Wild West Exodus - Outlaws

I wanna be a Cowboy...  Oh my, lets jump on the path of another distraction and a new project.  Derek, from Throne of Angels, suggested we pick something to paint and play at Adepticon this year.  After kicking some ideas over to him, the list came down to either Wild West Exodus or Relic Knights.  Having some stuff already, from the original Kickstarter, I advocated Wild West Exodus.  We agreed to target 750 pts for a small starter force that would be doable (for me) and depending on time we could either increase the size or also throw Relic Knights in at a small point level.  Note, since "agreeing" to 750 pts it would seem to have grown to full blown 1500 pt game...

I advocated for WWX mostly because I already had some models and that should mean not having to buy much, if anything.  Using the Outlaw models I already had also allowed to me to actually do something with a kickstarter (other than put it on the shelf) for the first time!  Since then I have been, albeit unsuccessfully, resisting the urge to buy more and new stuff but let's not dwell on that now.

Outlaws assembled.

The picture above consists of the Outlaws I got from the original Kickstarter.  The multi-part plastic models (hired hands) are tedious.  Each one of them was at least 5 pieces, sometimes more.  The resin models were much easier to deal with, although the alternate Jesse James was not such a great casting.

Slapping some paint on the hired hands.

I went with a strange, for me at least, approach to painting these guys.  Something I had never tried before.  I primed a black base coat, then did a heavy dry brush of grey followed by a light dry brush of white.  Then the colors you see above were applied as washes, trying to take advantage of the highlighting.  I think it worked to some degree, and I managed to get to this point very quickly (I think I was at about 20 mins/figure here).  The next few steps however bogged down  as it required more precision work.  Esp, since I did not use a good/proper order of operations (like the classical "inside-out" approach) to get to this point.

The metallics and light leather blocked in.

Now I've hit the home stretch.  Not terribly happy with the light leather and it "ate" the pre-highlighting (paint was to thick and my previous work being to sloppy), so I had to re-highlight.  At this point, I was hoping the washes would knock things down to where I wanted and also help clean things up.

Post-washes.

Maybe a matter of opinion, but I think the washes panned out the way I hoped.  I considered hitting the light leather with 1-2 more washes to tone them done some more but ultimately decided not to.  Now all that is left is to highlight the armor some and knock the bases out.  I kind of backed myself into a corner at this point though.  The typical darker color for the basing did not seem like such a good idea since the models themselves are kind of dark.  After a few iterations I ended up at this:

Click for a better view, Blogger is butchering the thumbnails.

I not completely happy with this, as I find the bases distracting and in general just find my eyes drawn downward.  But since they are just hired hands (grunts), I called them done.  Maybe down the line I will figure something out and get these fixed up.

Colors used:

• These colors were interchanged on various figures & places:
• Dark Browns:  RMS Blackened Brown
• Blues:  RMS Twilight Blue
• Greys:  RMS Cloudy Grey
• Light Brown (Holsters/Belts/Boots):
• Leather Brown (Base), 2:1 Bronzed Hightlight:Leather Brown (Highlights)
• Bandannas:  RMS Clotted Red
• Rifle/Pistol/Knife:  AP Gun Metal
• Rifle/Pistol/Knife Stocks:  RMS Walnut Brown
• Skin:  RMS Bronzed Highlight
• Cracked Earth:  RMS Tanned Leather
• All - 2-3 applications of thinned AP Strong Tone