Wild West Exodus – Attack Dog

This miniature came free with Tabletop Gaming Magazine back in July last year, and has since sat in my desk drawer, forgotten; that is until I brought an airbrush earlier this year, and went looking for something to try things out on.

Wild West Exodus isn’t a game I currently own, or have even played, but it has often sparked my interest when looking at the demos set up at the Expo. Therefor, it will come as no surprise that I know nothing at all about this figure – K9 Attack Dog – and so, let’s get straight down to its painting.

I had an idea about what I wanted to do, taking a little inspiration from the magazine it came with, and wanted to do as much of it with the airbrush as possible – bearing in mind that at this point, I’d only had the Airbrush a few days!

I primed the whole thing black and then, spraying only on a horizontal level and above, basecoated with Dark Fleshtone thinned down with Vallejo Airbrush Thinner. This left the underside and lower recesses in black.

I then loaded the airbrush with Gunmetal, again thinning it down, and sprayed from a 45-degree angle above the horizontal.

The effect of the shading from Gunmetal, through Dark Fleshtone, to the black underside worked quite well, but that was all I could realistically do with the airbrush.

I then spent the next 10-minutes or so stripping down and cleaning it, as I’d been using metallic paint I wanted to make sure it was spotless; I didn’t want any metallic flakes appearing in the paint the next time I used it.

I then gave the Attack Dog a going over with Blue Wash, followed by a drybrush of silver, concentrating on the upper edges.

For the glowing areas, I started by taking the smallest amount of Scarlet Red and mixed it with some Glaze Medium. I then applied the resultant glaze around the area from which the glow would be emanating. Several thin coats were applied, reducing the area of concentration down towards the centre with each coat.

I then applied Scarlett Red to form the actual base of the glow, and to the centre of this I added a slight dash of Dwarf Skin, followed my a central dot of Dwarf Skin lightened slightly with Ivory.

As for the base, I really have no idea what I was trying to do. I think I was aiming for an alien world type of thing, but the less said, the better!

I finished up varnishing the whole mini with Vallejo’s Mecha Matt Varnish, again with the airbrush, and added a little Satin to the glowing areas.

Overall, I accomplished what I’d set out to do, and that was experiment with the airbrush – you know how it is when you have a new toy!

It certainly didn’t take very long to do; it’s probably the only figure I’ve ever done in one evening start to finish, an evening’s painting for me is about 2-hours, so, all-in-all, I was quite pleased with myself!