From Zero to Hero II: The Journeyman Warcaster

Hey everyone,

today I will be covering the painting of the Cygnar Journeyman Warcaster. It´s a very nice model, although in my opinion with one or two flaws. For one thing, the sword looks more like a club as there is no real edge to it. And secondly, the posture made it very difficult to paint the left side of the face, as it was almost obscured by the armor.

But lets see, what we can make of this model.



I started breaking out my trusty airbrush and gave the whole mini a nice even coat of grey primer.

I then started to work on the armor, building up the Falcon Turquoise in thin layers. When that was done, I did a zenithal highlight of a 1:1 mix of Falcon Turquoise and Electric Blue. For this technique you hold the airbrush in a 45° angle above the figure an dust it with the brighter color. All upwards facing areas get a nice highlight this way, although if you only do a slightly different color it can be hard to notice.

Then I started to work on the cloth areas, which were to be painted Ivory, to fit the general tone of my army. Here I used multiple thinned down coats, to achieve a smooth finish - as whites are some of the most difficult colors to use.

For shading I wanted to give the cloth areas a thinned wash of badab black - disaster... The wash dried splotchy and uneven an gave the impression that the Journeyman Warcaster can´t afford his laundry bill - so I redid the whole basecoat and thought about a different approach.

Disaster I

In the end I use a light grey in the recesses and added pure white on top of the folds as a highlight. Very subtle but quite nice in the end.

I then started to work on the other areas of the mini. All ornate parts of the armor got a basecoat of Brassy Brass and all leather parts Calthan Brown.

I Then taped off the mini for some airbrush work on the sword. Which looks quite out of place by the way. A sword should look sharp and lethal - on this figure it looks like you should club your enemies to death with it, not cut them up.

On the sword I started with Falcon Turquoise on the base and worked my way to the tip up with first Electric Blue and finally Skull White. When I was satisfied I used a coat of gloss varnish to seal my airbrush work.

When I removed the masking tape, disaster number two occured: Because I forgot to wash the mini thoroughly before priming, some of the casting release agent must have been still on the figure. Which caused the paint just to rip off...

I used Tallarn Flesh on the face, followed by a wash of Ogryn Flesh. The I built the tallarn flesh back up and added more and more Cadmium Skin into the mix to give it definition. I painted the eyesockets white and dotted the pupils in carefully, trying to avoid an "unnatural" look.

The goggles where basecoated Bloody Red and then highlighted with Orange Fire and Sun Yellow. Finally, a white reflection dot was added opposite of the yellow to simulate light from above.

Lastly, I tightened up all colors on the model and added one or two details. I used a Soft Body Black Wash in the recesses to add shadows and definition and also to tone down some of the metals, to give the figure more of a grimy look.

I based the model using grit, which was drenched in Awesomepaintjobs Armor Wash to give it a more natural texture. I then added a screw detail which I rusted with pigments and some static grass. After all that was finished and let some time to dry, I repainted the lip of the base black.

As a last step I used first gloss varnish for protecting my paintjob and the matte varnish to get rid of the sheen caused by the first varnish coat.

I hope this tutorial may help some of you!

As always, enjoy and have fun,


IK-Painter