Sunday 15 February 2015

Test Mini: Harlequin Troupe Master

The new Harlequin releases have caught me off guard somewhat. I am a big fan of Rogue Trader style minis, and I am a big fan of GW's current range of plastics. The current range of new stuff is the best of both worlds and I am so impressed that I am thinking of painting and collecting a full army. I've painted up a troupe master as a test mini.
Originally I said that I wasn't brave enough to attempt diamond checks, but I have been practising my freehand for the last year and in the end I got the nerve together to give it a go. In the end I didn't find it anywhere near as difficult as I was expecting, although it is rather time consuming.
This mini isn't entirely finished. Our local GW is running a Harlequin painting competition at the end of the month, so I am going to add some more freehand to him before he goes in, but this is about the standard I am aiming for with the bulk of the stuff that I am planning to paint.
The purple  and white texture based was an experiment, and although it is growing on me I will trying something a lot more tradition out next before I make a decision about how the whole army will look.
I will probably add some free hand to the back of the cloak and do some highlighting work on the ribbons before he goes off to be judged. I will also be trying to improve the gems and metallics a lot which are rather basic at the moment.

Update:
Here's a quick snap showing the grid for the checks on another mini from this squad. It looks pretty awful at this stage, but that's fine because there's plenty of opportunity to tidy them up as you fill the checks in. I start the red checks off using GW Khorne Red which has a nice strong coverage and is great for smoothing out a shaky diamond or two!

7 comments:

  1. nice clean pj, great brush control :)

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  2. Those are some excellent checks. Sure you aren't a goff ork player? :)

    I especially like the colored mowhawk. That was a cool idea!

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  3. Terrific work on those diamonds. Did you use a brush to do the grid?

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    1. Thanks. Yes, I used a very fine brush with a thinned down Vallejo black. I did do a quick experiment with a micro-pen, but I found that a brush was the easiest for me. You can afford to have a pretty messy grid because you can tidy it up when you layer up the colour for the checks...

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    1. No problem. I am just working on the rest of the squad so I've added a shot of the grid to the bottom of this post. It looks pretty horrible at this stage but it really doesn't matter too much.

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  5. Now that I tried it for myself last night, I'm in awe of how great yours looks (as well as the official ones). I find it really hard to get nice straight/sharp diamonds given all the various curves and odd surfaces of legs and butts basically :)

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