Hordebloods - Mulg the Ancient

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Mulg was a really fun project to work on and I learned a bunch from it. It gave me a chance to break out the airbrush and discovered a few new techniques. Colour theory was also something I played with, which I'll follow up in another post. Pinning him was also a little trickier than others.

As discussed before, pinning awkward spots is best started using a drop of paint, fitting the pieces together and finding where exactly to drill.







But what about sections that can't really be pinned? There was the Ogre Bomber where I supported his stomach.. but look below and you'll see I've had to pin him in kind of a shish-kabob style.

Basically, since he's in 3 pieces, I've pinned the upper section to the bottom one with one long piece of wire. First, I assembled the top 2 pieces, painted everything separate, then fit him to his legs after. Yes, very awkward, but ended up nice and sturdy.

In classic Privateer Press fashion, organic models need lots of green stuffing...

As per usual, black primer.. but will you look at the left photo below? Terrible colour. Turns out, Privateer Press Paints don't tend to like alcohol, which I use as part of my airbrush mix. Their lighter colours were degrading and gumming up the airbrush while their darker ones had their pigments dissolve and lose the intensity of their colour. Taught me a valuable lesson though - if you use alcohol in your airbrush thinner, you have to always test your paints to see if they're compatible.

Anyways, found the paints I needed, and got to airbrushing.

And more airbrushing. You'll note that I've painted his skin and stones slightly different colours.

Shading time... I went with a really bold turquoise wash from P3 for his skin and just black for the stones.

Then more highlighting.

Also, I've painted his clothes and club.

You'll also notice I've started to add some brown to the shading of his skin, just like painters might add reds or purples when painting normal flesh tones.

To paint the runes, I've painted them white first, followed by magenta. I'll talk about my reasoning in a follow up as to why I chose magenta.

I actually used gesso to paint the runes, because the stronger a white you use before a light colour, the brighter the colour will be.

Another tip is if you water the white down a little before painting the runes, it'll flow cleaner into the tiny crevices, without you having to do much actual "painting". Just don't water it down so much that the white becomes dull... if you do, you might need to paint a few layers of white until it's bright enough. (tedious when you have lots of runes to paint)



Instead of going for a glow effect, I've painted the stone turquoise around the runes anywhere that I painted out of the lines. This adds to the contrast, rather than softening things as a glow would have done.


I've used the same steps to paint the runes on his club... but as you'll see by the end photos, I hated the magenta on brown.. it was just ugly. I've ended up going back over these areas and painted the runes on his club green.

Here's a close up of the shading and highlighting I've been doing to the stones. I've strengthened the shadows with black and emphasized the edges with light blues and whites.

Still has the hideous purple on the club, but I've painted the metal, shaded and weathered his loin cloth, as well as painted the stones and runes hung at his waist.

Once again - tea makes WONDERFUL and NATURAL flock. Just look at it. You'd swear he was striding through a forest over leaves. Well, technically, he IS striding over leaves. Mmm tea.

Find it on Deviant Art

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Take a look at my Step by Step page for the entire Hordebloods project. Here you will find each model broken down into links showing each step: Concept, Works in Progress, (for both modelling and painting) and Final Shots