Aard Paints: Dust Scorpions!

[Aard_Rinn]

I love scorpions, and I was very excited to get ahold of a small clutch of them at last year's Reapercon! I'm not a huge fan of the way these guys are set up on their base (It's a little perfectly-flat disk, kind of hard to get Greenstuff between the legs) which is why it took so long to get started, but I finally spent an evening basing them up, and after that, it went really smoothly! Did all eight in the course of about two hours.

 

 

I made painting these guys as simple as I could, since they've got a lot of texture and I didn't want to have to spend a lot of time chasing details. Originally, I planned to do a yellow colorscheme, but after I saw @Jen's beautiful work on them here I decided I wanted to work more reds and browns into the colors - which, in the end, I think works better with the tufts I got to use on the base.

 

I started by priming black, and then basecoating with a layer of Urgathoa Red. It's a really solid, brick-dark red that worked perfectly for this - I've been really pleased with the Pathfinder paints so far! Then I drybrushed the body with Golden Shadow, which brought out the details, but not as fine as I'd have liked. So, I drybrushed it again, even lighter, with Osirian Sand, which I also used for the base - it's very, very pale, almost white, and I'll warn you it dries lighter than in the bottle if you buy it.

 

I then used very very thin glazes of Merisiel Red on the tails and claws to highlight them and draw the eye, and dotted the tip of the tail in Pure Black. A couple thin coats of Army Painter Soft Wash followed, and then a coat of 'Ardcoat to give them some gloss. Annoyingly, a little gold from some Egyptian stuff I was working on got into the gloss, so there are little gold flecks on a few of them, but not too noticeable... 

 

 

This guy was probably the worst-hit of the bunch.

 

Then I waited a few days to finish them because... new tufts! I had a couple of recommendations of Tajima1 bases and I have to say - they're fantastic! I've used them on a couple different projects at this point, although this is the first one I'm posting, and they're much better than Army painter - they're on a soft, flexible adhesive that actually sticks to the bases, so no more carefully supergluing stuff down, and they have these desert/moorlands/field strips that are like little 1" flocks that you can pull apart or place down whole. These guys used the desert ones, which gave me a nice mix of tall grasses, velvety short grasses, bushes and rocks that worked really well for basing them up.

 

I'm really happy with how these came out, and there's more to come - I'm working on a giant scorpion to match at the moment, as well as a giant scarab beetle, and at some point soon I should have a chance to post my mummies!

[Glitterwolf]

[Marineal]

Those are fantastic! I love seeing a whole platoon of something painted so well! I think the red adds a lot of visual interest. 

[Inarah]

Those came out really well, thanks for sharing the painting method.  The basing adds a lot to the simple figures. 

[Highlander]

Great job.

 

Times 8.

[Iridil]

Wonderful, chitinous glory. Really like the contrast with the bases that using the red gave - thanks for sharing how you did them.

[Kangaroorex]

Im Jealous.  Those are really nice and the time is so much faster than what I have been able to produce.  I have been trying to paint faster but it never looks right.

 

Really nice job on these, and you did a great job giving them an active base and some depth where the base and mini is rather flat.