Quick Naffatun step-by-step

Originally written for Smurfs In Space

What do you do when you've spent more than 24 hours and whole forests worth of carbon to travel to literally the other side of the planet to visit old friends?

Fresh air? What's that?

That's right, you sit inside and you paint tiny space men* with them.

Fair warning, this is just another step-by-step painting work in progress, so if you're not terribly interested in that please click anyway as I am terribly lonely and I get beaten if these posts don't get hits.

I recently made one of my semi-regular trips back to my sheep-infested homeland, while also acting as The Megapope's mule for plastic crack. Games Workshop gouge the crap out of their antipodean customers, so I was happy to bring him a box of Devastators that wasn't being charged at 800% markup.

Look how happy he is!

Being a gigantic nerd, I had planned ahead and bought with me an Infinity figure (another Naffatun, like the ones in one of my earlier posts). So while lascannons and heavy bolters flew from their sprues like plastic rain, I got busy painting.

I don't think that ponytail is particularly safe.

Didn't have any primer on hand, so I picked up a can of Tamya white primer. It's actually really nice, had a good tooth, and didn't wear at all. As usual I started with citadel Desert Yellow for the uniform, then Dark Flesh for armor and detailing. It'll be mostly covered by subsequent orange coats, but enough will remain in recesses to add depth.

Really, it's going to get caught on something.

My Ultramarine-obsessed host was lacking in Badab Black and Gryphonne Sepia washes**, so I had to make do with extremely watered down Snakebite Leather (for the yellow) and Chaos Black (for the grey). The brown worked better than the black, but both did their job. The highlighting on the yellow, however, is not at all up to my usual standards, and I blame the unfamiliar (and hook-ended) brush. I'll have to fix it later.

Or catch on fire.

The orange, on the other hand, turned out great. I decided not to overthink or over-blend things, and the bolder highlights coupled with the added depth from the dark flesh make it pop against the pale cloth areas. Sadly, I was missing the greys necessary for the gun and boots, as well as blue for the visor/details, so this is as far as I could get. I thought it was worth posting though, as I'm pleased with how much I could get done in just a couple of hours - it's always much more fun to paint with someone else.



* Actually, in this case a tiny space woman. Unlike most tiny space women, she is wearing sensible clothing and no combat heels. Sadly she has not avoided Gigantic Boob Armor Syndrome, but I guess we can't have everything.

** I think they're too dirty for Ultramarines.