OATHMARK EXPRESS

Building armies  under duress.

Part 3: of Elves and Spiders
Kev Dallimore and
John Treadaway

Above. Armoured Elves with Spears & Swords

This part is a bonus and as lock-down continues, feels
appropriate to add it in. It  did also involve some very
minor transgressions, painting
  not legal, from the
painting I had agreed to,   but only very minor
transgressions… I was just testing
  my eyes…
BUSTED
As it happens I had, as you might suspect, already busted
the golden rules when I painted the Wood Elves.  Not in a
major way but as I painted  the flesh on them, using
Tanned Flesh, it only then  occurred to me that on the
Dwarves it came out darker than  I wanted to have on the
Armoured Elves. Having painted   the Wood Elves  flesh in
Tanned Flesh  it seemed the  best approach was to just
slap on a bit of the lighter Barbarian
  Flesh  as a quick fix
and as a highlight in a very  rough and quick way. That
however left me in somewhat  in a quandary as I wanted
all the Elf flesh to be the   similar, so I repeated the
“mistake” on the Armoured Elves 
  too.
EXPERIMENTING
The Armoured Elves  were primed with Platemail
Coloured Primer Spray, just  like the Armoured Dwarves,
as they have a lot of armour  on them though it’s mostly
chainmail on the elves. I wanted
  a distinctly different look
for them so instead of painting
  in all the details then
reaching for the Army Painter  Quickshade Strong
Tone, I followed the route I  had used on the dragon but
utilising Warpaint Washes  Blue Tone Ink  and in the
end, not using the Quickshade  at all . This did require a
bit more planning as I would   have to use colours that
would be successfully shaded  but the dark blue of the ink,
but I reasoned that this would
  give then that distinctive
look I was after.  Also I fancied I could do the armour as
well with the Blue Tone Ink,  and that would save more
time.    As it happens Army  Painter make a lot of blues,
more than you would think, but  I stuck to using a pallet of
Deep Blue, Crystal Blue,   Electric Blue and
Ultramarine Blue, and used  the odd non blue that would
shade OK with the Army Painter  Blue Tone Ink like
Necrotic Flesh, Wolf Grey and   Uniform Grey.
 
NOT QUICKSHADE
So I painted on all the colours that were destined to be
shaded by the Blue Tone Ink.   Once dry then sloshed all
over with Warpaint Washes  Blue Tone Ink.  Making
sure it didn’t pond or form unsightly
  blobs.  And them put
aside for a good while to  dry thoroughly, it’s not like
there’s not more to do!  It is  worthwhile just going and
checking on them from time to   time just to make show no
unsightly blobs have accrued,   a quick flick of the brush
will sort them out.  
In an attempt to save a bit of time I left the shield fronts in
the Platemail as I had a plan  to use up some spare Little
Big Man decals and I wanted  to see if they would look OK
on the Platemail, which they  did.
 
NOT BLUE
And that left the rest, obviously some things were never
going to work with blue shading,
  as I have mentioned
previously the flesh, I’m not going
  for Dark Elves  here but
Tolkien’s Elves of light. For  the flesh I used the Tanned
Flesh and Barbarian Flesh    combo as above, the
woodwork like bows etc was  painted in Fur Brown, some
hair I did Uniform Grey  but others
  Desert Yellow.  Some
of the small metal details were  painted in Greedy Gold.

Above. Armoured Elf Warriors with Spears. Showing, primed and washed with blue ink.
Above. Armoured Elf Guard – double Armed (Line Breaker).

Above. Armoured Elves with Bows.

MORE WASHES
With non-blues all done I did consider hitting them with QUICKSHADE CONFUSION
Quickshade Strong Tone all   over like the rest of the
troops, but I was worried that  it would dull down the blued Note. The Army Painter Quickshade is the stuff in
areas to much, so I went for  using the Warpaint Washes the tins like a varnish (wash
  your brushes out in
Strong Tone (which is a brown wash) out of the bottle, brush-cleaner or white spirit).
 
 
just like I used the Warpaint  Washes Blue Tone Ink  on  
The Army Painter  Warpaint Washes  are in the
the blue. Carefully restricting  it to the not blue areas. To small bottles like the paint,
  water-based, but with a
vary it up a bit, I did swords   blades and some helmets red cap, wash out in water.  
with the Strong Tone.  
 

Above. Armoured Elf Warriors with Swords. Showing the LBM shield decals.
Above. Armoured Elf Warriors with Spears.Showing the LBM shield decals.

DECALS FINISHING
So that’s the High Elves  all but done.  But I did want to The basing was done, like before, and to match the rest of
use those LBM decals.  To  this end and for the models the good army, Dwarves, Wood   Elves, bears etc. The
general protection I gave them  a coat of gloss varnish all Spiders got similar basing treatment
  as the rest of the evil
over. When this was very dray   and hard (like next day) I side.   
applied the LMB shield decals   in the approved way, see
my article on PAINTING ELVES.   It’s not difficult to use MORE TO COME?
the LMB decals but it does require
  a specific procedure a Yes inevitably; with the Oathmark human cavalry arriving,
bit different from normal watersides.
  some Riders of Rohan might   just hove into view, and
  more Wargs and Riders to match
  them!
VARNISH  
And then two coats of Anti-Shine Matt Varnish  which –
again – was brushed on the Elves
  and Spiders.
 

Above. Elf Commander (General) with his bodyguard.

EXTRAS

DRAGON ATTACK
I went on to then paint a Dragon using the same fast painting method. The Oathmark model was primed green with
Army Painter Spray,  and then – after painting in detail like
  eyes, horns teeth and a tongue – I did the same Army
Painter dip painted over routine and then based it in much  the same way as the rest (and on as small as base as
possible!). Again this took me less than half an hour.  
A TROLL
As this developed, we decided the evil needed some
punch so Kev painted a troll  for them using the brilliant
two-headed Frostgrave Troll    sculpted by Mark
Copplestone.  Obviously it  was a metal model which
broke the “let’s do it all fast  from plastics” rule we’d set
ourselves but – on the phone   – Mr Dallimore promised
he’s make up for that by painting
  it blisteringly fast. So
that’d be all right then! As good
  as his word, he painted it
in 20 minutes... The model was   primed with Army Painter
Army Green Primer when Kev   was doing some of the
good forces priming. Then  the hair was painted black,
thinned a bit so the green grinned
  through then sloshed all
over with Warpaint Quickshade   Green Tone Ink. Then
the eyes picked out in Pure Red  and the teeth and claws
in Warpaint Skeleton Bone   (again no shading) and the
tree he was holding was painted  in Oak Brown. He was
then sloshed all over with the   Quickshade, but we are
getting ahead of ourselves. But  it’s a testament to the idea
that two heads are better than  one... JT.

Above. Dwarf Commander (General) and bodyguards.

Above. Orc Commander (General) and bodyguards, we added bodyguards to the Generals after realising the
vulnerabilities of a lone Commander.  

SPIDERS
Before I finish, I just couldn’t resist some of the Wargames Atlantic spiders, especially as we set these armies within a
stones throw of Mirkwood. So I put together a frame of one  big and two smaller arachnids to add some more punch to
the evil side. The painting of them followed along the evil lines
  as in part two, they got primed grey, but I had no white
primer on hand so they got brush painted white with black  spidery markings and claws and Pure Red  eyes.  Then
Quickshade Strong Tone all over them in the accepted fashion   and put aside to dry.