Skip to main content

"Sinister and Crazed" - Forge World Grot Shaman

Night Goblin Shamans are sinister and crazed individuals, 
due to their consumption of huge quantities 
of the powerfully hallucinogenic fungus 
for which the Night Goblins are renowned.



Greetings and Welcome to The Art of Caesura!

Today we're shifting gears from all of the Hellboy: The Board Game coverage that we've had in recent times. 


Like any good hobbiest, I have a ton of unpainted models lying around the place. Much of my unpainted collection is made up of Orcs and Goblins (my original love from Warhammer Fantasy, before I joined the Skyfleets of the Kharadron Overlords


As I said in my post about the new Contrast Paints (which, excitingly has now had well over 10 000 views!), I am looking forward to using these paints to get through my old Night Goblins (Moonclan Grots) from the Battle of Skull Pass box-set. At the time of painting the model the Contrast Paints had not quite been released yet.


I also wanted to get used to the idea of using the Contrast Paint style, so for this model I used the technical paint Nighthaunt Gloom for the magicy bits which works a little similar to the new Contrast Paints. Thus, as a goblin - and using a paint similar to the Contrast Paints - this Grot Shaman from Forge World ticked both of the boxes in preparation for painting one million (or about 73) Night Goblins. 


And now, just before we crack into the nitty-gritty of the painting, I just need to say: I LOVE THIS MODEL!! I have always loved this model, from the very first time I saw it! How hilarious, and thematic that a goblin is basically combusting in a mushrooom-induced explosion of magic! You can get a better view of the fully-assembled miniature below.


I started by painting the goblin as I normally would. For his skin, I started with an olive green (2:1 mix of Warboss Green and Steel Legion Drab), I highlighted first with pure Warboss Green and then a 2:1 mix of Warboss Green and Yriel Yellow. I finished the skin with a 1:1 mix of Warboss Green and Yriel yellow and then a wash of diluted Biel-Tan Green (1:1 Biel-Tan: Lahmian Medium).


I would usually leave details like his eyes for later, but anticipating that it might be a bit tricky to get in there once I'd attached the "moony-magic puke", I painted them Evil Sunz Scarlet with Yriel Yellow highlights. 


For his robes, I started with Abaddon Black and simply added more and more The Fang. The trick here was keeping the consistency nice and dilute for the first few layers (the wet palette really comes in handy for this kind of blending). 


Once I was using pure The Fang, I started adding White Scar with less medium added - this was mostly the very finest edge highlights on his robes. 


Then came the magic smoke. As I mentioned, I wanted to use Nighthaunt Gloom over a light basecoat for this to replicate a contrast-style approach. So, starting by painting the black-undercoated smoke bits white (this took far too many layers of White Scar - but I wanted a smooth, even coat) I then applied Nighthaunt Gloom to the whole thing. 


Had I thought about this fully before starting to paint the mini, I would have realized that this was a terrible idea for the look I was going for. I wanted to create the look that you can see in these finished pictures (i.e. lighter in the depths of the smoke and darker on the outsides) which is the exact opposite of what the Contrast Paints (and Nighthaunt Gloom) were designed to be used for!


These paints have been designed to flow into (and ergo be darker in) the deeper recesses and lighter on the superficial details. And it worked perfectly in that way - doh!


Anyway, so I picked a bad model to apply this technique, and ended up keeping the Nighthaunt Gloom as the mid-tone, painting White Scar into the recesses (another million layers) and The Fang + Stegadon Scale Green + Abaddon Black onto the outer surfaces.


Having salvaged the smoke effect, the rest of the model was the quirky details of his staff: the dwarven skull (with red beard) and amulet.


As I knew he would be, this was an awesome model to paint! My slight misadventure with my Contrast-style painting (totally my bad) created a fun little challenge of bringing it back to something I was happy with. 

In your zeal to clear all of your shelves of grey plastic, have you come across any old miniatures that you had forgotten about but are now going to paint? I'd love to hear about it!

See you next week on The Art of Caesura!


Listening: Berserker - Amon Amarth


Next Week:

Lots of squeaky voices...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Full Stop - Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood

The monstrous Deepwood has consumed the land.  No farms or fields remain. There is only corruption, rot and the endless shadow of the twisted trees. ~ Shadowborne Games Pot's Peace, Oathsworn. Welcome to The Art of Caesura! What's all this then, TWO posts in one day!? Well yes, you see timing is of the essence here. Today marks the 200th post of The Art of Caesura , so if you haven't had a chance to check out the celebratory post, please do so !  There is also a Kickstarter ongoing at the moment, that I am getting quite excited by, but it closes on Tuesday, so if I left it till next Friday to tell you about it...it would be too late! Hence, in a world first, two hits of The Art of Caesura in one day! Now onward, into the world of Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood ! Credit: Shadowborne Games Nota bene : I am not associated with Shadowborne Games, and am just writing this because it is something that I am genuinely excited about. None of the

"The Skinny" - Scale 75 Flesh Paint Set Review

The complexion of a light-skinned face  divides into three zones: The forehead has a light golden colour  because it's freer of muscles and surface capillaries. The ears, cheeks and nose all lie within the central zone of the face.  Those areas have more capillaries carrying oxygenated blood near the surface, causing the reddish colour... The zone from the nose to the chin (where there are relatively more veins carrying blue deoxygenated blood) tends toward a bluish, greenish or greyish colour. Some artists accentuated this subtle bluish or greenish hue to bring out the reddish lip colour. Color and Light (page 156) - James Gurney Welcome all to The Art of Caesura! So I finished all the models in Warhammer Quest Silver Tower!! Wooohooo!! Now for something a bit different!  This week I'm going to do something I've never done on the blog before: write a review!! I've been wanting to write my thoughts on  Scale 75 's Flesh Paint Set for ov

Warhammer 40k for Beginners - Writing an Army List

Hello again good friends of the Caesura! I am glad to report that I am feeling much better than last week, recovered from most of my COVID symptoms. Continuing from last week's post , I'm ready to tell you more about the lists that JP and I took for my first game of Warhammer 40k in over a decade and a half.  I have tried to write this post for those who know very little about playing Warhammer 40k (which was me when I started preparing for this game).  So, I knew that I wanted to keep things straightforward for my first game and that we were playing to 500 points. For those non-warhammerites, this is basically the smallest game you can play - less moving parts to keep track of.  Here is my list again, but this time I will discuss what it all means, and my thought process behind each choice: + Stratagems [-1CP] + Stratagem: Revered Repositories [-1CP] This just means that before the game I used one of my finite resources ("Command Points") to buy a very fancy weapon (