This post was migrated from my earlier blog:
Painting The Lord of the Rings Miniatures.
The world is changed…
I feel it in the water…
I feel it in the earth…
I smell it in the air…
Citadel recently added six new paints to their already vast collection: Blood for the Blood God, Typhus Corrosion, Ryza Rust, Nihilakh Oxide, Nurgle’s Rot and Agrellan Earth. The day they were released to the public I bought all six of them and began experimenting with Agrellan Earth and Blood for the Blood God.
Agrellan Earth is similar in many ways to the Citadel Texture paints in that it is used primarily for basing miniatures. It differs from the Texture range in that it is not used to simulate the look of stone or wet mud. Instead, it is painted rather thickly onto a base and left to dry (which should take about an hour for most bases). When this happens, cracks will start to appear in the paint, giving it a look of dry, cracked mud or (if it’s painted white) a salt desert. The size of the cracks depends on the thickness of the paint, with thicker applications producing larger cracks, and with a thin layer producing smaller ones. I used a 25mm round base to test this paint (above), applying quite a thick layer of the stuff. After it had dried, I covered the base with Lahmian Medium to stop the terrain from flaking off. I then gave it a slight wash of Agrax Earthshade and (once it had dried) drybrushed the terrain with Karak Stone. To finish the base off, I painted the rim with Gorthor Brown.
Blood for the Blood God
One of the paints about which I was most excited was Blood for the Blood God, a disgusting Technical paint designed for adding blood and gore to miniatures. I tested this paint on a Moria Goblin spearman (more on that in the next post) and then decided to try it on one of these cracked bases (I had made another for this very purpose). I made this second base (below) using a slightly thinner layer of Agrellan Earth and, omitting the Agrax Earthshade this time, drybrushed it with Karak Stone. This paint becomes transparent when applied thinly and dries with a high-gloss finish, creating a look of fresh blood on a miniature or base. I made sure that the blood got in the cracks in the earth and even went so far as to have it flowing into a dip in the earth. I used a fine detail brush to make some drips going off in some direction (perhaps the wounded soldier stumbled away). I think this new paint works well when you want to add a suitably disgusting effect to a model, although I usually tend to focus more on rust and grime.