Painting the Fanticide Fae

The Satyrs and Brownies ready for flocking

I finally finished painting my Fae for Fanticide. I worked on them a little at a time, painting for an hour or two at a stretch. I painted them to a little better than what I call table quality. That means that I painted highlights and did a little shading, but I didn't worry about painting the tiny details like eyes. One of the best things about the Fanticide models is that they are designed specifically to be easy to paint. They only have a few tiny details, so they lend themselves perfectly to painting for actually playing games.

My camera was acting up again, so I only have a few pictures of the models in progress. If you have any questions about how I did a particular step and want to see some pictures, I'll try to do a similar paint job and get better pictures later. Just let me know what you want to see.

To paint the Fae, I worked with a variety of paints again. I primed the models with Games Workshop Black Primer, and then base coated everything with Design Master Colortool October Brown spray paint. I normally like to prime my models white and then give them a wash. I used the black primer and spray this time because I wanted to paint these as quickly as possible and all of the models have colors that should work best with a brown base coat. Spraying the brown paint mainly from the top of the models also creates some natural shading on the models.

The other paints I used were a mix of Citadel Colour paints (the ones made by Coat d'Arms that Games Workshop sold in the late 80s and early 90s), Games Workshop paints (the ones in the hard plastic bottles), Games Workshop wash (the newer soft plastic bottles), and Ceramcoat, Apple Barrel, and Americana acrylic craft paints. I thinned the paints 1:1 using my normal thinning solution. In the pic below, you can see the models, my palette, some of my brushes, and most of the paints I used laid out on my paint desk.

Ready to paint

The first thing I did was cover the blank spots left by the primer and base coat with Games Workshop Scorched Brown. This prevents bare metal from showing through on the finished models. The color is close enough to the the black primer/brown spray base that this doesn't really stand out. The next step was to darken some of the areas of the models with Games Workshop Badab Black wash. I painted the fur, hair, and armor areas with undiluted wash. I normally like to thin my paints and washes, but I wanted a dark solid wash on these without having to do several coats.
 

Models after washing darker areas

Once the wash dried, I started highlighting the fur and legs. I drybrushed the fur on the satyr's legs and the squirrel with Games Workshop Dark Flesh. I did a basic highlight on the legs of the satyrs and brownies and the antlers of the Satyr Legend with Games Workshop Bestial Brown. I painted the quivers and straps with the Bestial Brown as well.

Legs and fur with basic highlights

With the highlighting done on the legs, I turned to doing the flesh on the satyrs. I like to use a mix of Games Workshop Bestial Brown and Games Workshop Bleached Bone for a lot of different paint tasks. Rather than have to make a mix every time I want to use it, I mixed a bottle of each with some thinner and stored it in a large plastic paint container. I have a couple of these kinds of mixes that I keep around. Some are for general use - Bestial Brown/Bleached Bone and Dwarf Flesh/Bleached Bone - and others are mixes for specific projects - Blood Red/Terracotta for some space marines I painted, for instance. Pre-mixing like this helps keep the colors consistent across a large project and saves some time for the general colors.

Pre-mixed colors will save you some time

I painted a base coat of my Bestial Brown and Bleached Bone mix on the flesh on the satyrs' torsos, arms, and faces. For this coat, I avoided the deepest crevices and creases in the flesh areas to create a first basic highlight.

Bestial Brown/Bleached Bone highlight on satyrs' flesh

From the brown base, I built up the highlights on the flesh in layers. I painted a thin layer of each color, working the highlights up to the highest parts of the musculature on the figures, blending each color up from the one below it. I painted with Games Workshop Dwarf Flesh, a 1:1 pre-mix of Games Workshop Dwarf Flesh and Games Workshop Bleached Bone, and Citadel Colour Elf Flesh. Because of the size of the brownies, I didn't worry too much about lots of highlights on their flesh. For the brownies, I just gave them a quick highlight with dwarf flesh.

Flesh and fur on the satyrs finished

With the flesh finished, I took a quick look at the squirrel with the brownies. I wanted to have a reddish-orange color to the fur, so I gave it a final drybrush with Citadel Colour Fiery Orange. The figure kept a lot of depth and and the reddish color of the underlying brown, but picked up the orangeness of the final drybrush.

Next I did some touch-up work. When I paint models, I always make some mistakes. Most of these, I can just let go and move on, but some of them would be glaringly obvious on the finished models. For the latter, I go in and do some touch ups before I move on to the final details. On the satyrs, that meant touching up a few faces, plenty of mustaches, spears and legs that got painted with flesh, and so on. You can see a couple examples in the pic below, specifically his mustache and the areas around his hands.

A couple mistakes that need correcting

To correct the mistakes, I painted over them with Games Workshop Scorched Brown and highlighted where appropriate.

Touch ups finished

Finally, I turned to the details. I used a little Citadel Colour Snakebite Leather to highlight the quivers on the Shootists and the antlers on the Satyr Legend.

I used Games Workshop Desert Yellow to paint the bows, spear shafts, and arrows. For these, I used a little extra thinning solution in the mix and painted along the length of the spears and bows. That produced some streaking that helps create a bit of depth.

I painted the tassels on the spears and the fletchings on the arrows with a base coat of Ceramcoat Quaker Grey. I highlighted them with a bit of Apple Barrel White.

For the metal, I wanted a bronze look rather than steel, because of the traditional Fae vulnerability to iron. I base coated the metal on the squirrel's armor, the brownies' swords and shields, and the spear tips with Citadel Colour Dwarf Bronze. I highlighted the edges with Citadel Colour Mithril Silver.

I painted the vines on the Satyr Master's club with a Citadel Colour Dark Angels Green base coat followed by a highlight of Americana Foliage Green.

Finally, I drybrushed the bases and mushrooms with Games Workshop Desert Yellow followed by Games Workshop Bleached Bone. I washed the mushrooms with the Bleached Bone to smooth the color as a final highlight.

The only thing left to do one these now is flock the bases and seal them.

Fae Shootists

Brownies

Satyr Master and Legend

Satyr Stickers