Island of Blood: Griffin Rider

Having got my Camelot Knights to a point where I'm happy to leave them, this weekend I eagerly jumped into painting up the griffin rider from the Island of Blood box set I got for my birthday. While I'm probably more excited by the skaven then the elves (I'd like to use Mantic elves if I ever built an army), this was easily my favourite model in the box.

I quickly decided that trying to paint it full assembled would have been a nightmare. So I primed up the three main pieces and got to work. As it turned out, I wish I'd left the wings off as well, but that's only caused problems with a few tiny areas.

I figured I'd paint up the rider, then I could finish putting it all together before I painted the griffin. I started with the gold. I base coated the golden areas with a mix of brown, red and gold. - the result was a little redder then I wanted. I then went over everything with straight gold, then gave it a wash of Delvin mud. Finally I highlighted with silver.

It came out looking more bronze then I was planning (due to the red base coat), but I was happy with the look. Plus, now I know how to make an awesome-looking bronze!

I hit the silver areas with straight silver, then a wash of Badab Black before a highlight of 1:1 silver:white. I was pretty happy with the results, especially on the mail areas (I carefully tried to put a dot of highlight on each scale, which was actually a pretty quick process and looks really good).

I originally did the whole lance shaft in silver, then decided that looked a bit poo. So I went over the lower part with light brown. The result is a kind of brassy-woody look that I'm pretty happy with.

I base coated his face with light brown, ready to try layering up the skin tone.

The last bit I've done was to hit all the cloth areas with navy blue. I think just the non-metallic colour instantly lifted the look of the figure. Adding the highlights will only make it look even better.

The next step is to hit the cloth areas with something (I'll probably keep them white), then I'll be ready to move onto the rest of the model. So far it's been quite a quick process considering how good it looks.

Shadows Over Camelot: Almost Done

I managed to finish most of the highlighting and touching up that I wanted to do. There's still a couple of bits that I need to fix up before I seal them, but I'm pretty happy with these guys. It's far from a brilliant paint job, but I'm fairly happy with it as something that was meant to be simple and quick.

I need to decide what to do with the bases - repaint them the block colour or properly base them. But that's something for another project.

This guy is one of my favourites. I was quite happy with the shading I managed on his cloak (which I really should have taken a photo of). I would have liked to do a better job on the trim, but none of my brushes are up to the task.

I need to do something with the heart in the centre of his chest, and he could probably do with a bit more work on his face. But otherwise he's sorted. This was probably the quickest and easiest model to paint. I'm not super happy with the colours I ended up getting on his cloak (a bit too pinky), but it's good enough.

I'm probably least happy with this guy. He's ended up looking like all the fairly dodgie models people post as examples of their early (read "shit") work.
Sir Kay has a very demented face (which is the way the model is - all the Sir Kays look like this). While I'm not super happy with his skin tone, I'm please with the shadowing (particularly around his eyes). He also could have really done with me cleaning up the mould lines across the top of his head, but I was extremely lazy.

Sir Gwain came out fine. I quite liked the colour I got for his hair. He needs a bit more work around his bags, and looking at the photo, the knife on his shield need some cleaning up!

I was pretty happy with how he came out. A lot of the colouring was achieved just using washes (Griffin Sepia and Delvin Mud mostly). I was also happy with the checked shield. The gold could probably use an additional highlight, but whatever.

Arthur is the figure I'm most happy with. His armour came out really well, especially with the gold edging. I was also extremely happy with the highlighting of his cloak. I guess it's fitting that he's the best looking figure!

Painting Shadows Over Camelot Part 3 - Washing Day

I haven't had a lot of spare time since the weekend, but I did manage to find 15mins to hit all the knights with a couple of quick washes.

I went over all the metal area with Badab Black, and hit a few other areas (any black clothing, Arthur's shield, etc) and Arthur's cloak. I followed that up with some Delvin Mud on the gold, wood and flesh areas.

It's quite impressive how different these figured look to the last photos. My next step is to hit some of the coloured (green, yellow) and the white parts with Griffin Sepia. Then I'll add some highlights, and do some touching up and I should be done!

Painting Shadows Over Camelot Update

I only had a bit of time this weekend to continue my work on the Shadows Over Camelot knights. But I did manage to take a picture!


After adding the primary colour to each model, I filled in the areas that needed black. I wasn't too concerned about any tiny white patches still peaking through because I'm planning on hitting everything with a black wash soon enough.

I did the skin areas of each knight, and just added the gold to a few areas (like the trim on Arthur's armour). The next step is to apply some washes (hopefully tonight), then highlights.

Painting Shadows Over Camelot

After playing Shadows Over Camelot on Friday, I decided that I really needed to get around to painting up the knights.

Saturday was a gloriously sunny day, and I had a heap of gardening to do. So I pulled out all the knights and the special markers, set myself up on the deck and primed them all with white gesso. Thanks to the perfect weather, they were all dry by the time I'd finished with the weeds.

For the rest of the weekend, whenever I had a bit of time, I spent it adding colour. The models were pretty straight forward to paint - thanks to the stat cards, I already had the colour scheme worked out. I started by hitting all the metal areas. Then I did the primary colour for each figure. I wasn't happy with my purple (I clearly need to get a different shade of purple paint), but otherwise they all came up okay.

So far this hasn't been a time consuming project, but my work on it has been very spread out. Hopefully I'll be able to get some more work done during the week.

Weekend Gaming: Shadows After Dinner

K, M and I sat down on Friday night to have another game of Shadows Over Camelot. After our impressive victory last time, we were feeling a little cocky.

We ended up with a strange selection of cards. Everyone - especially me, playing a Gawain who could draw an extra white card - seemed to always have plenty of cards. But they never seemed to be quite the right cards.

We came extremely close to the grail a couple of times, but each time the black deck seemed to surge with Despair cards just at the right time to exhaust the available Grail cards. We managed to get Excalibur and succeed in a couple of minor quests, but we were also losing quests at about the same rate.

We were playing with the traitor deck, but we were pretty sure that no one had drawn the traitor card - if they had, they were doing a very bad job!

When a 7th black sword hit the table, we decided to change the rules slightly to say that to end the game, there must be 12 or more swords, and the majority had to be white. This meant that we still had a chance to win - if only we could get the grail.

Of course, if we lost any other quest, the game was over. And the siege engines were building up pretty quickly. So it was really only a matter of time before we all lost.

I'm still quite happy not working out what the "winning solution" to Shadows Over Camelot is. That, combined with the fact that I try to let K and M drive what we do means that this stays a game we can play without ever quite knowing how it will turn out.