Article by Harkon GreyWolf.

"The Dummies Quick Guide to painting Blood Bowl Trolls!" by HG

Step 1: I decided to try and tie the Trolls into my Blood Bowl team in terms of colour, but make them different enough to stand out (apart from their size!) I also decided to use 25mm bases, as per Stretch's Ogres, so that movement and positioning on the Pitch would be easy.
I tidied up the mould lines as best as possible, stuck them on 25mm bases and undercoated them black.

First coat was an Ork hide green Foundation paint on all flesh areas. I decided to do something a little different from the Orcs and Black Orcs and drybrushed the flesh with Hawk Turquoise! This is predominantly a Blue colour but works quite well over the Ork hide Green.
I then painted armour and straps with Mechrite Red and the loin cloth animal skins with Iyanden Yellow. Again both Foundation paints which I have to say I think are brilliant for base coating quickly.
This is what they look like as this stage:


Step 2: Next stage, painted all teeth, nails, horns on the shoulder pads and the Skull Fist with Dheneb Stone. Then the leather bits with Calthan Brown and the metal clasps spikes and chain-mail fist with Boltgun metal.
I then used Blood Red to overcoat the Mechrite Red and dot in the eyes (not easy to see in this picture.) I also at this stage painted the bases Goblin Green, the same as all my other bases.
I find that once a mini has a coat of paint on the base that psychologically I feel that it's that much closer to completion. Always a good motivational point I find. Sometimes I've been known to go straight into basing my mini with Goblin Green immediately after the undercoat in an attemot to make me feel better! It works!
Picture number 2:


Step 3: This is where G-man puts his fingers in his ears and sings "La La La" loudly! "Don't look Gareth!" LOL
I use inks!
He he! I find using inks speeds up painting and is a quick and easy way to shade/highlight and generally bring minis to a reasonable table top state without too much "Faffing around" with 20 coats of highlight and blending etc etc. After all I've got 3 hours and I'm not going for a Golden Daemon!

First I use 1:1 water to Brown Ink to wash the leather belts and straps. This makes an "old leather" look and it's what I use for all leather effects on my mini's.
I also washed the chain mail and other botgun metal parts with the same mix, to "dirty it up and dull it down". Again a technique I use for all my metals on all my minis.
Next I washed the skull with a 2:1 Water to Brown Ink mix making sure to get into the crevices and sockets. I also dabbed a little wash onto the bases of the teeth and nails for a more "natural" look, I also then painted lines up the horns in the same mix making sure the base of the horns were completely washed and the tips relatively clean.
The final Brown ink wash was on the animal skins. I used another 3: 1 water to Brown ink wash here. Whilst this "dirtied up" the Iyanden yellow and changed the appearance slightly away from the rest of my teams' leggings, it retains enough of a colour base to still tie them in.
I then drybrushed the skull with Bleached Bone to give the natural "old bone" look.
While the brush was still charged with Bleached Bone I also drybrushed the animal skins and the horns. This achieved the result of matting down the ink on the skins and returning the horns to a more natural look.
The final wash was using a 5:1 water to Waagh Green ink wash all over the flesh again, to get rid of the slightly chalky look of the Hawk Turquoise drybrush and to bring the overal look slightly closer to green than blue, again to tie in with the rest of the team.
Picture at this point:


The only thing left to do now before putting them in the Team is to Flock the bases and give them a coat of Purity Seal.

I'll leave that till later to let the paint and inks "set" fully. (That and I can't be bothered to get the flock out yet! )
Here's a picture of each of the Trolls independantly.
Chainmail fist:

Skull fist:


Yes, up close the drybrushing shows and all the little imperfections are obvious, but at table top height you ain't seeing any of that!
Also these pictures are approximately 4 times life size!

Comments and criticisms welcome, but please bear in mind these are meant to be quick and easy figures for playing games with, not competition winning GD entries!

Total time including cleaning them up and taking pictures and writing this thread 3 1/2 hours! Not too shabby for me!