How to batch paint some furious northmen
When I paint wargames units I usually aim to have a degree of variation in colours, even in uniformed units, while still sticking to a similar palette. It’s not always about picking completely different colours but rather using different shades of a few different colours.
A Viking shieldwall prepare to meet their Anglo-Saxon foes on the field of battle. Kingdom of Mercia, 892 AD.
This isn’t really speed painting or a similar named methods. It's more of a way to organize your painting to get a varied result in less time by using your colors in a smart way. And painting like this is nothing unique, I’m sure lots of people do it like this but hopefully you will pick up something useful from it.
By the way, the trick to paint miniatures fast is to have good brush control with a large brush.
One of the goals with this unit is variation. I think that is especially important when it comes to Dark Age armies like Vikings, Saxons and Normans. Uniformity doesn’t suit these armies. So I try to increase the variation as much as I can while still keeping it manageable. And this is still batch painting, the other goal here is to do this fairly quick. To help me with this I lay out the miniatures in a grid. Most of these miniatures are from Warlord Games although a few of them are from Gripping Beast, all of them are sculpted by the talented Colin Patten.
First I clean the minaitures, attach the spears but leave the shields off and then I glue four of them to a stick. As you lay out the sticks as below you can see that we get six columns (the sticks) and four rows in our grid. I try to vary the type of miniature as much as possible both in each column and on each row. This will ensure that even if we have several of the same miniature in our batch all of these will look different once painted.
After undercoating the miniatures black the first thing I paint is the metallics. I paint all silver metals with Games Workshops Leadbelcher, wash it with Nuln Oil and then dry brush it with Ironbreaker. Sometimes I’ll emphasise the edge of weapons by painting it with a bright silver, like Games Workshop's Stormhost Silver. Gold details, mostly sword hilts on these miniatures, are painted Vallejo Model Colour Bronze, washed with Games Workshops Reikland Fleshshade and then highlighted with Vallejos Old Gold.
The plan is to paint the miniatures with six different colours for the tunics following the columns and four different colours for the pants following the rows. This means I need 10 colours to work with. I’m a bit lazy with the pants so I chose four dark brown colours. For some reason I don’t like the look of a miniature with light pants, hence the four dark colours (which are quite similar to be honest).
Then I need six colours for the tunics. I chose two reds, two greens, one blue and one orange. The colours I’ve chosen are quite muted, I don’t want any bright colours. Not using bright colours might not be “historically correct” but at least for me the muted colours look more realistic. If you need inspiration for choosing colours you should check out Jacksarge Painting on Facebook. He is a master of the Dark Age-palette in my opinion.
Then I start painting according to the grid laid out as below.
The paints from top left are: Vallejo Game Air (VGA) Red Terracotta, Vallejo Model Colour (VMC) French Mirage Blue, Vallejo Model Air (VMA) German Red Brown, VMC Orange Brown, VMC US Dark Green, VMA Middlestone, VMC German Camo Medium Brown, VGA Charred Brown, VMC German Camo Black Brown and VMA Camo Medium Brown.
Now it’s time to paint details like belts, pouches and shoes. Once again I’m a bit lazy and paint all of these details in Vallejo Model Colour Flat Brown. Sometimes I’ll add in a second colour here (for example Mournfang Brown from Games Workshop) for variation if a miniature has too many of these details. Spear shafts gets a layer of Games Workshops Tallarn Sand. These models all had sleeves from under the tunic and these were painted with a basecoat of Vallejo Model Air Light Brown as was the leg wrappings.
Then it’s time for washes. I use Games Workshops washes, varying them depending on the base colour. Agrax Earthshade for greens, reds and browns. Seraphim Sepia for light browns, yellows and oranges. Nuln Oil for dark browns and basically any dark colour. Drakenhof Nightshade for blues. Carrouburg Crimson for lighter reds.
I don’t wash all over the miniature but rather recess shade and black line the miniature to create depth and contrast. This is usually pretty sloppy which is fine since I will touch up with the main colour after this step. Belts, straps, shoes and other smaller details usually gets washed all over and I don’t even bother highlighting them later on.
After the washes I reestablish the main colour by touching up the areas where I don’t want the wash to be. If you’ve been sloppy with the wash this can take quite some time. If you have been careful with the washes you might not even have to do this at all.
Then it’s time for highlights. To do this I mix the main colour with a lighter colour and apply as a highlight. I usually add an off-white colour like Vallejo Model Air Old White. This works best for warmer colours like reds and browns, for cooler colours (like blues) I’ll add a flat white instead. You don’t even have to use whites, for reds I sometimes use pink or for green you could use yellow or beige. It’s not an exact science, I don’t have a white to base-ratio, I just mix until it seems right. You could also increase the variation here by mixing the basecolour with different lighter colours to get different shades on your highlights. This is a good time to use some of those odd bottles of paint we all have!
To save some time here I usually don’t bother highlighting the pants. I clean up the wash on them but leave them after that.
Here are the four basic stages, basecoats, wash, clean up and a highlight. Stage 1-3 is know as the “This looks horrible-stages”.
To add further variation to the miniatures I usually add borders or patterns to at least every fourth miniature using a suitable colour. So I begin with the first miniature on the first stick. Then the second miniature on the second stick and so on. Most often I use an off-white for this but you could use a contrasting colour depending on the colour of the tunic. A red border on a blue tunic or a green border on an orange tunic for example.
The finished miniatures with shield transfers and flags. They won’t win any painting competitions but that’s not the goal here, we want to put troops on the table.
The skin is painted with a basecoat of Games Workshops Cadian Fleshtone, wash with Reikland Fleshshade, highlight first with Cadian Fleshtone and then Kislev Flesh. I don’t really bother with highlighting straps and belts and shoes and things like that. Objects like a sword scabbard or a backpack might need a highlight though. Then there is always some odd piece of gear that you might need to paint, like fur.
Hair is obviously a big part of Viking attire and here we want a bit of variation too. There are certain colours I try to have more of in certain dark age armies and one of those things is blonde hair on Vikings. It’s probably not historically correct but it’s a prejudice I can live with. In my Viking units I try to paint around half of the miniatures with blonde hair. To do this I basecoat the hair and beard with Games Workshop’s Zandri Dust, wash it with Seraphim Sepia and highlight with Bleaced Bone. Brown hair is painted either Skrag Brown or Balor Bron, both from Games Workshop, washed with Agrax Earthshade and then highlighted by mixing the base colour with and off-white.
For the shields I use transfers from Little Big Men Studios and these can lift basically any unit, no matter the paintjob, can’t recommend them enough. The metal on the shields is painted like the other metal and the wood parts are mostly obscured so I just paint them Dryad Bark and wash with Agrax Earthshade.
And the complete unit, based and ready to wreak havoc on unsuspecting monks and Anglo-Saxon kings alike.
Above you can see how the finished unit looks in all its varied colour glory. It took about ten hours to paint this, excluding prep time and basing. Obviously not speed painting but pretty quick for a tabletop standard unit I think.
The grid method works great on other armies that need a certain variation in colour. For example ancient germans, celts and spanish, most dark age armies I can think of and the most extreme example is probably landsknechts. But it also works well if you just want to vary a single colour. For my Macedonian pike phalanx I used the grid to vary the red shades on the tunics and the skin colours. You could also increase the variation even more by just having three miniatures in each column and thus increasing the colours needed for the tunics to eight.
Here’s how I made this diorama of two dueling samurais inside a glass jar for my fathers birthday.