First Few Custom Doors

So as you may of seen in my last few posts, I've shifted attention towards getting my zealot double doors painted up. and to make it a little more interesting for myself and the overall dungeony feel I decided i was going to customize them ALL!

Be it very minor customisations to slightly more flamboyant themed doors. so with the help of a little greenstuff and a route through my bits box ive finally managed to get them all customised and have now finished my first 4.

DWARF TOMB

The idea here was that with a very little bit of change i could make something somewhat slightly resemble a dwarven doorway. adding some hammers to the base of the arch and a dwarven rune (master rune of kingship) would be a nice little touch too. as you see a simple change. but still something different. 

ORC THEME

The idea behind this one was to have something resemble that of some orcish lair or throne room to a warlord. again pretty simple to achieve. as you will see with this one. i attempted some light sourcing. as a few of these doors have torches on to light the way. this being the first attempt..a little bit of a fail as i dont feel i got it quite right, but brush down and better the next one with light sourcing and all will be good .

 VINES

Got to have something overgrown right?

making all of these i tried something new ive not done before, the mushrooms on the base was my attempt to show the dark dampness of the dungeon. im quite happy how they turned out. the vines...well they add more, but not brilliant. again I added a dwarf rune as the idea in my head is that most dungeons were once dwarven  strongholds or at least dwarven built. even sewers of the old world were built by dwarves.

 WARPSTONE

Another very simple one where i attempted a little less subtle light glow.

another dwarven rune and a few chunks of warpstone set this one off quite nicely

So thats my first 4 if you exclude my 4 earlier testers. another 14 to go and ill be all finished.
im just in the painting process with the remaining ones now so hope to have more to show soon.
so until then!! :)

Doors colour test

now ive got a ruck load of doors to start making my dungeon look the part.
however i have 2 dilemmas on this front.

now anyone that paints have certain things they paint that they know they are good at. and to follow that up. there are certain things that some are not so comfortable with. and for me...doors have 2 things ive never been very confident in painting. and this might sound stupid but ive never really been able to paint wood or rock to a standard i like.
ive never been able to lock down a solid colour formula that when i sit back and look at i am happy with. so it made perfect sense that i attempted some colour tests before really laying into the doorways.

so here we have them

 first up the portcullis' (portculli? portcullises?) i dunno.
anyways as i only had 2 of these i just painted both of them in these scheme. for me the real tests were to attack the rock work and wood. this is no wood on this so i simply went for a brown dark rusted type of old metal.

 the rock work...ive gotta say im about 75% happy with my attempts and will carry forwards the method i used on these for all of the other doors. was rather simple really.
-Mid tone grey basecoat(in this case i used some cheap acrylic i picked up from a hobby store)
- Thin washes with 4 colours to break up the solid grey colour and hopefully gain some sort of realistic weathered look the 4 colours being. Agrax Earthshade, Athonian Camoshade, Seraphim Sepia and Reikland Fleshshade
-Dry brush with base colour.
- Light dry brush to pick out edges using Screaming skull

so with the rockwork nailed down it was the wood to concentrate on.
here....i wasnt to happy so will be trying a new formula on the wood as i want to get a much older dark and dampened look for the wood. but all in all it was a worth while attempt.
im happy with the rock. now i just need to go scouting around for the wood colour i would prefer to have and take it from there :)

so yup the dungeon is slowly getting there. a quick little mock up is showing how things are starting to look pretty nifty indeed.

i have much more plans for these doors as well. trying to add some character to them rather than them just being standard.
maybe some themed ones for the open doors(skaven themed - undead themed and so on)
and some ivy or cobwebs and such for the closed ones. skulls (gotta have skulls) rats, cobwebs and that sort of thing.
i just want them to end up looking great and not so standard.
i know most dont care about these little details. but we would all chose to have them if they were easy to have right?

anyways until next time :)