Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sponge

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How to Paint: Zhufbar Dwarfs

In which I get ready for Dawi to return to The Old World...

With The Old World bringing back two of my white whales from my childhood in the form of Bretonnians and Dwarfs I’ve had a lot of fun projects this year. I wanted to do a slightly different Dwarf scheme than the old green and gold I remember seeing in White Dwarf as a kid and settled on the old Zhufbar livery of white and light blue. It makes for a striking force on the table top and is relatively speedy to paint up as detailed below!

N.B: If I don’t specify a brand I’m using Citadel paints. You can swap for similar Citadel colours although I do highly recommend the Army Painter tones as they work out of the pot and are used in the Marine Juice recipe.

Setting yourself up for success

As mentioned in my previous painting guide I do a Zenithal+ undercoat as so:

  1. Black undercoat.

  2. Heavy zenithal drybrush* of Mechanicus Standard Grey.

  3. Lighter zenithal drybrush of Administratum Grey.

  4. A lighter still drybrush of Corax White.

  5. Final highlight of Pro Acryl Bold Titanium White.

This should leave you with some nice shadows and strong highlights over which to apply your washes and contrast paints:

Zenithal undercoat with extra steps

*I used Artis Opus drybushes if you are interested...

How To

  1. Paint all the metal parts with base colours:

    • Darkstar Platinum for the chainmail

    • Darkstar Tarnished Steel for the weapon parts

    • Runelord Brass for the helmet metallics as well as some details to add variety

    • Pro Acryl Rich Gold for the gold details

  2. Wash the silver metallics with Army Painter Dark Tone

  3. Wash the gold and brass with Army Painter Strong Tone

  4. Paint the blue trim with Lothern Blue

  5. Paint the cloth with Ulthuan Grey

  6. Use Gagrak’s Sewer contrast on the helmet and leathers

  7. Use Gulliman Flesh contrast on the skin

  8. Use Black Templar contrast on the boots

  9. Use Skeleton Horde on the horns

  10. Paint the beard with a basecoat:

    • Thinned down black for a black beard

    • Balor Brown for blonde

    • Rhinox Hide for dark brown

    • Dawnstone for grey

    • Doombull Brown for reddish brown

  11. Wash all the non-metallic areas with Sonic Sledgehammer’s Marine Juice

  12. Highlight silver metallics with Runefang Steel

  13. Highlight gold and brass with Canoptek Alloy

  14. Highlight the blue with a 50:50 mix of Lothern Blue and Ulthuan Grey

  15. Highlight the cloth with watered down Pro Acryl Bold Titanium White

  16. Highlight the beards as so:

    • Mix in some bone colour to make a higlight of the brown/blonde beards

    • Highlight the grey beards with white

    • Highlight the black beards with a light grey

  17. Highlight the flesh with Bugman’s Glow

  18. Paint the eyes with a small brush using an off white

  19. Dot the eyes with black

  20. Paint the base rims with Dawnstone

  21. Use a suitable basing material such as Geek Gaming Scenic’s Base Ready Mountain Pass

The scheme is relatively quick to get down with most of the shading done using Marine Juice and simple highlights. You could always do more blending to improve the highlights but for painting an army I think this gets the balance about right between speed and quality.

I’m really happy with how these turned out:

If you enjoyed this make sure to check out my painting Instagram, painting Twitter and painting Mastodon accounts and feel free to use the Element Games Affiliate link below to get discounted minis and send some money my way too!

Tom Out!

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Inspiration

1. Zhufbar - Respect Your Ancestors. Never Trust An Elf. And Always Hold A Grudge.