The Bloodstone clan hails from the remote Blue Mountains in the realm of Chamon. Unknown to many, the mountains were formed before the Age of Myth, when a realmbeast was defeated by a spell that turned it to stone. These Ironjawz discovered that pieces of rock from one giant boulder - what used to be the realmbeast's heart - becomes saturated with blood when in battle.
They thought it was neat.
Yep, I got into AoS.
I started this army around June, after a lot of thinking over which army to start with. The Ironjawz seemed fun to play, straightforward, and they played exactly the way one'd expect them to play. I chose to get a bunch of Brutes instead of 'Ardboys as they were more or less equivalent in 2nd ed and Brutes looked so much better to me. And piggies are cool too... And then the 3rd ed book came out, and well, this is a facecrushing army now. I then bought the Weirdnob Shaman and a third Warchanter only to weaken it a bit, as honestly, I'm worried that this is too strong for friendly games. And it's so difficult to play Ironjawz wrong...
Enough about that. I'm playing AoS, it's a good game, and this is a fun army. But the best thing about it is, it's an elite army, so it should be quick to paint. Right?
But, well, I started in June and I've been working on them more or less non-stop. The technique I ended up with required a lot of stippling and glazing, and that's pretty time consuming. It took me about 2 hours to paint just the blue armor on each model, and the rest was easier, but not as easy. Add about 45 minutes for skin, a couple of hours for doodads and pants and leather, it adds up.
Anyway, here's the recipe. I painted all shadows and highlights as if the light was coming from above and behind the model.
Skin:
- A warm zenithal,
- Thinned Gore-Grunta Fur Contrast Paint
- Glazes of Deathclaw Brown for the midtone, Tau Light Ochre as highlight, Ungor Flesh as spot/edge highlight
- Glaze heavily thinned Gore-Grunta to add warmth and/or heavily thinned Wyldwood to add shadow where the layers went too far.
- Keep glazing all of the paints above until most of the roughness is gone.
- A couple of thin layers of Scale75 Abyssal Blue as base.
- Sharp wetblend into Scale75 Artic Blue. Keep in mind where the light is coming from when choosing how high/sharp these blends should be. If the surface is large and flat (usually weapons), I just randomly drew shapes to break up the surface and shaded them as if they were real. Don't make the blend too smooth.
- Stipple Artic Blue highlights. Stippling is important here as it communicates a rough texture. I used a very old brush. If a shape is not facing the light, I added some Abyssal Blue to the paint to darken the highlight
- If something still looks smooth, either in the blend or in the highlight, break it by stippling. It shouldn't be smooth, it's stone and not metal.
- Glaze heavily thinned Wyldwood to add shadow where the surface is exactly opposite the light source, and if the concave shape you're painting on would partly be in shadow, do a part-glaze of Wyldwood.
- Ushabti Bone blended into Wyldwood.
- Bone gets a glaze of yellow, rope gets a glaze of red or grey, randomly.
- Revisit with Ushabti Bone and Wyldwood to reestablish highlights/shadows if needed.
- A flat layer of Mephiston Red
- Wyldwood and Wild Rider Red to pull it into shadows and highlights
- Blood for the Blood God
- Mix some of the above paints with Blood for the Blood god to pull it in different directions where the shadows and highlights were lost.
- Airbrush: Scale75 Brown Leather into Tau Light Ochre into White. White around the bone to desaturate the area, the rest is more or less just zenithal Light Ochre into Brown. The wing membranes got a lot of white.
- Airbrush: Glaze heavily thinned (with contrast medium for no reason) Scale75 Ardennes Green, mixed with a touch of FW Indian Yellow ink where I wanted the skin to be more saturated. I didn't use this mix on the wings.
- Airbrush: The wings got a glaze of Gore-Grunta Fur, with FW Indian Yellow where I wanted it brighter/more saturated.
- Varnish it all.
- Airbrush AK Interactive Streaking Grime, then remove it selectively with a Q-tip that has a trace of white spirit in it.
- Regret airbrushing AK Interactive Streaking Grime and removing it with a Q-tip and white spirit. It had a nice effect but it wasn't dark enough for what I was going for, and a lot of variance in the deepest shadows was lost.
- Fixed shadows with Wyldwood by brush. At least this was easy, Contrast paint both glazes well and goes into the recesses depending on how much you apply.
- Varnish it all again. Then, follow by brush and even out things that needed to be evened out, pick out things that needed picking out, etc.
- I wish I took notes... Ushabti Bone was used a lot, Wildwood and Gore-Grunta Fur to tint it, but also whatever grey and/or wash color I grabbed at the moment. It's a base, it should be random.
