Sception's Sleepy Sepulcher

[Sception]

Current Project:  Zombie Dragon

.......

This thread is a project log for my Age of Sigmar undead army, a collection that I accumulated mostly during the End Times with the return of the Undead Legions, the faction that first got me into warhammer, and that I had abandoned many years ago when the oldhammer undead were split between vampires and mummies, neither of which appealed to me as an army on their own.

Unfortunately, for all the models I've purchased, I haven't finished painting anything.  I lost a lot of my motivation when AoS came, not because I hated the game, but because the local community dried up.  Anyway, while none of these models are even half done, it is enough to give an idea of what I'm going for, a very limited palate of blacks and ethereal greens.

More pictures can be found on my minis tumblr, but since this place seems a more lively spot for AoS discussion, I figured I might as well start a thread here, too, though I expect progress to be extremely slow (hence the 'sleepy' part of the thread title).

[Sception]

Much as what I should be doing is getting something, anything really, painted, the project I'm actually currently working on is convrrting a unit of miniature sphinx riders from dracothian guard to stand in as necroknights.  Still tinkering with the first test model.  I'm not sure if I’m going to do the rider as a converted undead stormcast, or cut off the legs and re-sculpt the saddle, then put some sort of skeleton rider on there.

If I do them as corrupted stormcasts, then I'd want to do a mini side faction of them.  Like, replace the mummy rider from my royal warsphinx with a corrupted stormcast hero, maybe some paladins to stand in as ushabti (though they’re a bit small for that) or liberators as tomb guard (though they’re a bit large for that), lord relictor as a tomb herald, put a couple stormcasts in a war sphinx in place of the four skeletons that normally go there…

but that’s a lot of work, and some of those units don’t fit their stand-ins too terribly well, and I already have a herald and some (old metal) tomb guard.  And paladins are a bit short to be ushabti, liberators a bit big for tomb guard, etc.  So maybe instead just stick to skeletons?  I may be getting my hands on some plastic tomb guard soon, they could probably convert as riders without too much trouble, though that would mean the cool green stuff boney shin guards the test model has going would go to waste.

I’m not in a hurry to make up my mind.  I'm still waiting on the reaper bones scorpion i ordered from the local store as a possible replacement for the dracoth’s tail, and i have yet to see what condition those plastic tomb guard are in.  We’ll see.

[Gotrek]

Truck on brother. For the Great Necromancer!

[Sception]

painting progress 5/1/17

before:

 

after:

 

 

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Progress today was limited to fixing previous mistakes on the Black Knights and Grave Guard.  I'd meant to do some more, including assembly work on the new skeleton units, but it didn't happen.

As I’ve previously mentioned, I went overboard on the green wash and wight highlight previously and as a result kind of lost the ethereal effect I was going for, so I basically started over on these models, painting over the green with the celesta.  Inevitably that means overthick paint and some loss of detail, but so be it.  I’m only really aiming for tabletop quality, and I’m more concerned about the overall effect of the army rather than worrying about how the individual models look on their own.  As such, getting the green just right and consistent over the whole army is of critical importance, far more so than preserving the detail on individual dudes.

Once I have the green re-done, I’ll show some comparisons with some black knights that aren’t in this batch that I haven’t re-done yet.  Otherwise, I took the opportunity to start setting up the blending from black to ghostly green on the black knight & grave guard cloth bits, which I previously was planning on reserving for characters, but... eh.  Why not.

 

 

 

 

 

The batch itself is a 1000 point pure Deathrattle army with no tomb kings stuff (despite the counts as necroknights project languishing on my conversion table) that I’m painting partly because they’re my favorite undead models in the current range and partly because I’m anticipating a deathrattle battletome some time this year, what with the upcoming re-boxing of the skeleton warrior unit and the Sepulchral Guard previewed for Shadespire.

The list at the moment is:

Wight King with Black Axe (general)
Wight King with Infernal Standard

10 Grave Guard with swords & shields
5 Black Knights

30 Skeleton Warriors with spears and shields
10 Skeleton Warriors with Hand Weapons (still in box)
10 Skeleton Warriors with Hand Weapons (still in box)

Battalion: Legion of Death

total: 980

Though I’m considering dropping the Battalion for another 10 spearletons, rounding the list out to an even 1000 points, and getting me a solid unit of 40, which I feel is the right number to use in larger games.

[Davariel]

I really like your colour scheme, it's simple but very striking. And your green stuff skills are absolutely amazing! 

Looking forward to seeing your progress

[Sception]

A while back I picked up some old tomb kings from a guy at the local game store.  Most of it’s in pretty poor shape, but there’s definitely some worthwhile stuff in here if I can salvage it, including some finecast ushabti and a bone giant, 6 chariots (no riders), and some plastic tomb guard.

Here's some of the Tomb Guard.  Unfortunately, they're in pretty terrible shape.  The white primer used was just way too thick, killing a lot of the detail, and the paint over it wasn’t helping.  Normally I don’t mind just painting over mistakes, for my undead I’m much more concerned with the overall effect of the army from across the table, rather than worrying about how any individual model looks on its own from a couple inches away.  But this was too much even for me.

I’ve never managed to successfully strip paint from plastic models before, but after some research online I went out and bought some purple-carton ‘super clean’ - an automotive cleaner castrol used to make before they sold the formula.  You have to wear protective gloves when using this stuff (rubber, neoprene, nitrile, etc), because it burns skin, but it does a pretty decent job of softening the paint without damaging the plastic.  Just soak the models for a day, then scrub them with a tooth-brush style cleaning brush.  I also went at them with a sharp sculpting tool to try and scrape some of the paint out of details that the brush couldn’t really get.

Even so, I still wasn’t able to get all of the primer out of the details and recesses.  And a couple of the models weren’t assembled all that well to begin with.  I don’t think I’m going to be able to salvage all 20, but that’s alright, it just lets me use these to convert riders for my necroknight conversions without feeling bad about giving up a usable unit in the process.

That said, I’ll probably manage to salvage about 10, not counting the ones I use for the knights, which means I’ll have enough for a tiny unit just to qualify for formations, and I’ll be able to put together a decent unit of these in the future if another box of them ever happens to tumble into my lap.

Still can’t believe I sold two unopened boxes of these guys a couple years back.  I don’t exactly regret it - I was moving and really needed the money, but still.  It’s not like I don’t have a spare kidney.

...

The real prize from this bundle was something I showed a few posts back:

The warsphinx on the right, next to the in-progress test conversion for a necropolis knight.  The sphinx’s howda was kind of broken, and there were no crew, and as you can see in this pic, it was missing the flamer nozzle that is supposed to be assembled in its mouth, but I’ve got replacements for all of that on sprues left over from a necrosphinx I built a couple years back.

I had originally thought to remove the sphinx's head, and just replace it with an entire new head from my sprues, but this sphinx was assembled with some apparently high quality plastic glue and that head just wasn’t budging at all, so instead I clipped away the beard bit holding the lower jaw together, used a hobby knife to split the skull and neck apart as much as I could without breaking anything, shaved down the bottom of my spare flamer nozzle a bit to make it slide in a bit better, and just kind of forced the thing in there.

Surprisingly enough, I got it in without breaking anything.  Now I just have to glue it all back in place, and repair the removed section of the lower jaw.

…

Speaking of the necroknight conversion, when I realized how closely it was starting to resemble a regular warsphinx, I decided to ditch the idea of doing converted undead sigmarine riders, and instead will use some of the above plastic tomb guard to convert tomb kingsy looking riders instead.  As such, I clipped away the shins, removed the raised sort of thumb claws, and clipped the tail in anticipation of replacing it with a scorpion tail.  Shame about the green stuff bonemold armor, that was looking pretty good, but the new plan will be less work and fit in better with the rest of my army.

Still needs to be cleaned up with the dremel and a file, and then the holes need to be filled & fixed with green stuff before it’ll be ready to start work on the rider.  Unfortunately, the Reaper Bones giant scorpion I had ordered for the tail is no longer available from my local game store’s distributors.  I’ll either need to order it online, or figure out something else.

I have to stop by a toy store later to get a gift for my niece’s birthday coming up this weekend, maybe there’ll be something there I can use.

[Sception]

My already slow progress has been put on hold, due to catching the spring cleaning bug which has left me with dramatically reduced free time, and the new edition of 40k is taking what little hobby time I have left over.  That said, I have had time to build a fancy new set of stackable magnetized storage & transport bins:

Spoiler

 

 

It's a pretty nice set up, and not too pricey compared to battlefoam or the like.  Stole the idea from MC1gamer on youtube:

[lastdarkness]

Im in the process of making some Custom tubs myself now, thanks for the link for ideas

[Sception]

Alright, as of the Summoning/Nagash preview this morning, I'm back on board for Legions of Nagash.  I'll be setting aside the necroknight conversions I had been working on (difficulty finding appropriately sized scorpion tails), and going back to the models that I like the best out of those that are fully assembled & closest to ready to go.  After hauling everything out of storage and rooting through it, that pile looks like this:

Now, I'm not going to try to paint all of this in a single go, I'm not that crazy.  This is over 3000 points already, with an unplayable number of heros regardless.  But I will be trying to put together a smaller playable list in the 1k to 1.5k range chosen from this stuff to try and paint, with tomorrow's legion of sacrament preview probably being the most influential on what I pick - though with the amount of deathrattle and morghasts here, it's entirely possible the list I end up with may end up as Grand Host of Nagash instead.

It’s been quite a while since I was working on this stuff.  A lot of things knocked me off of my progress.  One was getting my hands on a bunch of tomb kings bits, leading into the previous half-started conversion work.  Bigger was the dual blows of the GH’17 nerfs and my own realization that I had made a terrible error in painting and needed to start a lot of this stoff over nearly from scratch.  See, I was aiming for a ghostly, smokey green necromantic look, but I accidentally went too deep in the greens and too light in the white highlights, and the result has too much contrast, losing that smokey feel.  This is best shown in the comparison between the mortis engine spirits and the terrorgheist, with the mortis being much closer to what I was aiming for, and the terrorgheist being more like how most of what I had started was turning out.

Spoiler

Not perfect, but pretty close.  A smokey, ghostly feel.  One of the spear heads broke off, but I can fix it later.

Could maybe go a bit deeper even.  Maybe get a hint of blues in there.

this isn't ghostly, this is just green.  I'm trying to paint the undead here, not orcs.

Having to do work over again is a much bigger mental hurdle than having to do it in the first place, but enough time has passed that I can swallow the bile and just get to it, I think.

The other question is whether I intend to bite the bullet and just re-base everything I decide to work on.  I'd done so for characters already, and a couple of larger models like the mortis engine, but so far I've left the units as is.  Rebasing them would be a pretty daunting prospect in itself, especially as I put a lot of working into making sure units ranked up, magnetizing the bases to their unit trays, setting up a removable magnetized rock token on the terrorgheist that can be swapped out for my ghoul king model, etc.  And some models just don't fit well on their new bases without hanging way over the edge of them, most especially the morghasts, which really don't have an ideal base size to work with out of the rounds/ovals.

I didn't make any actual painting or modeling progress today, but I'm feeling the juices flowing again.  Thursday is a day off for me, so that'll probably be the big day to start working in earnest.  Tomorrow will be for deciding on a smaller coherent list of models to start with, and coming to a decision on whether or not to rebase them before resuming painting.

does anyone know of any good magnetized 25mm round based movement trays?

 

 

[Sception]

Alright, here’s what I’ve settled on to try and paint first for Legions of Nagash.  A Grand Host of Nagash army featuring 40 skeletons, 20 grave guard, 10 black knights, a necromancer, and a black axe king (I don’t like what they did to him rules-wise, but I love the model and it’s the closest to painted of any of my characters).  Total comes to 1070, 70 points over a playable 1k list, so on the table I’d have to drop down to either 5 black knights or 15 grave guard, but I don’t want to leave part of their units unpainted.

The four little tokens in the front left are soul counters from Warmachine, which I’ll use as grave site markers until I can get around to making something better.

I decided against rebasing the units right now.  That can be done after painting well enough, and the amount of modeling hassle would eat away at my time and desire to paint these guys.

Anyway, to-do before I go to sleep tonight: add texture paint to the token bases & skeleton champion, prime the same plus the one skeleton whose arms broke and were replaced with bare plastic replacement bits.

[Sception]

I sadly lost last weekend to family stuff, but painting progress on the thousand(ish) points of Grand Host continues, alongside work on the Raven Guard commission.  I won't have these done by my first test game with the new rules on Saturday, but I might at least have the green done, finally catching up to where I was almost a year ago when I decided to start this lot over more or less from scratch.  And the green is basically the majority of the overall paint scheme for these models, so that'd be something at least.

With the pale grey finally done on everything, I can move onto the next stage, dark green on the cloth skirts and barding of the grave guard and black knights, as shown in the pictures above.  It’s a slower application than the white, though still pretty fast and loose, and I only have to do this on the more elite infantry and cavalry, the regular skeletons don’t get this stage except on their banner.  I think I maybe didn’t extend the green down far enough on the black knight, might push that a bit further down when I do the rest of the unit.  After this, there’s a wash of Nihilak Oxide over all the grey bits, bone & cloth alike.  Then multiple applications of significantly diluted green wash to smooth the transition on the cloaks, diluted black washes to deepen the folds in the dark green cloth away from the ghostly trim, and finally some green, grey, and maybe a tiny bit of white highlighting.  It's basically just the technique used on Nagash's Skirt from GW's how to paint Nagash series, just with fewer wash layers so the transition is more jagged & less smooth:

The below pics of my wight king and necromancer show more or less what I'm aiming for with the final effect.  Obviously I didn’t put as much work into the wight king as the necromancer, and likewise the units will probably get a bit less work put into them than the wight king, but that’s still more or less what I’m aiming for.  The Necromancer also suffers slightly from the 'too much green, too much contrast' problem that made me start everything else from scratch, but I put too much work into it for me to start that particular model over again.  There’s still more to do after the green is done - metal, wood, bases, etc, but the green is very much the majority of the effort for the look I'm going for.  The rest should, hopefully, go more quickly, though I haven’t progressed anything in this army past the greens, so we’ll see.  I'll have to take considerable care with any additional colors that they don't ruin the overall effect.

 

[Sception]

Spoiler

 

 

Painted the new Knight of Shrouds. This is actually the first model I’ve fully painted in the new color scheme. The effect of the minimal color palette should be stronger with more models together, but I do like how it came together on this guy.

[Undeadly]

I really like the technique you used on the Herald's sword. How did you achieve that?

[Sception]

I used a technique adapted from GW's 'how to paint Nagash' and 'how to paint Knight of Shrouds' youtube videos.  Same technique as I used on the lower part of the robe & ghostly arms, just with deliberate highlights instead of light drybrushing.  Specifically:

1. Celestra grey (2+ watered down coats over black primer)

2. Ulthuan grey overbrush

3. Nihilakh oxide

4. Very diluted greenwash (one part wash to 3 parts medium) applied more heavily towards the top of the lower cloak/bottom of the sword

5. Optionally some similarly diluted green glaze for a bit stronger hue.  On this model I applied diluted glaze to the length of the sword, but not on the lower cloak or arms.

NOTE - the dilution with medium in steps 4 and 5 are critical.  If you apply undiluted wash or medium it can outright ruin the ghostly effect with too-strong contrast between the shade and highlight colors.  I ruined my ghostly effect on like 1000 points of models and had to start over because I went too heavy on these steps and didn't dilute enough.

6. Light drybrush/highlight with celestra grey.  I drybrughed the lower cloak and highlighted by hand the edges & holes on the sword.   Important to water down the thick base paint, even when drybrushing, and to wipe almost all the paint off the brush before drybrushing, even though you'll end up having to build the effect up with a few applications.  Otherwise you can get streakting or a dry, dusty look, and we're aiming for a more misty effect.

7. Optional even lighter drybrush/highlight with ulthuan grey.

NOTE - be very light with the highlighting.  Build it up in feint layers if need be.  As with excessive, too dark, or undiluted washes, excessive, too heavy, or too bright highlighting can ruin the smokey, ghostly effect with too much contrast.  Whatever you do, stay away from stark white.  Ulthuan grey is absolutely the lightest you need to go on this.

..............

The overall effect isn't too hard or time consuming to do once you've worked out the kinks on a couple test models.  The oxide does most of the work for you.  The main things to watch out for are dusty looking drybrushing and, again, excessive, sharp contrast between light and dark, both of which can kill the misty ethereal look.

[Sception]

In the interests of preserving my sanity, and of actually fully completing some units for points in the Dread Solstice global campaign, I’ve switched from working on a full 1000 points at a time to a much more modest ‘minimum legal unit’ batch size.

The ten skellies pictured here with the previously posted Knight of Shrouds, my FIRST AND (to date) ONLY FULLY PAINTED UNDEAD MODEL out of, and I counted, more than 12,000 points of backlog, are about 2/3 done.  The ghostly green and metals are done, the black and darker green bits started, and the bases still to do, along with the unit’s shields. I hope to finish them this weekend.

Next up should be more skellies, this batch doesn’t even have command, and they’re hardly even a real unit until there’s like 40 of them, but maybe I’ll try something fancier instead. Best not get ahead of myself, though, as this lot still has a ways to go.

But even unfinished as they are, pictured with the knight of shrouds I'm already starting to see some of the cumulative, unifying visual effect that I'm aiming for with the super limited color palette, so that's encouraging.  That said, given how agonizingly slow I am with painting, maybe it was a mistake to choose a color scheme where the impact is weakest with single models and really only starts to show when a whole army is together.  Haha, whoops.

[Sception]

Some more pictures of my knight of shrouds:

Spoiler

 

 

Progress continues, albeit slowly as usual, on my skellies:

Spoiler

 

 

First 10 done but for bases & shields, next 10 started.  And I have another, somewhat larger skeleton already underway for when this lot is finished.

Spoiler

 

[Sception]

Had a 2kish game to try out Nagash, the First Cohort, malign portent rules, etc. Had a whole thing written out, but my phone ate it, so long story short, a mostly Khornate chaos force ambushes Nagash. The undead hastily form battle lines, skeletons in front, morghasts and Nagash behind, lesser heroes hiding beneath Nagash’s skirts.

Unfortunately, the formation is destroyed when a blood priest pulls the morghasts out of formation and the Chaos force tears them apart, but their hopes are quickly dashed when a furious Nagash wreaks arcane vengeance upon them, utterly collapsing their flank. Nagash’s might, combined with some absurdly lucky rolls, proves to be too much, and the attacking force is quickly scattered.

[Sception]

Spoiler

 

 

LoN, as great as it is for its own legion armies, really did a number on the generic mixed death army as a viable thing, when it was already hurting after GH2016, and this includes tough times for tomb kings, and especially for ‘undead legion’ style lists mixing stuff from both the old Vampire Count and Tomb King ranges.

As such, I’m looking for ways to run iconic TK stuff as legal LoN units. Not really possible for a lot of TK units, there’s really no equivalents for chariots, catapults, or the like, but here’s my attempt to make a royal warsphynx work as a vampire on zombie dragon, while still leaving it unchanged enough to still run as a regular royal warsphynx in a TK army, through the rather obvious and simple addition of the necrosphynx wings.

I've also given the rider the appropriate weaponry. Still needs greenstuff work to better connect the wings to the body. Also to fill in some of the gaps in the rider’s torso and maybe to add some nosferatu-like fangs, to sell the idea that this guy is supposed to be both a vampire and a mummy.

[Sception]

Hobby ADD strikes again, as both Nagash and the sphynx were sidelined today to make some progress on my mortis engine and start work on a balewind vortex:

I did, however, manage to continue work from the past week on *something*, in that I finished the bases on the first ten skeletons.  These are now fully done except for the shields, which I will try to finish tomorrow.

[Sception]

First 10 skellies completely done, scoring a point for drake in week three:

Highlighting on the shields turned out... excessive.  I'll try to dial it back in the next batch, and, if that works out better, might come back to touch up these slightly.

[Sception]

It's been a while since I've updated this project log, but some progress has been made, albeit at my usual glacial pace.  The biggest thing (har har) is a zombie dragon I've been working on:

Spoiler

That last one's a cool picture, but reveals a spot I missed in the neck.  I'll have to make a point of going back to fix that.

I painted this beast over the course of the last month or so.  Finished It just this past weekend. The rider’s still only barely started, but the dragon is technically a legal unit on its own, and was thus good enough to enter in the local store’s monthly painting competition, this month’s theme being ‘something that flies’, whether that be a flying fantasy monster or some airborne 40k vehicle, where it eked out a slim victory over a very nice blood angel's storm raven.

No prize, sadly, but I did get to pick next month’s theme.  I chose "terrain".

The rider's hardly even started, but I did raid my ever dwindling TK box to fancy him up with some minor conversions:

It's not much, just a shield swap and some tomb king glaives in place of the hornes that normally adorn the model's back, but I think the result works pretty well.

.....

The dragon isn't the only thing I've been working on.  I also started a unit of sepulchral guard, in part to test out some new techniques with my greens, starting from a white primer, as a testing ground before using applying those methods to the zombie dragon:

Spoiler

 

 

I'm pretty happy with how the greens turned out, though I'm not sure when I'll get around to finishing the unit, let alone the rest of my skeletal legions.  I'm behind on commission work, so that'll be taking precedence over my own models for the next week or two.

[spoon_fed05]

I really like the effect you have achieved on your the sepulchral guard. Can you go over how you got the darker ethereal colour (like in the cloak)? 

[Sception]

@spoon_fed05 All greens started with:

1. White spray primer
2. Undercoat ulthuan grey
3. All over wash 2 parts lahmian medium to 1 parts nihilakh
4. Wash focusing on recessed/textured areas 3 parts medium to 1 parts green wash
5. Drybrush ulthuan grey again, heavier towards edge of cloak

Thats pretty much done for ghosty bits.  I might sneak in a bit of similarly diluted green glaze onto bits where I want the color to be a bit richer (see the sword on my knight of shrouds), either before or after the final ulthuan grey highlight.

Overtop of that, the darker greens are painted with:

1. A mix of around 2 parts medium to 1 parts incubi darkness, diluting the darkness enough for a bit of the ethereal tones & highlights to show through.  In areas where you want a transition from the darker green to the lighter, such as the champion's cloak, stop about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way up.  You might need a second coat of this mix in some places if the result is splotchy from being a bit too diluted.  But if its not diluted enough none of the previous stuff shows through.
2. Wash of 2 to three parts medium to one parts nuln oil into areas of deep shadow or texture, and on the far end of the dark green on transition areas like the cloak. Might even do a second coat in especially dark areas and on the farthest part of the cloak.
3. Optional, not used on my sepulchral guard: if you want the tramsition green to ho all the way to black, add about 1 part abaddon black to the previous mix, water it down a bit to be smooth again, and paint that into the far dark end of the transition part, then highlight the black and smooth the transition into the dark green with a drybrush of incubi darkness
4. Highlight the dark green with a light drybrush of kabalite green focused on the edges.  On the transitional parts, make the drybrush heavier towards the lighter ethereal area.
5. Highlight again with an even lighter drybrush, or just straight up edge highlight, of sybarite green.  Again, heavier brush towards the lighter green transition, blending into the nihilakh green.
6. If needed (might not be), smooth the transition between the darker greens with one or more washes of 3 or more parts medium to 1 parts green wash.
7. If needed (probably will be), smooth the transition of the sybarite into the lighter ethereals with one or more washes of 3 or more parts medium to 1 part nihilakh
8. Optional (if you did the black earlier): if needed, smooth the transition from the darker green to the black with one or more washes of 3 or more parts medium to 1 part black wash.
9. After these washes, you may want to pick out / lightly brush in some more highlights in incubi, kabalite, sybarite, gause blaster, or ulthuan grey, depending on where the highlight is on the blend.  In particular, extending the ulthuan grey highlight on edges a bit into the transitional nihilakh application, or adding an exceptiinally light drybrush of ulthuan over particularly heavily textured areas of the darker green, like the fur.

.....

Watch the warhammer youtube channel's how to paint videos for nagash and for the knights of shrouds (both foot and mounted), to see where I got my ideas and techniques.  There are a lot of paint applications in my greens (part of why green is just about the only color in my army), but they're mostly washes and drybrushes, albeit targeted ones, so they paint on pretty quickly.

One important tip: do not let the washes pool.  You'll need to peek in on occassion while they're drying and remove any excess by soaking it into a clean brush.  If you want a stronger effect in any particular area or recess, that requires multiple washes, not heavier ones.

Also, make sure your washes are fully dry before the next application.  This is not a wet blending technique.  We're using the washes & drybrushes simultaneously for blending and shading/highlighting.  You don't want those lighter colors getting drawn into the darker shadows.

 

[spoon_fed05]

Hey thanks for the detailed reply, thats really useful! 

[Sception]

3 hours ago, spoon_fed05 said:

Hey thanks for the detailed reply, thats really useful! 

No problem.  Do understand that in practice I'm not super strict about mix ratios or orders of things.  Mostly I just kind of feel my way through, alternating between drybrushes/highlights and heavily diluted washes & glazes until I get a result I like.

Lahmian medium is definitely your friend in all this.  I go through quite a bit.  Kind of wish it came in a bigger bottle.  Other mix mediums are probably as fine or better.  Just water sort of works, but not nearly as well on its own, though you do want to water down your mixes a bit to get the right flow just like most paints.