Paint

Tonight I started working with the interior acrylic latex paint available from Canadian Tire. I took paint chips colored with Shadow Grey, Bestial Brown, and Graveyard Earth to CT and had them matched. The reason should be obvious; I don't feel like paying a zillion dollars for ten pots of each color from Games Workshop, and doing it this way is very affordable.

The object of my attention tonight was the Soul Shrines. I decided that rather than consider what I'm doing with them to be a "final", I've put one aside in order to use it as a tester. I also designed a base for the shrines; a round pedestal based on Games Workshop tips on Storm Of Chaos scenery (I'm borrowing the circular tile motif).

Ironically, I didn't use the Canadian Tire paint on the Soul Shrine. I started with Snakebite Leather (which I debated getting in a can; I may still do so) and then drybrushed the living crap out of it with Bleached Bone (another candidate for the can rather than the pot). Once finished, I was very happy with the base effect but found it very bland and lacking in character. I added some stick-on gems I got from a craft store, thinking they'd make it look fancier and cooler, but it increased the stupidity factor by 100. I decided I preferred boring and bland, so I peeled them off. The final Soul Shrines will have runes and patterns carved into the foam before it's drybrushed.

The pedestal is as you see it; Canadian Tire black (called "Deep Onyx"), Canadian Tire Shadow Grey, GW Bleached Bone, GW white. I'm really fond of the results here and I expect that the tester is just scratching the surface of the effect I'll get in the end.

There's one other change I've made to my overall paint scheme which will either strike you as dramatically major or banal and minor: My original plan for "sand" was going to be a base of Snakebite Leather, a heavy drybrush with Bubonic Brown, a lighter drybrush of Bleached Bone and then an even lighter drybrush of white. I've decided (hang onto your seats) to replace Snakebite Leather with Graveyard Earth. I found the end result to be less "red" and more natural. While the Graveyard Earth makes the sand look more like dirt, the Snakebite makes it look as if there's some odd red coloring to the ground. I've included a pic to illustrate the difference (the Wraithlord is on a Snakebite Leather base).

Anyhow... a photo is worth a thousand words, so here's: 1. Graveyard Earth vs Snakebite Leather, 2. Snakebite Leather base on the Soul Shrine, 3. The pedestal, 4. The pedestal + Soul Shrine, 5. The pedestal + soul shrine + Wraithlord!