Meet Gergely, First Troll of Dhunia

I am really excited about this blog post as I can finally deliver pictures of the first couple models of my new Trollbloods army. With every army I try to push myself a little further and I am quite happy thinking that I managed to achieve it again.

Pictured above is Gergely, First Troll of Dhunia, the first model I completed. I named this model Gergely after a friend I play Warmachine/Hordes with. Originally I started out with 25pts of Cygnar as a painting project and it would have stayed a painting project if I hadn't had my first game with the real Gergely. Among others, Gergely is a driving factor in building the local community which eventually encouraged me to start also a Trollbloods army as I see a good momentum in the Swiss community. Therefore, I found it just fitting to name my first Troll Gergely. (of course this is just a very elaborate ploy hoping the real Gergely with his Menoth trickery won't have the guts to kill the Troll Gergely on the table)

So onward on how to paint Gergely. but before we do that, we need to have a look at the color wheel.

The color wheel by Wilhelm von Bezold. Source: Wikipedia

On Google+, many people asked me why I started with green primer. Well, it's because I wanted to do an army with blue and yellow colors. In the color wheel above you can see the three primary colors blue-red-yellow (in terms of pigments, for sunlight the primary colors are blue-red-green). You can also see that blue and green are direct oposites, that's the reason why those colors "pop" so quickly. (for a more scientific answer, check Color in the human brain) Now the thing is that if I had sprayed my Trollbloods blue, that would have resulted in easy skin painting, but painting any yellow surface would have been awful as the blue would continue to "shine through" unless I painted many many layers. Therefore I started with green as it allows me to move easily either towards blue or yellow. That's why I also decided that my Trollbloods are supposed to have green armor as this really is easy painting starting with green primer. Except the big Trolls, most models have large areas covered with armor, so green primer for green armor was the logical choice.

This is Gergely after I built him; I pinned the legs and filled gaps with Green Stuff + Liquid Green Stuff.

To paint Trollbloods skin I used GW Hawk Turquoise and Blue Ink (both out of production) and the continued with Army Painter Ultramarine Blue, Wolf Grey, and Ash Grey. Here the investment in dropper bottles really was worth a lot as they allow you to smoothly blend the colors by just counting the drops of color you add.

At this stage Gergely had been primed with the Greenskin primer from Army painter and already has a coat of Hawk Turquoise. Although primed green, the model has a blue look already.

Here, Gergely has had the Blue Ink treatment plus another layer of Hawk Turquoise again to light up the surface of the skin. Otherwise, the entire skin would have been completely dark blue.

Here, Gergely has his highlights done on the skin after I simply added Ultramarine Blue and Wolf and Ash Grey in increasing amounts. The rocks, finger and toe nails plus the hair were painted brown as the base color for the orange.

It took me a long time to decide on what my "third color" was supposed to be next to blue and yellow. Originally I thought I wanna do grey, but that would have given a very cold look to my models. Despite I planned on having them on winter bases, I felt the need that at least part of the model has a rather warm look. Looking at the color wheel again I realized that using red would overload the wagon as it would result in a very colorful model. However, with red ruled out I was left with either purple or orange. I decided to go for orange since it can easily be mixed with brown and has a warm tone.

Doing the hair, the rocks, and nails was very easy - I simply added one additional drop of Lava Orange into the brown paint from the previous layer.

The rest was just detail work. The yellow loincloth was done with a layer of GW Tausept Ochre (out of production, too). Tausept Ochre was the ideal candidate because it's an old GW foundation paint that easily covers anything in just one layer of application plus it has a warm and earthy yet still yellow tone without being as bright as a really flashy kind of yellow. To further dull its effect I washed the loincloth with Army Painter Strong Tone.

Gergely's teeth had been done with what I always use for such occasions - a kind of undead yellow/white mix, in this case Army Painter Skeleton Bone that gets increasing amounts of white paint added.

Well, this is my finshed Gergely, First Troll of Dhunia. May he serve me well in all the battles still to come.

I am also very proud of the base as it's the first base I did where I didn't just simply glue sand to it. The base was done with the Tundra basing kit from GaleForce Nine plus simple baking soda mixed with white glue and water. For my new Trollbloods army I want bases that look as if my Trollbloods are walking through the last remnants of snow on the tundra before spring definitely kicks in. I want this to symbolize how Trollbloods are used to harsh conditions such as winter, yet they are marching forward with high hopes for the future.

Well, I hope you liked this blog post, more is to follow. :-)