The rise of the White Rose

Having painted every Greek I own, it was time to look for another painting project to occupy my time. Having quite a big pile of unpainted miniatures, you would have thought the decision to be a long one. Actually, it only took five minutes to decide that the Esher Necromunda gang, which I'd purchased off EBay quite a few years ago, was next in line for completion.

If asked, many people would believe that EPIC Armageddon is my favourite wargamming system; and, considering that I own five armies and play at least once a week, you would have thought that they were onto a winner. But actually Necomunda is my favourite game system, it's just that not many people feel the same way (hence trouble getting a game).

As mentioned above, I'd bought this gang 2nd hand off eBay; therefore the first job was to put all twelve members into a jar of 'paint stripper'. These being the first models I've ever stripped, I was expecting it to be a little easier than it turned out to be. One faithful friend assured me that the paint simply 'dropped off'. After a few hours soaking, and a lot of brushing using a toothbrush (plus a few choice words directed at said friend) most of the paint had indeed come off.

Next up was 'cleaning and basing'. Fortunately, the previous owners had done a rather good job of cleaning the models and few mould lines could still be seen. For basing I'd purchased a 'Warhammer 40,000 basing kit' which is unbelievably expensive, only caters for around twenty models but has quite a lot of bits that are great for the Necromunda 'Hive'. I added milliput to each gangers base plus bent wire, metal plates, tubes, shells etc. Once dry I added a bit of sand and sent the whole gang outside to be sprayed black.

As my models were drying I contemplated a paint scheme. Within a very old White Dwarf magazine, I will always remember a Necromunda game, with an Esher gang called 'The Black Orchid'. I thought the name was rather good, however I couldn't just steal it. After contemplating 'The White Orchid', 'The White Rose', 'The Red Rose' etc I settled on 'The White Rose'. Now I suppose your wondering what on earth my gang name has to do with the paint scheme chosen. Well, as it turned out, everything; as they were going to be called 'The White Rose' one of the main colours had to be ... err white. I therefore decided to make the clothes a dirty white colour using Dheneb Stone with a very light wash (and I mean light) of Devlan Mud.

With the clothes sorted next was the skin colour. Normally I would even think about this as I'd use my usual female skin system of Snakebite Leather - 50% Snakebite Leather / 50% Elf Flesh - Elf Flesh combo. However, with the clothes already white, I was wondering whether all these light colours might impact badly on one another. Also, apart from 'fantasy figures', I have always painted white skin on all of my models without contemplating that there are literally hundreds of different skin shades - within the real world - that I hadn't experimented with ... until now.

A friend of mine gave me a link to a rather good 'skin' painting article (which can be viewed here) where I researched through all the material and decided upon a light Asian skin colour. After 'googling' more Asian women photos (for research you understand) I was surprised to find that almost every Asian female skin colour nearly always goes 'whiteish' when directly hit by the sun. This fact made one choice easy, I was going to highlight my base colour with Elf Flesh ... but what was I going to use as my base colour?

First up I tried Scorched Brown...





















Now, I think I can safely say that my first attempt didn't quite go how I planned; to me, This model looks more 'white' than 'Asian'. The first mistake was that I highlighted too much, but I also believe that my base colour was incorrect. On the plus side, I found out that Scorched Brown - 75% Scorched Brown / 25% Elf Flesh makes a brilliant combo for African skin.

For my second attempt I changed my base colour and went with Calthan Brown ...





















This mix of Calthan Brown and Elf Flesh, I think, has worked a lot better than my first attempt. It's still not perfect and, as my third model can testify, it's quite difficult to get the same shade more than once. Still the great thing about skin colour is that, because there are so many variations, it's difficult to get it wrong. On the down side because there are so many variations, it's difficult to get a match.

So what do you think?