"Oh! Are you hungry?"
she asked, turning to the Troll, who was just then yawning so
widely that he displayed two rows of terrible teeth and a mouth big
enough to startle anyone. "Dreadfully hungry," answered the Mauler,
snapping his jaws together with a fierce click. "Then why don't you eat
something?" she asked. "It's no use," said the Mauler sadly. "I've tried
that, but I always get hungry again."
As suggested by my colleague colleague, the first warbeast I wanted to tackle was the Dire Troll Mauler. It offered me the chance to get into summa dat good exposed troll flesh and work on building up some techniques for painting large amounts of beast, muscle tissue, and different textures when compared to the infantry. Aside from that, painting a warbeast is always a genuine pleasure since they can each quickly become a centerpiece for forces of small to medium sizes.
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| Sweet mercy, so much flesh |
Our Dire Mauler here was no exception. However, when looking at the model at first with all the various types of custom work done by my partner, the model already seemed to have a color scheme that was a little difficult to look past for a then neophyte beast painter such as myself. So, the first step I took was to basecoat the entire model in a single color the start mentally assembling the hodgepodge of colors that would eventually become the Massive Musclebound Mauler.™
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| Yes, you too, can experience muscle gains like this with the M3 training program! |
The base layer was the same Eshin Grey paint I use to base coat everything. I applied the basecoat using a brush, rather than a spray base. Don't read into that though, this was merely a product of wanting to use a specific color, not using an airbrush, and not really having a permanent workstation as of yet. Once that was done, it was much easier to see the monster that could be, the as yet partially realized ferocity.
For colors, I wanted to go for a more stereotypical shade of green for my first beast. I painted this model long before the idea to start an official project log began, some point in 2015, so regrettably there are no progress shots of this model, nor could I remember each particular paint that was used.
All digression aside, the skin's base coat was a standard looking Kelly Greenish color, then washed in Biel-Tan Green to deepen the shadows while retaining that quintessential color. Then, instead of picking out the raised areas with wet paint on the brush and going for a high contrast comic book feel, I drybrushed a paler shade of green across the Mauler's rippling musculature. This was done to catch the raised edges while keeping a blended flesh tone without the use of an airbrush. The mouth was painted using an old GW color, Scab Red, as a basecoat on the tongue and mouth, and Zamesi Desert on the teeth. The whole mouth area was then washed in GW Agrax Earthshade, which I've found is one of the single most useful paints it ever been my pleasure to use. I also have spilled that ONE SPECIFIC PAINT more than any other as well. The teeth were then highlighted in another old GW color, Bleached Bone and the tongue in a much lighter red.
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| Hit that signature pose every time |
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| Shot of some extra detail on the left arm, plenty more models with plenty more custom modeling work will soon follow |
Overall, the look I was trying to capture was an older strain of troll genetics with this model, using a more cartoonish shade of green on the Mulg's share of the model. As previously stated, genetic diversity is an IMPERATIVE for a successful army of slobbering monsters.
