Well I've had Nicodem and his entourage for a while and I've finally got round to painting them. I wasn't particulary pleased with how Seamus and crew turned out so when I saw an alternative approach to painting on the Lead Adventures Forum I decided to use Nicodem's crew to test it.
The technique is a speed painting technique that envolves an under coat of neutral grey to start, followed by a wash of ink over the whole figure. Once that has dried the entire figure is dry brushed with a non-white highlight. I used bleached bone.
The figure is then 'painted' using only washes and inks over what has been done already to stain the underlying grey undercoat. The primary ink wash becomes the shading and the dry brush shows through to be the highlights.
It is meant to be a quick and easy way to paint troops. Did it work? Well yes and no. The inks and washes are easy and quick to paint with as you are less worried about coverage and they are very liquid so easy to push around with the brush. There were also some great shading results on some colours such as dark green and browns. I had to cheat in the end and use solid colours to finish them but only really on some small areas.
On Nicodem I used black ink and I was surprised at how nice it was to paint with. It covered pretty well but it was so black that it effectively wiped out the shading and highlight base coats. Maybe a slightly watered down wash of ink next time?
I am please with the skin on the Zombies and the green on one of the zombies has a really nice shade/highlight effect coming through so I might bear that in mind when painting greens in future.
