I finally finished painting my first warband for Shadespire – settling on Steelheart’s Champions, as much for the low model count (only three figures) as for the large flat surfaces and a chance to try out some different painting techniques.

As the previous posts have shown, this type of gold spends a lot of time looking like brown and yellow paint… I’m still figuring out the right balance between dark shadows and bright highlights, but I owe a lot to this excellent video tutorial from Painting Buddha. You can find individual photos of each of the figures below:

I continued working on the Angharad Brightshield model from my last post, pushing the contrast up a bit with deeper shadows (black and brown), and much brighter highlights. Same plan as before, only with more consistency across the model: the light source is coming across the body, from somewhere above the left arm.

That meant the helmet highlights needed to be placed on the opposite side, and the specular highlights on the shield needed to become a lot brighter. I think it’s working much better now, and a large part of that comes from the contrast on the shoulder and the top of the shield. I’m happy with where this is going, now 🙂

Now to open up the Shadespire box for another look at the game boards, and then I’ll try to match colours with the model bases. I had originally planned to work on 1-2 models from each warband before starting work on something new, but I’d like to have a painted Shadespire warband ready for a game. So, I’ve just cleared all the other models off my desk in preparation: the next things I paint will be the other two Liberators from Steelheart’s group.

Even late at night, the weather is starting to get a bit too warm for painting – so I think this Summer may be when I finally try using a wet palette for the first time. Stay tuned for the next batch of WIP photos 🙂

I’d planned to paint the Shadespire models in regular metallics, so I could quickly get them ready for some games. Then I realised that it’s pretty rare to have a painting project capped at only three models, and that seemed like a good opportunity to practice some non-metallic metals.

Bright lights and close-up photos make any painter cringe a bit, but this is the result of last night’s painting on Angharad Brightshield, from the Liberators warband. I realised much later that I’ve painted the light source on the wrong side of her helmet, so I’ll need to go back and change that next time I pick up a brush…

More detail behind the cut…