Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Thanks everyone. Doing freehand is one of the things that I really enjoy about painting minis, but don't get to do nearly as often as I'd like. I was also surprised at how well such an old model fit with the new base. He's still a little hunched, but yeah - it works!

That's actually one of my future projects, Archer. Rogue Trader-cover art style Crimson Fists made up of RT-era marines, though with a bunch of Forge World and other fancy modern bits added in. It's been in the "planning" stages for about 4 years now. Once I clear this backlog the hope is that I'll be able to pick up and start and maybe even finish some of these cool projects that live in my head and in my figure storage. That's the hope, anyway.

I used to do all my eye lenses in that style, Grim. Directly ripped off the old JD artwork and the odd RT-era Marine model as well.

And Mymearan - thank you for the huge compliment - especially with the wealth of talent that people here have. I'm very flattered.

Kind of neat, if a bit of a pain!

Funnily enough, it's probably a little easier to do than the "gem"-style eye lenses.

Not exactly Oldhammer this time, but still a few years old. I picked up this guy in a partially painted state off my mate Matt F, who I haven’t seen in an age now.

So anyway, it’s probably taken me 15 years to get around to finishing him off. I’ve certainly been staring at him on my shelves since I moved into this house, and we’re moving up on three years of that now. I’d recently moved him up the queue and been actively wanting/trying to make myself complete him for a couple of months, and this past weekend I finally forced myself to do it. It turns out that this extended timeline very nicely coincided with my playing about with a different technique to my tried and tested method for doing gold/brass to, so maybe it all worked out for the best.



Quite a lovely figure, I have to say. Sculpted by Colin Dixon and originally released as the Warhammer Quest Troll Slayer, it was re-released as a companion piece to the mid-1990’s metal slayers that were done by Aly Morrison. While some of those are nice enough models, this one is clearly the best of the entire range, so when it was moved to the WHFB range it was also renamed (or promoted) to Dragon Slayer, as befits such a fine model.

I took these photos while the PVA was still wet on the grass tufts, hence the “white blob” look, which has now disappeared. Sorry ’bout that!



I considered adding Slayer Tattoos, or Woad Warpaint, but it’s just such a wonderful model as-is that I decided that I prefer to keep him “clean”. I’ve now got plenty more Slayers to paint, after all – many who will come with much more appropriate amounts of skin to add ink to.



He’s a bit bright, both with his pants and also his hair. But then, he’s a Warhammer model, so I’m fine with it. The shading on the white stripes on his old-timey Warhammer pants is a bit washed out by the lighting, but at least the blue showed up. He could also look fantastic with a dark, grimy and stained look, but I’ve gone for the bright and clean style here which while far less realistic is just as valid an aesthetic for miniature painting. It’s like Goblin Green-skinned goblins!

In gaming terms he’s perfect for a PC or NPC in WFRP and on the tabletop as a Slayer Hero. He’ll find some form of use in KoW eventually, very much as a Dwarven Berserker(slayer) hero. Until then, he can just sit in a display case and pretty the place up.

I’ve got some more very old Dwarves painted up here that I’ve completed over the past few years. I’ll have to get them photographed soon and up on display here as well.

Very cool! What's the gold/brass technique you used?

Some nice slayer awesomeness there Azazel

Nice work!

Classic Slayer. Nice work!

I like the bright, "look at me I am a slayer" look. The hair looks great and the striped pants are excellent.

So reminds me of Asterix & Obelix!! Love those guys!!!

Oh yeah it's obelisk! Looks great, reminds me of old GW style.

It is weird the things that you forget over time, like the fancy striped trousers (not pants!) that Slayers had for ages.

A great take on a classic miniature, I think you were right to not add any tattoos/warpaint to this one.

Thanks everyone! I really appreciate the comments as always.

 Mymearan wrote:
Very cool! What's the gold/brass technique you used?

Thanks! I recently got hold of (well, found) VMA067 Bright Brass which I realised would be a great match with VMA066 Gold - which is a much "whiter" gold than most. Instead of starting with brown, I started with black, then brass, then gold, washed it down with thinned black wash, then picked out the highlights again. It gave a nice effect - a much "colder" brass/gold look than most paints and what I'm used to producing.

 Januine wrote:
So reminds me of Asterix & Obelix!! Love those guys!!!

I did have Obelix in the back of my mind when I painted him, what with the braids and all but the stripey pants started initially in homage to the old-school paint schemes for such figures.

Great job dude but I've got to say you've done a Cracking face on the slayer mate

Well done

How do you best follow up a post featuring a Dwarven Slayer?

With Trolls, of course!

I've shown two of these trolls before, just two weeks past a year ago now, as it happens. Last week, while stuck for something to paint I asked Marouda to choose some models for me to finish and as a result, I finally got a third finished for them.



Hill troll suffered a broken wrist many years ago, and with my meager skills of the day I "repaired" it by pinning and then wrapping wire around the join, as though it were bound with rope. Not the neatest of jobs, but it works passably, and I've not got the desire to destroy his wrist again in an attempt to repair it. The two that have already been shown were painted Blue, as GW-style "Stone Trolls" probably sometime during the period of 4th Edition of WHFB. Most likely the one with the boulder overhead "Cave Troll" was painted as he was a pretty good approximation of a Stone Troll. "Warrior Troll" was no doubt painted to match, and the "new" guy, "Hill Troll" was definitely started with the other two in mind. He just took a lot longer before I got around to completing him!



These three together will make up a regiment-sized unit for my eventual Kings of War (Orc and) Goblin Army, made up of (mostly) older Citadel figures. Not to be confused with the Moria Goblins who I've been working on a fair bit this year. In the short-to-medium-term, there might be some crossover between the two, but only until I manage to get both playable.



As it happens, I've just found that these three comprise 3/4 of the entire original C20 Troll range... queue a week-long delay in publishing this post to do a bit more BTS work...



...and also as it happens, I've also got their fourth, here, who just needed a little touching up and a rebasing from his old, 90's-style green-flocked base. I'll share Swamp Troll again sometime soonish with a bit of luck when I sort him out a pair of proper mates.



And the final shot - all four of the C20 Troll Class of '87. Finally completed!

Great trolls

Very nice. I particularly like the blue skin.

Haven't seen those sculpts before, they look great.

What models will you use to accompany the Marsh Troll in all his greeny goodness?

I think the old models have such an interesting look about them that although the manufacturing techniques produce amazing models these days I feel they lack a lot of a sculptors personality/ Keep the memories coming.

Great work on the TIEs there, mate, and the Mercs figure looks cool as well.

This might be a helpful and relatively cheap way to be able to do tufts (now and for quite awhile)

http://www.firestormgames.co.uk/gamers-grass-beige-tufts

Sure you're in the right thread there?

Cheers though! (unless you were taking to someone else round here who's been painting TIEs, Mercs and asking about grass tufts! )

Trolls are looking good!

Whups! Too many tabs open at once!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thanks for all that on the trolls - I've got a couple of models in mind that should fit with the swamp troll decently, while still retaining the "old school" ethos of the unit.

These take me back 25+ years to when a friend introduced me to Games Workshop. Before that it was D&D. His father brought home the GW models from England on his trips and he got 10-15 of us hooked at our game store. He also multi based his figures for fantasy and used toothpicks to track wounds , total innovator.

The more things change, eh? Hopefully these guys will also take you back as well..

And from Trolls, back to Dwarfs we go. Specifically, the Original Troll Slayer model and an old Champion from Bugman's Dwarf Rangers.



This Troll Slayer seems to have appeared in about 1988 as part of the "Dwarf Adventurers" range (or at least that's the earliest reference I can find, but it feels like a slightly earlier release). I painted this figure about 20 years ago and repainted it to "modern" standards a couple of years ago, at which point I added the tattoos. I gave him a more "natural" looking shade of orange for his hair and beard than the red-orange shade they usually have these days.



There's another of the "Dwarf Adventurers" who was also used and considered an early Troll Slayer and at least two "Berserkers" from the Norse Dwarfs range who predate this model and were later retconned into the early "Slayer" models in the same way that many of the Eternal Champion Models later became formative High Elves and Wardancers. But I don't have them so we're not too concerned about those models today.



Not the original RR1 version of Bugman's Dwarf Rangers, but from what I can tell the second version "RRD1" released in 1986 during the time of WHFB 2nd Edition. This piratical-looking guy is called "'Owd' Tom Thyksson". Once again, this guy was painted long ago and given an update a couple of years ago. I gave him a paler skin tone, while the Slayer was given a more ruddy look.

I'll have some more Oldhammer dwarfs coming along again soon. But next... more Trolls!

Making me nostalgic for crap beyond my years

Thanks! I'm quite enjoying going through these older models - both the ones I'm finally finishing as well as the ones I'm updating right now and even the ones I'm just showing off for the first time (or properly for the first time).

Nice Dwarfs. Not really a fan of the newer GW Dwarf stuff, so it's nice to see some models that aren't bling'd up to the eyeballs in runes etc.

I've got a few of the newer models as well. I have to say that I like both for different reasons myself.

And now back to trolls again!

Both of these trolls were released in July 1988 - with White Dwarf 103 and following Blood Bowl 2nd Edition. I got my first one of this sculpt around that time, alongside the ogre. Over the following years I picked up another two of the trolls, and as I already had one painted up for Blood Bowl, decided to paint them as Warhammer Fantasy Battle Trolls. The pair have remained prety much untouched since they were originally painted. The green one had an awful club made of sprue that I've since removed, and I've recently rebased both to bring them up to my "modern" speed.



I believe that these two were both painted before the C20 trolls shown recently were started. I removed the horn/spike from the shoulder in an effort to differentiate the two, which is obviously who one was painted green and the other purple. It's also why one of them had that awful club, which I've since removed.



My latest batch of Oldhammer Trolls, arranged as a Kings of War Regiment. I based the BB trolls in a very similar manner to the C20 Swamp Troll, using Army Painter Swamp Tufts. Hopefully they give the impression wet, rich soil when combined with my standard bases.



And now the full "Oldhammer Troll" group shot. All Six Oldhammer Trolls - Arranged as a Kings of War "Horde" Unit. All the rest of my trolls are newer models, though only one of those 4th? 5th? Editon trolls is even started. I might need to try to finish him off soon now...

Love the colors. Have you ever talked about how you paint skin? I find your skin tones to be pleasantly blended without going over the top with contrast.

The magic ingredient is saliva! Well, that and colour choices. For those who are a bit squeamish, Lahmian Medium works as well, but saliva has a kind of "elastic" quality to it as a medium,

In the old days, when I was a young'un I used to drybrush, as you do. You can still see remnants of that on some of the older models, though I often go over the harsh contrasts on them and try to add a bit of blending to soften the transitions.

For human (dwarf/elf) skintones I usually pick a base colour. The old Dwarf Flesh, Ratskin Flesh, (Pick a) Flesh, Sand, Bestial Brown, etc - whataver works as a good base colour for the skin tone I'm going for. (I tend to put more thought into the base it if the model is more of an individual).

Then I thin some paint that is broadly "chestnut" - so anything from Swamp Brown to Chestnut to VMC Burnt Cadmium Red (my current main go-to) and work it into the areas that need shading - kind of like a wash or glaze, but without really doing much to the base coat, due to the use of saliva and that elasticity I was talking about.

Whoops - gotta go. More later!

Don't tell GW, the executives would be rubbing their hands at the thought of Citadel gob! Interesting tip though.