After going through a bit of a painting rut in 2024 I decided to start with something simple for the new year.
There are a few teams I still need to paint up, but most of them are unique ones I have been thinking about and collecting parts for years. But the Gnomes were a brand new addition and some very fun models with alternative bits, that didn’t really need much conversion. I selected them to get me back into the swing of things.
As always I started with the linemen equivalents as they are going to set the baseline for the entire team. Gnomes suit bright, primary colours and I decided to stick with these. To that end I went for blue armour, red jackets, green hats and brown trousers, with silver for the metal parts. I’d used different heads for the linemen, but aside from that they were effectively 4 pairs of identical models. To slightly differentiate them I gave half grey beards and the other half brown/blond.
The foxes were very easy to paint as I just went for the standard red fox colouring with reddish brown fur with black and white parts. This made them pretty quick to paint, though no real way to tie them into the colour scheme of the other players.
Whilst working on this team I got an email from Travelling Man (a comic book and game store/online) about a Blood Bowl painting competition called Super Brush Bowl. You bought an entry pack and would get sent a random GW Blood Bowl model, 4 random paints and some basing material. You could undercoat in either white or black and use them for decoration, but otherwise could only use those 4 colours provided. There were prizes for best painted, best base and who best followed the spirit of the competition.
I got an elf union player along with Dark Green, Dark Blue, greenish-yellow and bronze paint. So quite a tricky combination as the dark green was largely useless since I could have mixed it from the yellow and blue. With those limitations I had to get a bit creative as there was no way to create a realistic skin tone.
I went for a black undercoat for shading, but later went back over some parts with white to make them brighter. The bodysuit was painted blue and I had to extend this up to his neck and ears. Highlights were added with the yellow, I kept these quite minimal to stop it looking too green.
For his armour I left parts of that black and went with the dark green, adding yellow for highlights. This was the part I paid most attention to as I could us my normal highlighting technique for it. Loin cloth and hair were painted yellow, I mixed a bit of the blue in for shading to make a different green compared to the armour. For the metal parts I undercoated them black and then put white on the raised bits to help with the shading. Also added some blue to the bronze paint for some shading, but it didn’t really turn out. Luckily I got an elf with a mask, it only covers the lower half of his face, but I painted all of it bronze as if it was a full face mask. Some white decoration on the armour and clothing as well as highlights for the gems and metal finished the model.
For basing I used my standard process, which normally includes static grass, added flock and some flowers to the base too.
I was pretty happy with how he turned out, considering the difficulties. Sadly I didn’t win anything, but checked out the winners and they were all really good, though some got luckier with their paints, having 4 distinct colours including one that could be used for flesh.
