A horde of new Ironjawz go on pre-order this weekend. Every time a faction gets new miniatures, the ’Eavy Metal studio works long and hard to ensure they look absolutely incredible. Content Lead Max has broken off from the painting Waaagh! for a moment to talk about their new approach to painting yellow – a traditionally tough colour to paint!
Max: Orruks – and Ironjawz in particular – have been one of the staple factions right from the start of Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Returning after years of delving deeper into the mentality and customs of orruk clans throughout the Mortal Realms gave us more context and information to work with than ever before, and I felt like we were able to visually represent how the Ironjawz fit into the Orruk Warclans structure more holistically this time around.
While the Kruleboyz have figured out how to get ahead by relying on their wits and cunning, wearing drab, stained cloths and leathers that blend into their swampy surroundings, the Ironjawz’ brutish size and strength means they tend to go for more of a “might-makes-right” approach. Wearing garish, bright colours says a lot about how the Ironjawz see themselves – they want to be seen and heard by their opponents, as they're out there looking for a fight!
At the same time, they are not ones for routine and minutia. Their armour will take a beating at the best of times, and will hardly be well-looked-after. Adding weathering and rust brought an extra element of realism and believability that helped them fit in alongside the rest of the Orruk Warclans a lot better.
This ultimately boils down to painting a very vivid yellow! Yellow is one of the tricker colours to work with for a variety of reasons. One is a slightly complicated – due to how light works, the range of yellow visible to us is quite narrow, and it’s easy to shift it into green or red when you mix other paints into a yellow to highlight or shade it. Keeping this in mind, we often shade yellow using warmer brown tones such as Mournfang Brown, Doombull Brown, and Rhinox Hide, mixed with black for the darkest parts, if needed.
On the Ironjaws we also decided to break up the yellow a lot more with areas of black armour and raw metal, to represent the fact an Ironjawz Waaagh! is constantly fighting, always moving, and forever battering new bits of scrap onto their armour.
The browns we used for shading also work really well to add rust and dirt to these black and iron elements, helping everything work together in concert. It also helps with the darker yellow to add different levels of what’s known as “value contrast” to the miniatures. This is a fundamental bit of composition in painting that needs a little explaining, so let’s break it down.
There’s a saying in painting that “value does all the work, and colour gets all the credit”. Value just basically means how light or dark a colour is, not necessarily if the colour is different. Bright yellow armour and bright green skin can be similar in value – if they’re both rendered brightly they will exist in a similar value range, even though the colour itself is different.
Fundamentally when painting a miniature you want certain areas – like faces – to stand out. By making sure certain points of interest on a miniature are brighter, you can break up its silhouette and draw the eye to specific areas, no matter what colour it is. If the value of the armour and skin colour of the Ironjawz sit too close to each other, the model will lack contrast. By tweaking the yellow recipe by adding midtone browns, and weathering the armour, you can retain a more vibrant colour at a darker value, which allows the face to stand out.
Of course there's no overall “right” green skintone for orruks, but some tones definitely work better than others. We like to paint orruk skin in a slightly lighter and warmer way, with bright earthy green tones. Varying the green tones around a specific base green tends to work really well. We also thought about how larger orruks would have thicker skin that would feature less red pigmentation in areas other than the areas with the most blood vessels like ears and noses.
The Maw-gruntas were also a lot of fun to develop, and the team did an amazing job figuring out how to make them look good next to each other and alongside the smaller Gore-gruntas. The darker fur with the pale face draws your eye to the beast's head, and allows enough contrast between the body and the crew to stand out with the fur as a backdrop, without the two competing too much for attention.
The visual identity remains the same – Ironjawz are bright, loud, and ready to fight – but now they sit more comfortably alongside the more grounded and earthy Kruleboyz, while still contrasting with them.
Thanks so much for that masterclass, Max! You can update your own Ironjawz with a range of new armoured hooligans by pre-ordering them on Saturday. You can also check out a gallery of gorgeous ’Eavy Metal miniatures and all the rules with Battletome Supplement: Ironjawz which is free to download now.