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.