Practice: Night Goblins WIP

Alright, here are some figures I've been practicing on. I'm actually starting up a Orcs n' Goblin army for WHFB as there are a bunch of guys in this area who play. The gaming store is currently having a bunch of sales on GW stuff so I've picked up quite a few units at 20% off.

The goblins are almost done, but I plan to add one more highlight layer to their faces/arms (they currently only have 2). Any advice is welcome, I really want to learn new techniques and try out new things. Don't hesitate to tell me what I need to improve upon (as long as you give me some advice on how to do it... ) Here they are!

Night Goblins, Front:


Night Goblins, Back:

ok good! they look great dude!

Looks like a very very solid paintjob to me. Especially when you consider that these gobs are mass units.

The only thing I would have liked to see, is a slightly different colour scheme than the GW one, i.e. maybe make the lances a different colour from red...

Hey Synder,
You are over-coming the shakes nicely. That's a good, solid paint job. If you want to expand on it, some high-lighting of the flesh [a lighter green or yellowish green] on the nose, cheeks, upper lip, chin, & hands would look really good. If you do a light dry of burnt orange on the spear shafts would pick out the wood grain & hint at what the spears were stained with [a truly disturbing thought].

I'm also not a big fan of GW's color choices [check out my Red Brothers]; their painters are constrained to a limited palette by the deadlines they must meet. However, the black robes DO offer a good base coat if you decide to come up with a different color scheme.

I'm really happy to see you painting. Keep up the good work, & ENJOY!

Hey guys, thanks for the nice comments.

@Tag- Thanks man! Nice words help motivate me to keep improving.

@Tom- I know they're an unoriginal take on night goblins, I was using a picture of a GW painted figure as a reference. Any advice on possible things I could do to make them stand out a bit? I originally did have the spear hafts painted a brown color, but I couldn't get it to come out looking like wood. It looked more like a dark colored stick smeared with mud. I also want to keep the robes black, simply because I currently have over 100 of the darned things to paint! It'll save me a lot of time.

@Nala- Yes, the shakes are becoming more manageable. I've also discovered that skipping my usual several cups of coffee before painting helps! Again, I know these goblins are terribly unoriginal. Once I have a unit of 40 or so painted and I'm feeling more confident I'll probably switch up the theme a bit...any ideas? (I'm going to leech you people for knowledge!) I'm also doing more highlighting pretty much like you suggested, it looks a lot better than where I left off on their faces last night. I actually switched it to base coat of dark angels green, highlight snot green, highlight goblin green mixed with sunburst yellow (1:2 ratio, roughly).

Currently plodding away on more of these buggers, I'm also nearly done with the goblin shaman...quite pleased with how he turned out with the exception of his staff. The shaft looks way too shiny; an unfortunate result of super-thin chestnut ink wash over the scab red/blood red highlighted staff. Any ideas how to make it looks a bit less like it's varnished with something?

Thanks a lot guys! I'm having a blast getting back into painting.

Alright, here's my goblin shaman. He still needs some touchup, but he's mostly done. I wanted a really bright model, hence the high level of contrast between the black robes and ice blue lines on it. Can't decide if it's too bold, but I'm not sure how to make it better. Any suggestions/thoughts in general? The only part I'm not really happy with is the staff...I don't like how it looks like it's varnished. I'll be attempting to fix that later.

Goblin Shaman, Front:


Goblin Shaman, Back:

ALL RIGHT SYNDER!

Very COOL! I know what a twinky little mini that is, & you did a great job on him. The highlighting on the robes is perfect, especially considering his vocation. We're on the same page with the red cowl [Great Minds again ]. I didn't think the staff could turn out so well; nice piece of work there.

Hi Snyder!

I moved the topic to this section, because it seems to develop more into a warhammer-ish direction.

Anyway, good job on the shaman. For originality, brown wood is a good idea, as you said (drybrush snakebite+scorched brown over scorched brown). I've also seen gobs with yellow/orange triangles around the edges of their hoods. Looked nice.

Awesome man, Bravo !

you probably have the skills mate! It looks good!

I really like the contrast of the ice blue lines and the black robe

thanks for sharing


greetz from holandia

Looks great mate Though I have to agree with everyone of Tom's cleaverly hidden hints for you to paint the staffs a woodish brown. the shaman for example would look a lot better (even though it looks hot as it is) if his stik was diffrent to his hoodie.

Keep up the awsome work,

Tom

Thanks a lot everyone for the words of encouragement and the solid advice. I'm happy with how both the shamans and goblins turned out, though I still have a ton of the little buggers to paint. There are currently 100+ of them being primed, the painting adventure will probably begin tomorrow. I'm going to try painting their staffs a different color for sure, and I've got something in mind for the next shaman I'll need to paint. I also added mushrooms to his base, I'm quite happy with the figure overall.

I'll probably be posting more pictures in here as the army progresses...I still have trolls, spider riders, tons o' gobbos (spear/bow), black orcs, and misc. character figures on the "need to paint" list. On that note, is there a common color for troll skin? I've never actually used the things before.

Wish me luck!

Good luck Snyder! I'm sure your gobo regiment will look stunning judging by the samples you've posted so far.

I personally imagine trolls rather grey-ish (thinking "Stone Trolls"). I don't know if there is a common colour though.

I remember painting mine - 1 million years ago - with a blueish-greyish mix. I think it was a progressive shading of a very dark grey (black+white custom mix) with a touch of shadow grey (despite the name it's a rather blue colour).