnatural. I overcame this by painting the highlights in 'clumps' of hair instead of trying to sort out individual strands and I think it worked really well.
I wanted them to have a bit of a rag-tag appearance. Which is to say that I was looking to use three or four different earth tones on the clothing, but then use the shields and helms to tie them together as a group, which I think worked to a higher degree than I was hoping. The red overshadows the colours in the clothing, and since the commander and standard bearer also had red shirts on, it seems to overpower the palette overall. I'll seek to remedy this with my next group.
The Champion I am especially happy with. I wanted to make his skin stand out a little, and give him a bit more of a venerable look, which is why he is the only one with white hair. I also gave him a red nose and rosy cheeks which I thought looked pretty cool.

The bases were really fun to make. Ever since I settled on the idea of building a Dwarf army, I wanted them to have snowy bases. I searched around for some tutorials on the type of snow vibe I was looking for, and found this, an excellent tutorial by a guy who, if I'm not mistaken, is also a poster over on one of the higher quality Wargaming forums, Librarium Online.
Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. But on the whole I am really really happy with what I've achieved, and they are definitely on the higher end of my tabletop quality paintjobs. I'm really, really hoping that I can speed the process up without sacrificing the quality too much though... because I have a LOT more piled up behind me!
If Josef Bugman made a non-alcoholic beverage, I'd raise a glass. To Dwarfs (sic), may more pour from the mountains after this initial 15.

As mentioned, please feel free to throw some criticism my way, especially with things you think I could improve on, but please don't feel obliged.

Cheers for looking,

Kev

Very good, better then my first try~ Are you doing the Throng of Karaz-A-Karak, or a custom Hold?

Great stunties! I'm always sad I don't see more of the dwarves (yes I prefer dwarves as well) on forums as they have always been one of my favorite fantasy races.I love your color scheme and the shading is very well done. The red's are really rich and the metallics have a great warm feel to them. You have done your ancestors proud.

Dawi-Marine'Va wrote:Very good, better then my first try~ Are you doing the Throng of Karaz-A-Karak, or a custom Hold?

Thanks man! I'm not 100% sure which Throng I'm doing, I'm still reading through the lore that I have and trying to make my mind up. I think that when they're completed though I will be making an 'Armies On Parade' style diorama for them, which I'm exited about, but it is a long way off yet!

Nice dwarves. We don't see them often enough on Dakka. Good work!

Kev wrote:

Dawi-Marine'Va wrote:Very good, better then my first try~ Are you doing the Throng of Karaz-A-Karak, or a custom Hold?

Thanks man! I'm not 100% sure which Throng I'm doing, I'm still reading through the lore that I have and trying to make my mind up. I think that when they're completed though I will be making an 'Armies On Parade' style diorama for them, which I'm exited about, but it is a long way off yet!

Hrm, well, you have any idea what kind of play style you want? Close Combat? Go with Karak Kadrin. Gunline? Go with Zuhfbar. Or you could just create your own Hold and Fluff, which I find far more fun~

Made a lot of progress on my second batch today. It's been a little different from the first, but I'm happy with how they are progressing. I wrote the blog post just now, but I will represent it here for those who don't want to open new windows and the likes.

I'm roughly half way through the second group of Dwarves. They are going to form the remainder of my first unit of warriors carrying shields. I'm no army list guy, I'm barely even a player. But people keep telling me that long lines of great weapons are where its at in the current edition... so there's 40 notes down the drain! It's been a valuable experience however. And working on the second box has been interesting.

Many of the techniques I used on the first group have been build upon. Some better and some worse. My red cloth has got a little weaker. I decided to use Vallejo Game Colours Red Gore, which has an extremely glossy finish. I'm not too worried though as a matt finish when its all complete should knock everything down to the same level.

I'm really happy with the chainmail on this group. I foolishly didn't write down the technique for the first box. Looking at the current group I'm wondering if the amount of steps I used was worth it. But it looks interesting enough, and looks a bit better than silver dry-brushed over black. The technique was as follows:

Based with Boltgun Metal.
Washed with Badab Black.
Highlighted with Chainmail.
Highlighted on upper areas with Mithril Silver.
Knocked back with Badab Black.

I've never really had much use for Mithril Silver in my painting before so it was nice to plop a few drops on to my palette. It has a very strange finish however, and knocking it all back with Badab Black was definitely the right move, as I hope you will agree when you look at the photographs below.

A guy over on Librarium made a comment that the blues on my last lot were a little flat. The chap was definitely right. He made a suggestion of going from a Necron Abyss Base and working up to Mordian Blue. It worked a treat. I did a final highlight of that new GW colour Altdorf Guard Blue. While the photograph isn't great, I'm extremely pleased with how it turns out. I must remember to say thanks!



The greens are something I worked on on this group too. The original scheme was:

Catachan Green base.
Devlan Mud wash
Catachan/Camo Green 50:50 mix highlight and then a very slight highlight of Camo Green.

However on these guys it went:

Catachan Green base
Mix Of Catachan Green and Death World Forest (one of the new range)
Pure Death World Forest (watered down as it is quite thick)
Death World Forest + Camo Green (50:50)

Heres how the greens turned out:




Again, I'm really happy with how this has turned out. I hope the photographs have captured it ok. I will be taking better ones once more work has been done on the batch.

I've done the base of Boltgun Metal on all the silver areas, and anything that is to be gold or brass coloured has received a base of Scorched Brown. So everything thus far looks a little flat. I'm hoping to get a fair bit more progress on these done tomorrow.

I also started to write my army list. Its not really an army list per-say, more a collection of everything I have up to now with a points value attached. Luckily it does mean that I will have enough points to take part in the Tale Of X Gamers over on Librarium. I do like things like this, they help give that little boost of motivation from time to time. Shamefully though, I left my Dwarf Army Book in work today so I couldn't sign up like I wanted to this evening. Such is life.

Here are some work in progress photos of batch two. Please do pardon the glossy reds and flat browns.







Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dawi-Marine'Va wrote:

Kev wrote:

Dawi-Marine'Va wrote:Very good, better then my first try~ Are you doing the Throng of Karaz-A-Karak, or a custom Hold?

Thanks man! I'm not 100% sure which Throng I'm doing, I'm still reading through the lore that I have and trying to make my mind up. I think that when they're completed though I will be making an 'Armies On Parade' style diorama for them, which I'm exited about, but it is a long way off yet!

Hrm, well, you have any idea what kind of play style you want? Close Combat? Go with Karak Kadrin. Gunline? Go with Zuhfbar. Or you could just create your own Hold and Fluff, which I find far more fun~

Honestly mate I'm not sure. I don't think I'll get to play too much, so I might just base my list around the units I will enjoy painting. Maybe somethings thats a "good allrounder'" if thats not too much of a cop out! haha

Good job man.

I like the red a lot. Not to bright not to dark.

They look great !

So after a very long week, I finally managed to sit down and do some painting last night. It wasn't much, just a few hours while watching some films and listening to some music, but it was enough for me to start on my second crack at ginger dwarf beards. My first attempt, which can be viewed here, I thought went very well, but I did think at the time that I could probably push myself a little more.

With that in mind, I started on 5 of my 16 dwarfs in the hope of making them nice and ginger, I chose 4 different beards. These here are the best of the bunch:






The method I used was as follows:
Base with Calthan Brown
Layer on Bestial Brown. At this stage I left very, very little Calthan in the recesses, as that was more of a base than anything.
Layer on Blazing Orange leaving some Bestial Brown.
Knock that back with two washes of Ogryn Flesh
A small highlight of Blazing Orange mixed with Dwarf Flesh
A final, very slight highlight of pure Dwarf Flesh

I must say that I'm really really happy with how these have turned out. Cant wait to have a crack at the blonde and brown beards!

Just as a side note, the method I used was a variation of this method here:
[video=youtube;GxW6A0cdOaM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxW6A0cdOaM[/video]

bold..dark and beautiful.....just like me!

Very nice, defiantly not enough dwarves on dakka.

Picking the colour scheme or Hold for dwarves is not an easy choice, thankfully it is something that can develop naturally