Thorin & Company Update #1

Since I received my Hobbit starter set last week, I've been working here and there on Mr. Baggins and his dwarven companions.  So that I have them all ready at the same time to run a few scenarios from the game, I'm treating them as a batch painting project.  Though the process will not go as quickly as if painting an army with the same color schemes, I think I'll still be able to progress a bit quicker by painting similar parts and colors at the same time rather than treating each figure as an individual project.  We'll see how the plan works.

So this is where I am right now.  I've cleaned, filed, and assembled all of the "good" models from the set.  I added basing material then primed the group black with a spray since the humidity has finally fallen enough here on the island to give me a break from having to use brush on primer (Guesso).  After everything was dry, I added a deep basecoat of Reaper Intense Brown (09138) to reduce the number of flesh coats I needed to apply over black primer.  I also used what was left over of the brown to do a bit of drybrusing on a few of the bases.

 All of the eyes were then painted.  I generally start by painting the entire eye socket black to help bolster the impression of depth around the eyes.  I then fill in the majority of the eye with an off white for the sclera (the white of the eye), leaving a thin outline of black applied in the previous step.  The eyes are completed by painting the iris black using the "stripe" technique.  A friend has provided an excellent tutorial on his blog on how to paint this stripe if you're not familiar with the process.

Finally, most of the models received a coat of Reaper Tanned Shadow (09043) as the initial flesh tone.  Despite the coat of Intense Brown, I'll need to apply another coat of flesh before I begin the real process of painting faces and other flesh parts.  Then it's on to apply base colors to the garb.  This is where I hope to save lots of time since for the most part, the color palette of the dwarves seems to be fairly uniform.  I should be able to slap on paint with minimal mixing between figures and hopefully bring them to the gaming table within a week or so.

More updates to come......