Having been somewhat in the painting doldrums recently, I have just gone and dug out about 80 un-painted Black Tree Design Zulus that arrived on my doorstep some time ago as part of a bulk order. Since they have been looking at me in the most accusatory fashion imaginable, I have been inspired to get on with painting them. The upshot of this necessarily paint be-spattered experience is that I thought I might share my painting methods for them.

After the castings were cleaned, I superglue them to the 20mm metal discs. These I coat liberally with white glue (PVA) and dip in sand to texture them. Note that at this the shields and weapons are left separate for ease of painting.

When they are really dry the castings get a good, thorough coat of matt white spray paint. To those readers in Australia, I use Plasti-kote Spray Dry Enamel.

This gets a follow up spray-painted coat of Tamiya TS-1 "Red Brown". When dry, this gets a thorough dry brushing (fairly heavy) of a mix of 1 parts GW Blazing Orange, four parts Tamiya Flat Earth XF-52 and two parts Tamiya Flat Flesh XF-15. This gets a further, lighter, dryer dry-brush of the same with more Flat Flesh mixed in. This again is allowed to thoroughly dry. Note again the emphasis I put on things being thoroughly dry!

All details - and here I must display my woeful ignorance of the correct nomenclature - such as the fluffy bits at knee and elbow (cow-tails?), as well as chest-pieces and iklwas, knobkerries &c get a coat of thinned acrylic black. This too is used to outline the "bum-flaps" and those thongs holding them in place. The same mix is used to paint over the hair and any beards. This mixture is also used to line in any more prominent areas of musculature.

The model then gets a liberal washing over of sepia drawing ink that has been well thinned with water. The purpose of this wash is to blend the colours somewhat and to lend the wholesome tonal unity (a kind of 'cool' brown).

Every lower lip gets a wash of thinned red ink.

All the 'fluffy bits' get a careful dry-brush of white acrylic, when the ink wash has thoroughly dried. The metal parts of weapons are painted accordingly with GW Chainmail. The wooden parts are given a single highlight with a 50-50 mix of black and whatever darkish brown you please.

Any bits of leopard-skin get painted with a yellow-ochre and the spots are done with a fine-pointed marker, tip somewhat frayed, in the form of a tiny circle delineated with five tiny dots. White feathers are painted black and dry-brushed white. 'Bum flaps' are painted in any convenient brown shade and highlighted. They are then washed over with more dilute sepia ink.

The bases are already red-brown from the initial spray. They get a dry-brush of Tamiya Xf-59 Dark Yellow, followed with a couple of highlights with increasing amounts of white. If necessary, they get a wash of the Sepia ink. They are finished off with a swipe of black around the edge with some black acrylic and then a liberal coat of Micador Gloss picture varnish.

Working this way, I am able to paint ten to twelve fierce little warriors in a couple of hours - I suppose this equates to two or three evenings work. Not a bad means of using a fortnight to do two Sword and the Flame units for the war games table, I feel.