How to: Ogroid Thaumaturge

Here I go, dipping toes in content creation… I've been wanting to give that a try for a while. Now seems like a great start as I've been overwhelmed with questions on my Ogroid I only finished painting yesterday. Therefore, I'll focus on the bits people commented on.
I'm painting every evening and the full process of this model took me precisely one week.

The things you "need"

I'll leave out the very basics (glue, cutters, etc.).

These are the paints ended up my desk. I grouped them a bit by parts I used them on. You don't need all of these, can safely use different brands etc.

I used oils for the tattoos (bottom left), the rest is acrylics from several brands

But, if do feel the need to find yourself an excuse to buy more stuff (hehe):

• "Livery Green" from Vallejo Game Color is what makes the fire pop, and its always good to have a turquoise and a purple.
• Oil paints to get the tattoos done
• Yes, I use an airbrush
• Yes, you can't have enough stuff to create bases with
• Yes, buy good sable brushes (I give my Squidmar brushes a spin on this model) and a wet palette
• Lately, I tend to work a lot with inks (Inktensity from Scalecolor, Liquitex) and heavier body acrylics (Kimera, Scalecolor Artist).

Assembling and priming

I assembled the entire model, except for the top of his staff. As it gets a bit in the way of other parts and is easy to glue on later. I glue in on its base only temporarily.

Then I applied a glossy black primer and use the airbrush to do a bit of sketching of my light (using an airbrush and some white ink).

Skin and Tattoos

With the airbrush I worked on the first colors.

Started with Orcish Blemish from Scalecolor, transitioned from purple, to violet to oxford blue with a bit of black.

The skin is airbrushed

Then, I started on the tattoos with oil colors.
A nice property of thinned down (with white spirit) oil colors, is that it just flows into crevices much more nicely than water-based paints. Plus, it can be cleaned much easier afterwards (with a brush dipped in white spirit and then dried).

I used Abteilung 502 Turquoise Lights and made it lighter with Yellow and a tiny bit of White.

After the first layer, I waited for the next day, cleaned it up and repeated this step, to get better coverage.

oils for the tattoos

The Flame

This needed to be the brightest spot of the mini, so in the eye socket, I went from Titanium White, to Livery Green (VGC), to Caribbean Blue (SC), to Turquoise Deep (Liquitex — which I used on his hair as well).
As fire is light source, you paint 'inverted', the deepest flames burn brightest and the outer parts are darker.

The first pass. I intensified the lights and darks a bit more later on

Belt and Eye

On NMM, my techniques aren't solid enough to give you any advice there. Hopefully at a later point.

So for the eye, I started with a mustard-yellow, and pushed some violet ink into the edges, which creates an 'off black' and drew a circle with violet as well.
I then highlighted the white of the eye towards an Glacier Blue (VGC) and stippled on various values and hues of blues. I tried to mimic the reflection of the flame, by reusing that bright Livery Green into the upper left corner.

Base

I love creating my own bases!

I used cork, Earth Texture (Vallejo Diorama Effects), several bits (Lumineth Warden, Chaos Spawn) and some chain and Crunch plates (GreenStuffWorld)

Cork and crunch plates — texture paint and bits — and primed black plus white ink

I airbrushed a black primer and some white ink. The benefit of white ink is that I don't need much of a thick coat when I apply the colors.
Then I airbrushed on some colors (greens and violets) and drybrushed the thing with lighter variants.

I ended up with quite a bright base, almost drawing more attention than the model, but was able to tune it down but adding more violet.

after airbrushing — painting — toning down with violet

Final Step: Taking pictures

I left out a couple of uninteresting parts and I now called the model 'done'.

At this point, its important to take that extra few minutes to take some good pictures before showing it off to the rest of the world.
REALLY, you want to do this! It's so much more rewarding for your work. Especially in times like these, when people only see your painted models virtually.

I used a cheap and small lightbox (GreenStuffWorld), with my additional desk light and and old DSLR + 100mm macro lens.
A modern phone takes pretty decent pictures too, but the DSLR gives me a bit more control, more consistent exposure and white balance. Afterwards, I fixed the black background and removed some dust particles.

The end result is posted on my instagram.

I truly hope you enjoyed and found this helpful. Let me know any thoughts, how to improve the content or format. I just might get into making more content like this.