Zarbag’s Gitz

And here’s the whole gang! (more about the squigs in the previous post) When I initially started painting the gobbos I thought they’d be pretty quick to finish. Once again, I was wrong 😀

Zarbag’s Gitz

The main inspiration for the paint scheme came from a classic Adrian Smith painting of Night Goblins. The main take-aways were the blue, black and red robes, as well as the freehand patterns on the hoods. My colors are obviously quite a bit more vibrant and cartoony than the artwork, but I’ve noticed I like my miniatures like that!

Prog da Netter, Dibbz, Stikkit and Redkap

The robes were finished pretty quickly, and painting a rough fabric texture by hashing is always fun. To contrast the robes I tried painting the skin smoother. While the light green paints have pretty bad coverage, I’m once again really happy with how they came out.

Then it was on to the details, of which there were many. Each model also seemed to have their own special things, which made batch painting difficult. But that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it! Even painting all the rope textures on the net was quite enjoyable, relaxing even. There were a few details which were a bit more intimidating (those involving blending), but once I started doing them they all came out great! It was funny actually, at first Drizgit da Squig Herder was my least favorite of the bunch (the mushroom on his mouth doesn’t really work for me), but after painting the fire effects he’s one of my favorites.

Drizgit da Squig Herder, Zarbag and Snirk Sourtongue

I quite like the bases on this warband, they have various small details that add to the narrative of the group. I actually started this painting project with the bases, something I don’t often do. As painting the bases was mostly drybrushing, I thought I’d have to repaint a lot less if I started with them (looking at Zarbag and those mushrooms!). Of course, I then had to lightly drybrush the bottoms of the robes after finishing the models, but thankfully that went without issues.

I’ve got one regret with this warband, and that’s not doing gap-filling properly. Thankfully it’s not (very) visible on the photos, but especially on Zarbag’s cowl it’s raining on my parade a bit, after painting him up so nicely. Painting-wise, there’s one or two things that I could’ve improved or added, but as fun as they’ve been to paint, it’s time to start working on something new.

I also get to cross off another square on the bingo card, this time it’s the “warband for a skirmish game”.

Zarbag’s Squigs

After building and priming all those models shown in the last post, I promptly went on to paint something different. So now, more than a year after building and priming them, I’ve finished painting Zarbag’s Gitz. In this post I’ll show you the two squigs, which I painted before the rest of the warband, and in a couple of days I’ll show the actual Gitz.

These two angry red balls were fun to paint, and quite quick as well, with so few elements to them. I tried some new recipes on these, mainly on the red skin and the teeth/bones. I shaded the red with Contrast paints, Blood Angels Red on one and Flesh Tearers (FT) on the other. Not much difference in the final product, FT provides a bit more contrast. Otherwise the process was the same. I used a flesh tone for highlighting, which was a first for me.

I wanted to try something different with the teeth as well, especially to provide contrast between the giant bone and the teeth on Bonerakka. I took inspiration from the studio models and tried Rakarth Flesh (RF) as a basecoat, shaded very carefully with thinned Nuln Oil. Highlighting with Pallid Wych Flesh (PWF) finished off the teeth. The bone was likewise RF, but shaded with Seraphim Sepia. I then layered with Flayed One Flesh and highlighted with PWF. Finally, I glazed on some color with a mix of Reikland Fleshshade and Carroburg Crimson. Very happy with the result!

One final note about painting the details: the brands on the squigs’ sides had me scratching my head for a bit, but happily one of my go-to sources, Tale of Painters, had me covered. Stahly has painted this warband very nicely and provides recipes for most of the colors, including the scarred flesh. Also helped with the mouths! I didn’t get mine to look quite as nice as the reference, but that’s fine.

I’m also sneaking in my hobby bingo card, as a week ago I built two new magnetic storage cases. The construction was exactly the same as the previous ones, so didn’t feel the need to post a picture of them. But with those, I should be set with storage for quite some time!