I had recently bought many new delicious paints, and decided I wanted to see what they were like. Given the palette of colours available, I thought Ajjatahr, that delightful tree-person from the Circle of Chaos Kickstarter would be an excellent test subject.
The colours I was playing around with were some Vallejo colours from their Model Colour and Model Air range, a Dark Star sepia wash, and some Coat d'Arms colours.
I heard a few people referring to the Vallejo Dark Sea Blue, from the Model Colour range, as being an awesome dark blue green for blending and shades. In this case, I started off by using it as a base coat. Sadly, I mixed a bit too much retarder medium in, so had to go for a teensy bit of a walk to wait for it to dry.
For those of you who remember me painting my D&D Tiefling, Myth, I used some of the Dark Sea Blue then to blend the darker colours, and it was excellent for that too.
Next up, I drybrushed using the Vallejo Model Air Pale Blue. Yes, it's advertised for airbrushes, but it still works just fine on a brush. This was followed up by the Dark Star Sepia wash. It seemed to work OK, but probably wasn't really the paint I wanted in this circumstance. I'll have to try it out again some time on something else.
Next up was some Coat d'Arms "Italian Red Earth". I sort of loved and hated this all at the same time. It was the consistency of milk and had practically no coverage. For blending and thinned down as a wash, it would be lovely for adding some depth into a colour, but on it's own, it covered very poorly. It's made by the people who made the first Games Workshop paints, and the coverage of yellows at that point was pretty poor.
I also used their Angel Red on the mushrooms - this had a much better coverage, and had a nice tone to it.
I fixed the yellow with some more sepia ink washes, and drybrushing with the Pale Blue again to bring the model back together. Patches of moss and growth got a heavy drybrush of Model Air "Duck Egg Green", which worked well. Coat d'Arms Hawk Turquoise was dropped into the eyes. The base was more Italian Red Earth, washed with the Sepia while still wet.
Finally tidied up the base once to wash was dry with some drybrushing - mixing the Duck Egg with the Italian Red Earth to excellent effect. The base edging is the Italian Red Earth after ten billion coats and basically shovelling the stuff on. If there was any detail to obscure there, it would have been obscured!
On the back, you can see some of the Angel Red better on the fungus growing on the body.
All in all, I really enjoyed this experiment. It was very much playing with paints in ways I wouldn't usually, and not falling back on old tricks. I liked how the model came out as a result, too!
I want to say something deep here, but can't think of words. But experimenting and trying new things is how you learn, alongside practice. I hope to be doing more of it in the future.
