The start of something big (but small)

Since my last post I've been furiously prepping my horde of Grots: cleaning, gluing, filling, basing, and undercoating my way to a force of Gobbos that are ready to start taking paint. 

Contrary to what I said in my previous post, I've decided to try an entirely new method of painting them that will involve green washes on the skin and maybe some yellow Contrast paint on the fabric. This means one of the preparation stages is slightly different to normal, so I've outlined the first few steps below.

Stage 1. I started by roughly trimming all the individual parts and gluing them together on the base. Some bits were plastic, some were metal, and some were resin, so I used liquid poly for plastic to plastic joins, and superglue for anything else. If a join looked weak, I drilled out both bits using a pin vice, and pinned them together using superglue and a paperclip cut to fit.

Stage 2. Using a scalpel and a Citadel Mouldline Remover tool, I then cleaned up any obvious flash and excess material left over from the casting process. I also filled any holes and/or joins with green stuff.

Stage 3. I then textured the base, by covering it in white PVA glue and dipping it into a small container of thick, coarse sand and tiny stones.

Stage 4. Although this picture looks almost identical to the one before, it is nevertheless an extremely important stage. You have to paint watered-down PVA glue over the top of the sand to give it any chance of staying in place. I think I probably use a roughly 1:1 mix of PVA to water. Maybe a little more PVA, as the water is simply there to help it flow.

Stage 5. This is the undercoat stage, and is the bit that is slightly different to my normal process. I usually just prime everything in plain black, but with these guys I wanted a pre-shaded, much lighter finish to take the washes and Contrast paints. Therefore I started by lying the miniature down, with the bottom of the base facing me, and lightly spraying black from underneath. At this point I don't want to cover the model, but just to get a little darkness into the deepest down-facing recesses – like armpits and groin regions. I then stand it up and spray grey from all around, at a roughly horizontal 90º. And then finally white from above and about 45º off. It's a bit of a faff, but I'm hoping it will prove an effective shortcut for adding a little extra shade and highlight.

And that's that. But before I could start painting, I just had the small matter of repeating the entire process another 43 times.