Darklands: The Ysians

It's been quite a while since my last post on this blog and it seems that the fast Kingdom Death painting wore me out. Also I still have lots of Kingdom Death miniatures on the table, I felt the urge to do some "easy painting" to get myself motivated again. The motivation returned, but for another part of my collection. Shortly after the KD Kickstarter I discovered another manufacturer called Mierce Miniatures from the UK, who are producing some of the nicest and most stunning resin models I have ever seen. By now I backed all three of their Kickstarter projects and my collection grows constantly, but I did not start painting them immediately, as I was unsure whether I should use them for dioramas, Warhammer stand-ins or for the actual game they're supposed for called Darklands. 

Recently I decided for the later solution and built some smallish hosts from my collection. In the following I'd like to present you the first: The Ysians.

Darklands is based in the ancient United Kingdoms/Northern Europe and creates a world in which the mythic beasts from old tales actually exist. The Ysians hail from Ker-Ys an infamous city of legend from the northern coast of France. In the game their force consists of barbarian warriors, beasts of legend like the Manticor or Chimera and strange creations of mutated humans and beasts.

It is strange that I started my painting with them, as they weren't actually a kindred I'm too fond of, but "Druc, the Meat-Hulk" somehow tempted me to just paint it on a quite afternoon.

Obviously it was quite important for that kindred to find a nice flesh tone for all those muscles and exposed flesh. I also wanted to use my (super-cheap) airbrush on Druc and so decided to use exclusively Vallejo paints, as they're easy to pour and mix. The whole concept for the Ysians was a uniform look of earth-tones that carries the wasteland theme. So the skin was based on dark brown and then I added Heavy Skin tone for every following layer. The airbrush worked so well on Druc that I used it on the brutes as well. In the end I had painted the whole force, Druc, 4 brutes and the character on a single day. So the whole stuff could be considered speed painted. I actually used the easiest techniques I knew for everything. From bone to cloth to metals and bone. Everything was just dry brushed or washed.

In the end I was surprised how harmonious the small force looks on the table. I believe this is due to the awesome sculpts of the models. They basically paint themselves as the textures are so nice and crisp. So I took the decision to get the majority of my collection painted sooner than later and I plan on getting at least one 500 Gold host painted per week. (the Ysians are even more than that) Hopefully I'll be able to show you some of my favourite models of the range painted rather soon.

Thanks for reading,

Sven

The 14th legion