PAINTING: Tomb Prince Al Ptramose

Looks like I was inspired by the Mini of the Week last week. My Tomb Kings are really inspiring me at the moment and I've had this guy sitting around for a month or so now just waiting for some paint.

I picked up this guy for a discount at my local store since he was still in metal and not finecast, which was fine with me, the more metal the better.

I didn't have much of a plan when I started him beyond using my army's colors of turquoise and white. I knew his loin cloth straps and shoulder/neck guard were going to be turquoise with a white cloak but his weird leather skin kilt thing threw me for a loop. I really didn't want it to look like human flesh since I thought that was kind of tacky for Tomb Kings so I was kind of stumped. I randomly chose one of my leathery browns, the new Vermin Brown equivalent, and started mixing different paints in starting with a flesh tone but ended up mixing in more black which gave me the final color. This was then highlighted up by mixing in Ushabi Bone.

Since this guy is royalty I made more of his armor into gems then normal to reflect his wealth. It seemed like a simple idea but proved a little bit more difficult once I had to work around his beard and raised arm. I painted the gems around his waist white which was a first for me and I am really happy with how they turned out, I definitely think they are convincing and they were pretty fun. They are just Rakarth Flesh shaded down by mixing in black and highlighted by mixing in white.

Once I was about 80% done with the entire model I decided that the color balance was off since there are no gems on his legs to break up the gold. I don't like to do any sculpting on painted models but I figured this was an easy enough task. The newer Tomb King models have plenty of little stylized skulls all over them and I have recently become an expert at sculpting these after having to do about 20 of them on another project. You can see the green stuff skulls on the nearly done model above. The skull on his base is from Secret Weapon Miniatures and added a nice final touch to break up the sand.

I am pretty happy with how this guy turned out, I feel like he gives a slight Lawrence of Arabia vibe with his white headdress. Like an undead, Egyptian Lawrence. I am always messing around with new photo techniques and put together a quick backdrop in photoshop for this mini. I printed it out and used it as my actual backdrop, its not photoshopped in later. I like it a lot and might use it for all of my future Tomb King stuff, although I will of course still take some photos with a traditional white background for a more uncluttered look.

Hopefully Prince Al Ptramose will be leading my army into victory over my friend's Lizardmen soon, my Herald hasn't fared so well.

Be sure to vote for him on Cool Mini or Not here.

Until next time,

Tyler M.

If you have any questions about specific painting recipes or techniques let me know in the comments and I will be sure to detail them in the future. Stay on the lookout for a tutorial on how to sculpt those skull icons sometime soon.