Warhammer - March of the Dwarfs

Hi and welcome to my first post on my new Warhammer army, the Dwarfs. 

I must admit that previously my experience with Games Workshop products has been mainly limited to 40k, with some LotR flirtations. 

But recently Ben at my local store introduced me to the Warhammer fantasy game. I loved it. The strategy of the movement phase really resonated with me and I knew I had to get in on the action full time!

I picked up some Dwarf warriors and immediately got painting. 

Below you can see the 4 guys I started off with, let's call them Cacofonix, Fulliautomatix, Asterix and Vitalstatistix. (I loved these books as a kid)

I'm a big advocated of base coating models with a brush rather than spray paint. You have a lot more control and there aren't any gaps (which always seems to happen to me with spray paint). 

A helpful tip Ben have me  just a little too late for these models... Always attach the shields after painting! I usually try and paint as much as I can separately but I was too carried away with these guys. 

After base coating my guys I set about dry brushing them with leadbelcher and doing a quick wash of Nuln Oil to highlight the details in the chain mail. Don't worry about the dry brushing getting on the wrong parts of the model, you need to catch all of the "metal" parts and can paint over the rest later. 

The next thing to do is paint the all the hair! Seriously Dwarfs are just beards and chain mail, once that is done most of the battle is won. For beards I tried to keep it simple, the blond beards were Zandri Dust, brown Mournfang Brown, Black Abaddon Black and red (ginger?) was some wild rider red, although I may throw in a little Khorne Red to calm it down a bit next time. 

For the gold I used Gehanna's Gold. A thin coat on top of the dry brushed metal gives a very pale gold but I went for a few more layers to give my champion a darker and more striking colour. For the face and hands I went for Bugman's Glow. It's a darker skin tone than I usually use for Caucasian models but as Dwarfs are more gruff and grubby I felt it worked. 

After some investigation I decided to go for a Karak Varn, I can already imagine running campaigns to reclaim a lost home and strike the entry from the book of grudges, theme for my warriors. The general consensus via Google was that the colours I should use were red and blue. The Kantor Blue base with Khorne Red trim seemed to work a lot better than the reverse and created a bit of a "turn of the 20th century" French Army regalia for them which could prove quite striking with a whole army on the battlefield. 

After that it was just a case of highlighting where needed. I went over the edges of the helmets with leadbelcher and used Ceramite White for the wrap on the handle (thanks YouTube!). Once everything was in place I went over it with Agrax Earthshade and voila! A simple but effective colour scheme. 

There are some details I am still adding though...