Three Random Dwarves!

These three little chaps have been knocking around my desk drawer for a couple of years now and two of them have been with me far longer than that. It was time to give them a bit of colour.

This one came with the game, Dragon Quest, which I spotted in our local charity shop for the princely sum of £3.50; I just couldn’t turn it down.

The other two’s origin is a bit more vague. I seem to remember buying them from a shop in Caldmore (pronounced Karma!), a small area in Walsall, which was just about the only shop for miles around that sold D&D products, it’s where I got my old basic set from – I was about 12 at the time.

They’ve managed to follow me around the country, hiding in one box after the next, and even recieved a layer of primer at one point. Their base had been given a thick coat of sand too.

Well, after surviving so long, I thought it best to treat them to a new coat of paint, after all, they’re part of my history now.

The Dragon Quest Dwarf’s colour scheme I based loosely on the card art, but for the other two I went with my own thing.

All three had their flesh painted in the same manner – Base of Dwarf Skin, highlight by adding Bonewhite to the mix, then pure Bonewhite and a glaze of the Dwarf Skin/Bonewhite to bring it all together. (All Paint Vallejo unless otherwise mentioned).

Likewise, all the steel areas were painted the same – Base Gloss Black Primer and then depending upon the area, either a coat or drybrush of Metal Steel followed by a highlight of Chainmail.

After that I stopped writing down what I was doing for some reason, probably carried away in the moment!

Anyway, I wanted to give each Dwarf a distinct look. For the Dragon Quest Dwarf this was based on the colours of autumn – yellows, golds and browns.

So he ended up with the inevitable ginger beard and gold armour. For the hauberk I wanted it to look like loose scale, almost like coin armour – think along the lines of this being a very tight dwarf and where better to keep his money than where he can see it, attached to his armour!

I didn’t drybrush the hauberk. At this point I’d painted up the surrounding area and didn’t want flecks of gold coating everything, which inevitably happens when drybrushing metallic paint. Instead, each ‘coin’ was first painted with glorious Gold and the highlighted with Polished gold.

For the next one I kept with the autumn theme, but this time reds and browns.

Finally, I moved away from autumn and went with a grey/green look. this is the ‘old’ boy Dwarf look with long grey beard!

I like how the cloak came out, just wish I’d written down the colours I’d used. Looking at it I think I used the old Citadel colours of Snot and Goblin Green highlighted with Vallejo’s Escorpena Green, then finally adding a little Yellow into the mix.

The latter two Dwarves were originally cast on a small base, which at some point in my past I had smothered with sand. I just glued them onto plastic ones and built up the difference with Green Stuff, a light coat of sand and threw in a few bits of scatter for good measure – job done!

Wrapping up the pictures I changed lens from a focal length of 200 to 55, just experimenting really. here’s the results…