Welcome Unkindled to my Legacy painting guide for the Old Iron King from Dark Souls The Board Game. Depending on the tools you have access to, this can either pretty straight forward orrrrrr a very long process as the colours Orange and Yellow are very awkward colours to paint with. There have most likely been better Oranges and yellow paints released since I did this painting guide, so please take this step by step as a rough painting guide and feel free to use alternatives that will make the job easier.
For this piece I recommend keeping the wings and body separate, as for the paints used, there wasn't many:
Mephiston Red (Pot & spraycan)
Troll Slayer Orange
Yriel Yellow
Casandora Yellow
Abbadon Black (Or any other black you like to use)
Screaming Skull
Agrax Earthshade
Vallejo Smokey Ink
Vallejo Matt Varnish
0. *Optional Extra* Add extras to the base if you want too, for my version I used a layer of Green Stuff and dug out cracks, channels and pockets for the hotter molten lava. For the bubbles so a rolled up ball of green stuff cut in half works well.
1. Ideally you want to undercoat this in a red similar to Mephiston Red (games workshop do sell a Mephiston Red spray can, you can get alternative versions and army painter sell these).
2. Apply patches of troll slayer orange over any of the raised areas, so biceps, pecs and some parts of the horns (Refer to the below pics for mapping).
*Warning! This will be the most tiresome part of the guide*
Orange + yellow are hard colours to use, as the pigmentation for them is so thin, when using them with a paintbrush they appear to steak or not apply to the model properly.
When painting with either colour it can take a lot of thin coats to get a decent result, easily between 5-10+ thin coats will be required.
Now I'm hearing some of you saying, "Why do I need to use lots of thin coats and not 1 or 2 thick coats?"
So yes you could use the paint from the tub/bottle as is and slap it onto the model, the problem with oranges and yellows is that even if you slap it on thickly the background colour still tends to peak through and you end up in a weird loop of slapping on more paint on, over and over, till you end up with a caked on mess that has hidden all the details of the model.
That's why it's best to use thinned down layers, it's very hard to hide the models details if you use thinned down coats of paint. I know it's frustrating as it doesn't look like you are applying paint to the miniature and you have to wait for it to dry before adding the next layer, but the colour will start to show over time.
Alternatively you can use an airbrush which works really well at utilising these colours, but even with an airbrush you might still need to use 1-3 layers to get a solid result. You can also use spray cans, but this is a risky choice and will require use of tactically placed tape or masking fluid to prevent the entire model being covered in orange/yellow.
3. With the orange finally done! Apply Yriel yellow to highlight the previous orange areas leaving some of the orange around it to create a transition between the yellow and the red.
*Warning! this will take just as long as doing the orange!*
Take your time with this step and don't loose patience or hope as once done, that's all the hard parts done with.
5. With the worst parts behind us we can finally move on with our lives!
Apply a coat of Casandora yellow (wash/shade) all over the model this will not only provide definition to the whole model, but will also help blend the yellow, orange and red areas.
6. Apply a dry brush of Mephiston Red to raised areas you want to be darker so for example the sides of the six pack and chest, as we only want yellow/orange in-between cracks some parts of the body (reference 6).
7. *Warning main body piece not wing piece*
Apply a dry brush of black all over previously red dry brushed areas.
You can go as heavy as you want, but I recommend holding back a little as it does well to have more of the reds, oranges and yellows peeping through. You can also use the black dry brush to fix any areas you might make a mess of in the next steps.
*Bonus tip for wings* Before starting the next steps I recommended using masking tape or blue tack (if using blue tack apply a layer of Matt varnish and let it dry first) to the flesh of the wings so as not to mess up the previous progress as we are doing the wing spines during this next part as well.
8. Apply screaming skull to the frontal face area, the roots of the two head horns, the back spikes and the bones on the wings (tip and second segment, 3rd segment just paint black and the bicep bones of the wing). For areas like the horns you can either carefully paint this on to avoid the cracks or little build up the paint using dry brushing (so the complete opposite of what I did in my pic, where I accidentally slapped it on).
9. Apply a coat of Agrax Earthshade to the previously painted bone areas/horns, leave to dry then apply a second thinned down coat, adding less nearer to the tips of the spines and wings.
10. Then apply a layer of Vallejo Smokey ink to the bone areas, starting at roughly a third or at the middle segment and painting towards the root/darker areas of the horns/spines. This will even out the gradient between the black and the bone,
*Warning* this stuff is pretty thick so take small dabs of paint and start from the the black root and pull the brush towards the lighter area*
11. Apply a drybursh of Screaming Skull to tips of wings, horns and face.
12. If you used any, now is the time to remove any masking tape or bluetack and apply a drybursh of Mephiston Red to refresh the red on the wings and a light bit of red to wing spines which helps them all blend together.
13. Do a light drybrush of black to the flesh found on the wings and feel free to use this method to fix any parts of the model you may have accidentally flicked or spilt paint on.
14. Paint the eyes Ariel yellow and as an optional extra paint a spot on the palm of outreached hand to create a glow, although for best results use an airbrush for the glow on the palm.
15. Apply Casandora yellow shade to eyes. (For palm just a spot of white)
16. *Optional extra* Base to preference, but I've included pics of how I built up lava using previously used paints. I did the yellow base coat back at step 3.
Once the orange and red had been applied to the base I simply did a light drybrush of black over the the base, followed by a grey.
17. *Optional extra* MATT VARNISH! you want to keep this bad boy safe from the elements.
And that's the Old Iron King done! If you liked what you read and have thoughts or would like to see more content like this feel free to leave a note in the comments.
Martin
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