Captain Dimi

The Frostgrave game was fast approaching, and I'd had an unusually busy week, so hadn't managed to get any paint to the Captain of one of my Frostgrave Warbands. I had plenty of painted backup models I could use if I got desperate, but it's always nice to tick another model off the backlog, so I thought I'd have a go at painting one (relatively simple) model in just an hour or so.

Usually I like to undercoat my miniatures in black or white using spraypaints. I do them in a bulk of whatever I think I'll be likely to paint up in the near future, but I don't get time to spraypaint very often due to weather patterns and daylight (especially at this time of year).

My birthday was recent, and I received an airbrush set from Laura, which is great! As the brush allows for much more precise spraying, I realised that I could use it for undercoating individual models when the need arises. I decided to undercoat one of Laura's models too - an unarmoured ronin/ashigaru.

The air compressor. It's pretty great and has an adjustable air-flow regulator to help with precision.

I decided to spray the models in white, and used the Citadel Air White Scar paint I have. One thing I've noticed about the Citadel Air range is that it's noticeably thicker than the Vallejo equivalent range. It tends to clog up the airbrush more frequently, and seems to require mixing with a tiny drop of thinner to make it usable. Getting the right quantity of thinner for the amount of Citadel Air paint is a bit of a nightmare, so I think I'm going to just get Vallejo Air paints in future, or just mix my own using regular Citadel acrylics + thinner.

The airbrush that came with the compressor has a double-action lever, meaning that I can turn the airflow on/off as well as adjust the needle during use to allow for finer painting where required. It seems like a good starter brush, but I think I'll get an Iwata Neo in the near future, as I've heard such good things about them.

I sprayed the ronin model first, and got a nice smooth coat of white on the model. Unfortunately I couldn't replicate that smoothness with the knight model, but I'm unsure why. It's possible that the blobby Citadel paint is to blame, or perhaps it's that the knight is plastic and may have some residual elements of release agent on it still. Whatever the cause is, the result was that the knight has a slightly runny looking coat to it, although luckily it doesn't seem to have obscured any detail.

Captain Dimi and his Japanese friend ready to be painted.

I decided to paint Dimi's surcoat in blue so it matched with the rest of Sir Roderick's warband, but I wanted it to be a slightly different shade to distinguish him from the regular soldiery. To this end I decided to use Citadel's Kantor Blue, which has a slightly greyish/green tone to it. The first coat that I applied was very uneven and I was disappointed (especially as it's a Base colour). But after that had dried I went over it again in a slightly watered down second coat and that seemed to neaten it up a lot.

Time was running out, and I had other things to pack for the game (such as lots of 4Ground terrain!), but thankfully Laura was there to assist, and she took over the painting of Captain Dimi. She used Leadbelcher for the mail, and Stormhost Silver for the great helm & sword. She also applied some Zandri Dust to the poleyns (with the knee cops painted Stormhost Silver).

I then returned and slapped some Nuln Oil on the entire model, and decided that would have to do as I'd run out of time. The model is looking tabletop-ready in my opinion (although the shield could definitely do with some colour), but I will add more detail for sure. I think I'll give his great helm a golden cross (perhaps P3 Burnished Gold) and I'll paint the sword's crossguard & pommel in black. I might just leave the belt as it is, but I'll see how I feel at the time. As for the shield, I think I'll go for white & blue stripes.