Even his name means "Big"...

Hello all, well, somewhat faster than expected, the Giant is finished!

He was a lot of fun to paint - hence the speed of painting - and also led to me doing a great deal of thinking how to make him fit in with the existing army. This is more of a problem than you might think, he is essentially a huge pink dude in a horde of green and black fellas. To get over this I made sure that all of the colours on the model - aside from the skin - are taken from the army itself. The yellows, blacks, greens and so on are all painted in exactly the same way as in the army. Check out the green on the trouser leg, it is actually the same green as the goblin flesh tone. Fortunately we don't have to worry too much about the model fitting in perfectly as he is massive. Forward Ms. Funnymoney to demonstrate:

See? "Giant" is not just a name for this fellow. Lets have a closer look at some of the elements of this wonderful model.

The flesh is the biggest job on a Giant so that came first. You would think it is easier to paint the skin on a larger figure. Nothing could be further from the truth. You have to delicately blend many, many layers of shading and highlighting to make it a smooth transition. I used my usual Tallarn Flesh and Bleached Bone mixes but with lots more layers than usual. The Ogryn Flesh washes had a little Thraka Green added to knock back the "pinkness" of the skin. On such a large model it can seem a little cartoonish. Once all of the shading and highlighting is complete I then added the stubble and body hair. This was achieved using the method shown in the excellent "Painting Faces Redux" article that Games Workshop produced. Essentially it is thin washes of a mix of grey, brown, black and Tallarn flesh with then little squiggly - technical term that - lines of the stubble mix and Tallarn Flesh for the body hair. Rehighlighting the skin knocks the stubble into the skin and prevents it from looking like it is floating on the surface.

The gravestone club was a lot of fun to play with. Lots of careful drybrush steps from Charadon Granite all the way up to Fortress Grey to give texture to the stone (it is perfectly smooth in actuality) and then stippled Camo Green and Camo Green and Vermin Brown mix to indicate lichen. Finally a wash of a mix of Devlan Mud and Thraka Green defined the details and gave it a weathered appearance.

Adding little details like dirty feet or banners of fallen foes (more on that later) is a great way of telling little stories with the figure and also giving a much more believable feel to the model.

A second club on the Giant is in the form of an entire silver birch sapling with a broken hunk of statue tied on to it.

And for armour? Captured shields and breastplates of the fallen (one with a slightly ironic "Ulric Saves" on it). When choosing the colours of the shields and banners I rather cheekily chose colour schemes that my friends have used to paint their armies in. So there is Charlie's Empire, Maisey's Bretonnians and Jen's Skaven all represented with my Averlanders also on the menu. This gives a nice sense of story to your battles with regular foes and can cause some tactical blindness on your opponants part as they attempt to erase the stain on their honour!

Of course, Jen's skaven banner (the blue one with the red and bone triangles) was the hardest! Worth it though. The barrel is also something I am happy with. The woodgrain was my usual trick of first basecoating the wooden area in Khemri brown and then picking out a few planks with a mix of Khemri brown and a few other colours to give variety. Then I use thinned Dheneb Stone to pick out the woodgrain and finally wash the whole lot with Devlan Mud.

If you want a closer look at the pictures (the stupid Blogger shadowbox thing being what it is) I have added all the original size shots to the Pirate Viking Painting Flikr feed. Come check it out and see the pictures in all their glory! Just click the image below:

And with that we come to the end of another installment, I am finally starting to recover the fine control in my hand so I feel confident enough to get back on the client painting horse now. Pictures to follow!

TTFN