Averland State Troops Painting Guide

Hello everyone,

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted anything. I am currently working on reorganising and indexing all of the Warhammer Skirmish scenarios, however it will be a little while before I am ready to post these on the blog. In the meantime, here’s a quick painting guide for my Averland state troops from the Empire. Unfortunately I forgot to take progress shots, but I hope you find the guide useful in any case.

Paints:

I paint with an eclectic hodgepodge of different brands I’ve collected over the years. In fact, I’m still using some of my oldest paints from around 2004! As such, there’s no guarantee you could follow this using the exact paints, but I’m sure you’ll be able to improvise using what you have.

Undercoat:

From force of habit I undercoated in black paint, but honestly undercoating all in white then basecoating the metallics in black would definitely have saved me time. It’s up to you which undercoat colour you use though.

Metal:

I have a tried and trusted technique for painting worn steel, derived from a Games Workshop guide from a while back. As such, it will probably be pretty familiar to some of you, just with different paints.

- To start, basecoat the metal in a dark brownish metallic colour. I used to use GWs Tin Bitz, but I ran out and they stopped selling it, so I now use their excellent Warplock Bronze, which is pretty much the same.

- Heavily drybrush the metal using a standard silver metal-colour paint. I used to use GWs old Boltgun Metal, but now use Miniature Paints Silver.

- Wash the armour with a black wash or ink. I use Army Painter Dark Tone Wash, but I’m sure the GW equivalent (or Vallejo or whatever) will work just as well. The wash tones down the drybrushing results and really makes it look good.

Wood:

I basecoated the wooden hafts and handgun stocks with Miniature Paints Chocolate Brown. I then carefully painted on the woodgrain with watered down Vallejo British Uniform, drawing irregular wavy lines along the length of the stock.

Flesh:

I’ve tried all sorts of basecoats and washes to do flesh, but I find a very traditional basecoat-mid-highlight scheme works best for Caucasian skin tones for me. Feel free to substitute your own preferred method!

- Basecoat the flesh with a 50:50 mix of a dark red-brown terracotta colour and a pinkish skin tone to get a dark fleshy pink colour that’s perfect for shading in the recesses. For this, I use a mix of Miniature Paints Chestnut Brown, which is almost equivalent to GWs old Dark Flesh colour, and GWs old Dwarf Flesh, but any warm, slightly pink pale skin colour will work well.

- Mid tone the flesh with a pinkish skin tone, leaving the base colour visible in the recesses of the face and between the fingers. I use GWs Dwarf Flesh here but any warm, pink pale flesh colour will be suitable.

- Highlight the raised areas of the flesh, so the nose, eyebrows, top of the cheeks, chin, knuckles etc., with a paler flesh colour. I use GWs old Elf Flesh, but one could simply add white to the their midtone colour, or use their preferred equivalent instead.

- Optional highlight: When I can be bothered, but particularly on character models, I sometimes do a very fine final highlight on the extremities of the flesh using an off-white or cream colour. This includes the very point of the nose and the most prominent knuckles. At this stage it is important to make sure that paint really has been thinned down! I use the Miniature Paints Cream, but it is actually very white, so I am sure a normal white paint will also do the job fine when watered down sufficiently.

Yellow Cloth:

For the yellow, I basecoated all of the cloth white then used the new GW contrast paint Nazdreg Yellow, then added a highlight. This contrast paint is great as it adds a lovely dark red-brown shade in the recesses but a nice yellow tint to the raised surfaces, without it being garish. To get uniform results, however, I would advise always taking paint from the body of the pot, not the lid, wiping your painting surface to check the consistency before applying. When painting, for proper shading, you do want to be applying it thickly initially, but then using your brush to drag it around the model as much as possible. Be careful also to babysit your models and drain pools of the contrast away from recesses before they set. If you time it wrong, however, it is all too easy to remove a pool and also remove all of the shading from that area.

Inevitably, I had to make corrections to the contrast painted yellow. Instead of repainting white and using the contrast again, I used a mix of a mid yellow (in this instance GW Golden Yellow) and Miniature Paints Chestnut Brown (the lovely dark red-brown I mentioned earlier) to recreate a shaded yellow colour, while watered-down Chestnut Brown matched the colour of the deepest recesses. I also found GW Golden Yellow on its own closely approximated the colour of the yellow contrast-painted areas.

Anyway, to highlight I used the old GW paint Sunburst Yellow, which is quite a bright yellow.

Black Cloth:

For the black cloth I applied a single highlight of a 75:25 mix of Miniature Paints Black Primer and Miniature Paints Cream to the undercoat, which was also Miniature Paints Black.

Red feather:

I simply basecoated this white and applied the GW Contrast Paint Blood Angels Red. I actually really liked the effect this gave and didn’t feel the need to highlight further.

Leather:

I basecoated the leather with a dark red-brown, in this case the Miniature Paints Chestnut Brown. I then washed it with Army Painter Dark Tone wash, and then highlighted with Chestnut Brown again.

Shield decoration:

For the comet, I first painted on the shape in white, sketching on the outline before filling in the shape when I was happy with it. I then shaded the extremities of the comet and tails with GW Contrast Blood Angels Red. I shaded the rest of the shape with GW Contrast Nazdreg Yellow. Finally, I highlighted the centre of the comet and tails with GW Sunburst Yellow.

And there you go, I hope you like my quick way to make good-looking Averland troops. For the Empire!

Thanks,

Owen