The Trans-Hyperian Alliance is the perfect quick and easy scheme to paint Votann in! You don’t even need an airbrush!
Painting orange can be a chore, but you can make quick work of it with a clever use of Contrast paints. You don’t need an airbrush for this technique to paint Votann and get a full army over a weekend.
Paint Votann for the Trans-Hyperian Alliance
We are using the slap chop technique for most of this tutorial, but still mixing in some classic painting techniques. This way, we get the best of both worlds without compromising too much of the result with the speed.
Slap Chop Readiness
Getting your model ‘slap chop ready’ means having a proper under coat transition of black through white. Because contrast paints use transparency, it’s important to get this part right.
There are many ways to achieve this, but they all start over a thorough black under coat.
Next you want to highlight everything with Celestra Grey, and the simple way to do this is with a heavy drybrush. You can use an airbrush to do this step if you have one, it will speed up the process without changing the overall look too much.
After the grey, we want to drybrush a coat of white. Depending of how much shading you want in the final result, go as heavy or as light as you want with this step. Even a little goes a long way, but it’s a mandatory step in this process, so don’t skip it even if you want darker models.
Contrast Colors
Next, we paint a few of the main colors with Citadel Contrasts. We aim for one even coat rather than letting it pool up like we would with a wash.
It’s a good idea to ‘play dress up’ when doing this. I.E. starting with the deepest layer, like the skin, and build towards the highlights. This minimizes the mistakes, and less touch ups means faster results.
As such, we start with Darkoath Flesh for the face, followed by Black Legion for all the clothing and the guns. Next, paint the belts, boots and pouches with Wyldwood.
Before painting the armor, take a good look and fix any mistake you have on the grey/white base, because orange is very light and those will be showing. The orange is painted with Magmadroth Orange, leaving some details to be painted in Apothecary White, like part of the shoulder plates.
Traditional Colors
Metallics are one part of miniatures that traditional painting techniques can’t be matched. So we use Leadbelcher for the few metallic doodads like vents and buckles, and we will shade those with Nuln Oil after.
Another dominant feature when you paint Votann are the weapons. Which are as big as the models themselves, or bigger like in our example model. While you don’t need to, a little extra goes a long way to make them stand out. in this case, we used a drybrush of Stegadon Scale Green.
Lenses, visors, and gems could go both ways. Contrasts make quick work of them, while traditional painting techniques allow you more control and brighter effects.
This is where you have to decide for yourself what aspect of speed painting you are going for. Cutting it short with contrasts to same time, or spend some extra time and have a flashier look. In the words or the the American poet Rihanna: you do you, boo.
Base
Let’s admit that the base on our example model is a miss, as most of the texture is invisible. We were aiming for a moon-surface type look, but fell short.
I do think grey is the best color for this scheme, but maybe opt for more traditional painted sand or rocks instead.
The great thing about this scheme is that it makes your army battle ready in no time, and everything is easy to improve upon.
So while your entire army can be painted over a weekend, you can come back at a later time and add highlights, battle damage and really go all out on the lights, lenses and energy weapons to upgrade your force.