Painting Westerners for Hell Droado


“DF Editor – Join Dave Taylor for some great painting tips! Click on any of the pictures in this article to get a closer look at the picture.”

The Westerners faction of Hell Dorado are based on the armies of the warring factions of the Thirty Years War. In the early 17th Century, although melee was still an important part of warfare, black powder weaponry was really starting to play an increasingly dominant role on the battlefield. Armor was still worn by soldiers on foot, but this tended to be restricted to helmets (with their distinctive “lobster tail” neck guards) and shiny breast (and back) plates.

With their focus on black powder and no-nonsense combat, the soldiers of the Westerner companies tend to reflect this functionality in their appearance. Well-maintained armor and sturdy linen and leathers are the order of the day. This means that when painting up your company you can expect to be using a lot of silver and brown.

In this article I cover painting the Westerners from their Starter Boxed Set.

 

Your Paints of Choice

There are many paint ranges available for painting up your miniatures, and it doesn’t really matter which paints you use. That’s completely up to you. I use  a variety of paints and ranges throughout this article, which I have named with abbreviations. These can be deciphered below:

VMC = Vallejo Model Color

VGC = Vallejo Game Color

CIT = Citadel (Games Workshop)

SWM = Secret Weapon Miniatures

GF9 = Gale Force Nine

AP = Army Painter

P3 = Privateer Press

Assembling and Basing

The very first step is to remove your models from the box and clean them up. A quick going over with a sharp hobby knife and a small file should remove any metal flash, tags, or mold lines that you always find on every metal model. The models were then assembled and glued into the bases provided using super glue. Any pieces that required gluing to the models (such as the arquebus and sword arm for Aiden St. James or the sword for Francisco Vargas) were glued to the models at this point.

I like to glue down my basing material at this point as well, so I started with some chunks of plaster from the GF9 Concrete Rubble mix, followed by some small slate chips from a CIT Urban basing kit, and then finished them off with some GF9 Superfine Basing Grit.

 

 

Priming

I typically prime all of my models black (using the CIT Chaos Black spray), but this time I also added an additional coat of AP Uniform Grey, sprayed from above at an approximately 30 degree angle. This helped to “pre-shade” the model and help me pick out the areas that would end up a bit darker on the finished models.

 

 

Painting an Arquebuser

What follows is an almost step-by-step guide for painting the mainstay of a Westerners company – the Arquebuser.

Step One – Paint all the wood and leather areas with VGC Charred Brown.

Step Two – Paint the cloth areas with VMC Beige Brown.

Step Three – Highlight the cloth with a 1:1 mix of VMC Beige Brown and VMC Pale Sand.

Step Four – Highlight the cloth with VMC Pale Sand.

Step Five – Highlight the leather areas with a 1:1 mix of VGC Charred Brown and VMC Beige Brown, then highlight with VMC Beige Brown, and finally glaze the area with CIT Seraphim Sepia.

Step Six – Paint the face with VGC Tan, then highlight with VGC Dwarf Skin, and finally highlight with a 1:1 mix of VGC Dwarf Skin and VMC Pale Sand.

Step Seven – Highlight the wood of the arquebus with a 1:1 mix of VGC Charred Brown and VMC Red Leather, then highlight with a 2:1 mix of the previous mix and VMC Pale Sand.

Step Eight – Paint all the metal areas with CIT Leadbelcher.

Step Nine – Shade the metal areas with a thinned 1:1 mix of VGC Charred Brown and VMC Black, taking care to work it into the details.

Step Ten – Highlight the metal areas with CIT Runefang Steel. Once dry, you can add more depth by pushing some thinned P3 Coal Black into the shadows.

Step Eleven – Paint the gold areas with VGC Hammered Copper, then highlight with VGC Glorious Gold, and finally highlight with a 1:1 mix of VGC Glorious Gold and CIT Runefang Steel.

Step Twelve – Paint the base with VGC Charred Brown, then drybrush with VMC Red Leather. This is followed by a light drybrush of VGC Orange Fire, and finally a light drybrush of VGC Sun Yellow.

The Finished Company of Westerners

Well, there you have it. Once you have painted your Arquebuser you are well on the way to painting your Starter Boxed Set. I painted the rest of the company in a “batch painting” style, painting each step on each miniature before moving on to the next.

With models like Francisco Vargas and Aiden St. James there were additional details that were painted at the end of the process.

 

 

Happy Painting!