Continuing on with painting the original HeroQuest. After the painting of the Heroes, I need to start to get the baddies painted up. The very first game in the Quest Book is a bit of a mess and uses almost everything in the box. Clearly, that quest was meant to show the kiddies a crowded board. Get them excited by using all the stuff. That didn’t make it easier to pick what to paint.
But the second quest, that one has mostly greenskins as the baddies. That narrows things down. I’ve not painted greenskins before, so this will be new for me. A new set of skills to develop and a new set of problems to consider.
We start with the goblins. Why goblins? Because they look funny and I want to develop my technique before I move on to the Fimir, which has always been a favorite of mine.
The original HQ was all based on Games Workshop miniatures from Warhammer. There were a few changes to the figures for casting purposes, which reduced the detail on some models, but the core look is still there. I wanted to give these a classic Warhammer paint job and did my best. Not up to the standards of late ’80s figures you can still see out there, but still a good look.
I’ve not painted green skin before. I’ve painted green, and I’ve done greyish green. But nothing like the ork/goblin look. Had to relearn how to do highlights a bit. In order to get the depth I wanted, I wound up base coating in dark green, highlighting in a lighter green, inking the model, then highlighting with the light green, and a last highlight in a bright yellow-green.
It turned out well. As usual, they look better in person than in the picture.
Tried something different on the clothing as well. For the black, I usually do a grey highlight. I’ve seen a few instances of people doing blue highlights to great effect. I gave it a go. Nothing amazing, but it worked well. I may have to try it again but leave it all a bit darker.
With the yellow shirts I also changed my usual base coat and highlight combination. Similar to the skins, I did more highlighting and allowed for a more dramatic difference between the base color and the highlights. Usually I would have gone back after inking with the base color. Here, I just worked with highlights and went brighter than I usually do.
The effect is not exactly the Old-Hammer look, but it’s closer than I usually do. Hopefully the orks and others give me enough practice to have the methods down before I get to the Chaos Warriors.
I am seeing more and more that I need to work a bit more on the metals. Have to check out that non-metal metal painting methods.
Next up for HeroQuest, nasty orkses.
2021 Count to Date:
34 figures painted
1 purchased
Project Posts
HeroQuest Project, Post 1
HeroQuest Project, Post 2: The Heroes
the immortal frequentist 