Commander Dante - Part IV

 

Now officially more bling than Sanguinary Guard.

In what I hope will be the penultimate post on this more recent version of Commander Dante, there's actually very little change since the last time. The winged iconography has been filled in, some of the silver metallics have been started, the grip on the axe haft done, and the base given a new primer layer.

By far the most interesting choice I've been exploring has been the metallics. I knew I wanted to try more mixing metallic paints with non-metallics, wanted to try paint them in an NMM style, and wanted to keep more glazing. The problem is really that black is a terrible colour to start that with and so I went with a darker grey instead. So far I've found this works acceptably well:

• Mechanicus Standard Grey / Abaddon Black (4:1, doesn't need to be specific). This creates a dark grey without being too black - the ratio isn't too important, just need it darker than Mechanicus Standard Grey on its own, but lighter than Corvus Black.
• Stormhost Silver, glazed. I prefer to use a small amount of flow improver or Lahmian Medium rather than water to help get the glaze consistency but without the reflective particles flowing too far out of the way.
• Stormhost Silver more directly layered for edge highlights.

I like how this turned out. It could use some more experimentation to get everything just right, for example I didn't mix the metallic and grey colours together (because I'd swapped out the palette by then) which would help smooth things out. I think there's potential in the contrast it gives. I still need to glaze over a blue of some description, just for the weapon glow effect.

The other very minor (and not visible in the photo) new idea is actually for the axe grip. That was done as normal for such things by now:

• Doombull Brown
• Tuskgor Fur to highlight.
• Carroburg Crimson shade.

However this time on the opposite side from what's visible, I mixed a very small amount of black into Doombull Brown and used that as a shadow colour. It makes a very dark and leathery brown which I'm definitely going to look into later. I may also try mixing Rhinox Hide and see how that turns out, although I'm not convinced it will be any better. I suspect this will be one of the few occasions where black is more suitable for the dual reason of it darkening and desaturating the mix.

The base so far is mostly Mechanicus Standard Grey, some black mixed in there just to play around with some areas, but nothing too noteworthy. I had some complicated plans for the base, but the darker and more muted tones play off the shine and relatively brighter appearance of Dante. A combination of drybrushing and washes will likely carry the lion's share of the work on the base.

The weapons need to be finished, gemstones painted in, a little more purity seal writing, the base, and of course the half tabard are yet to be done. It's simultaneously not much left to do, but also will take plenty of time owing to how different each piece is and how much I'll need to change approaches on each area. I doubt I'll have a quiet week to finish this model, but maybe in the next two weeks (or longer if I get sidetracked onto other projects).

-- silly painter.

Legions Imperialis - Deredeo Dreadnoughts

 

Oreo Dreadnought

(Warning: long day, a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes below no doubt, and I can't be bothered to proof read and find them.)

Pursuing more testing of small scale Legions Imperialis, I've managed to work on some Deredeo Dreadnoughts. They're honestly not my favourite design, just personal preference, but do provide some interesting shapes to serve as a test platform.

For these I opted to try a base coat of Night Lords Blue with Typhon Ash kind of Zenithal'd over the top. I put some extra emphasis on the upper body area, the upper missile racks, and the base of the legs. I also drybrushed Wraithbone over the top because I felt like I hadn't gone bright enough and wanted to try and catch some edges - but edge highlighting on models this size are rather pointless to do everywhere. A gloss varnished followed by flow improver mixed with Black Legion sorted out the shading, which actually isn't too visible aside from around the legs. It's still easy enough to do that I think I'll keep this step.

Black Legion was again used to base all of the black areas, and I still prefer that paint over anything else when doing this. The pigment count is very high and the paint consistency works well even over the gloss varnish. Troll Slayer Orange for the eyes to try and make them stand out, but they're barely visible at any sort of distance.

I did try some fluro acrylic paint, but that was a complete mess. The consistency was wrong, opacity was wrong, everything about it was just wrong for this usage - but that's what you get for using canvas paints on little models. It was worth the experimentation to see if it might be useful in future, but I think I'll stick to dedicated miniature paints for now.

Back to the black details and initially I was trying to do some volumetric highlights, but my patience was wearing thin. Lack of time to paint coupled with not really liking the model, and eventually I just stopped and instead only went with edge highlighting. Here's the biggest takeaway from this test: other than boxy tanks, and perhaps even not then, it's simply not worth trying to do volumetric highlights on this sort of scale. Save it for the Titans and larger vehicles. Anything smaller than a tank, just use a solid base coat and edge highlights to make it readable. It will give a cleaner look, take less time, and be far more impressive on the tabletop.

When Rifleman from Battletech goes grimdark.

The other major mistake on these was just a little playing about with Runelord Brass. I put Spiritstone Red over the top of that for the missile rack sensor array. It's a nice colour, it works well standalone, but it's far too bright here and attracts all the attention even with a matt varnish.

Lastly, I still need some practice with the airbrush. I suspect I didn't leave enough time between coats of Terradon Turquoise, which resulted in a grainy appearance instead of the smooth finish that I'd like. Practice will help I'm sure. The next models on my list (more dreadnoughts) I'm going to try give white edge highlights before that step, just to see if it will show through.

And no, I'm not drilling out those gun barrels.

-- silly painter.

Starting Sculpting

 

Sanguinary Grey

I've not had any time for painting at all for the last couple of weeks, but a few things are in progress. Which is slightly odd; I was going to try finish off some in-progress projects this year, but instead I've been just adding more. It's not that bad though, because I have been starting to try my hand at some proper sculpting.

The inspiration for this most definitely comes from Trovarion. I have no doubts that it would take quite a while before I'm as good as he is, but I need to start somewhere. I've been poking around green stuff and milliput for quite some time, but mostly just to fill gaps rather than actually seriously try to sculpt anything. Then along came the refreshed Sanguinary Guard.

It's important to recognise my own personal takes on what has gone wrong with some of the Blood Angels models recently released, as this is the motivation behind wanting to sculpt. I was actually looking at the Blood Angels Captain and wondering what it was that I simply didn't like about that model. The design seems to mostly be fine - muscle sculpted armour, various appropriate details, the head options are fine. Then I looked at the knee pads and it suddenly made sense. The old miniature designers knew a lot more about their craft I suspect, because they needed to when hand sculpting. Part of this is composition: and when there's subtle details creating ornate, artisan armour then surfaces devoid of detail stand out like a sore thumb. The knee pads in the older Sanguinary Guard have an iconic detail, but that means curved surface detail is balanced throughout the entire model. The chest plates on the new Captain are too bare - for all the prude social anxiety these days, nipples serve an artistic purpose of breaking up all of that surface area. Blur your eyes when looking at that new model and all you'll see are bug-eyed chest plates and a knee pads. The same can be said for the new Sanguinary Guard, who also suffer from another problem: they're all the same. There's no individualism, no soul to any of the designs, which is antithetical to what Sanguinary Guard should be.

The solution is therefore to try and kitbash and convert my own. I don't particularly want to pay full price for models that I simply don't like without major work being done on them. My own attempts are going to fall well short of display quality, so again I don't want to invest money into something that I know will end up mediocre at best. Even with the replacement parts from the Crimson Lords campaign from Greytide Studios, some sculpting is likely to be required.

Where now to begin? I bought some of the old push-fit Assault Intercessors. They're cheap, have good poses that will work without needing bases to make them look like they're flying about the place. There are also five on the sprue, giving me two to practice with.

The first attempt here was to see how well an old ("firstborn") torso would fit with the Primaris scale. It doesn't. I had to carve out most of the chest to fit one of the old upgrade sprue pieces, and even then the position is off: it's too high. The nipples looked odd. I've kind of solved that by trying to fill in the gaps and add a scroll to pad out the chest details and obscure the nipples. Here we come to the first problem: green-stuff doesn't file nicely.

Silicone clay shapers work very well to smooth out green-stuff, but it's an almost rubbery finish. It's workable when new, but after trying the freezer trick (placing uncured green-stuff into a sealed bag and freezing it to use again the next day) it wasn't quite as pliable. It's easy to knead, good to bulk out areas, but for a smooth finish and holding detail it simply isn't what I'm looking for. Another problem when sculpting is having the material stick to the surface: injection moulded plastic can be very smooth, and green-stuff will not stick readily to it. It might help to roughen the surface beforehand, which I will try next time.

As a complete opposite, removing green-stuff from some areas is proving difficult. I don't want to remove all of it, just carve out under the chest piece where I'd put too much. The thinking was that I could clean it up later. As it turns out, I should ensure surfaces are shaped as smooth as possible (with roughened surfaces) beforehand, as then later I only need to smooth out the putty - and while it's curing I should be careful to trim away excess then rather then trying to carve it out later. It's simply easier, particularly with green stuff, to keep the excess putty to a minimum. I did this with the holster, which doesn't fit with Sanguinary Guard, by trimming the shape down and filling in gaps to create just another pouch. Green-stuff might work here alright: it has a natural finish that fits to the texture of pouches, smooths out well enough, and I don't need to file away excess.

I would like a couple of extra tools to poke shapes with. I have some which are ok, but I might buy another one or two if they look appropriate. I'll also consider using vasoline to keep the putty from sticking to the tools.

When sculpting details, it's easy to smooth across a general shape. Something like scrolls, however, require some more thought. I need to practice creating thin strips of putty that are in roughly the right shape, then somehow transferring them to the model. Either that, or put a roll on and directly poke it to the proper shape. I think for future scrolls I should make the central strip, let that cure, and then add details on the ends. Curved patches are probably better as circular blobs that I try to poke pieces out of rather than rolls that I curve around - again, particularly with green-stuff. I may find milliput handles differently here.

I've started small on this model, and so far there's nothing that a bit of clever painting can't hide. I'll try to add some blood drop shaped gems to the left greave next, though I'm in two minds of how to approach that. I could either try to sculpt the shape in place, or make a stamp to press a blob of putty into the proper shape. The latter might have problems if the putty comes away on the stamp. I might try by hand first just for the practice.

The next model I try I'll likely keep the basic chest piece, but replace the central skull with a blood drop. After that, the third I'll probably try to make bare, add a blood drop in the middle, and nipples to the side. I'm not sure that I'll directly carve out grooves on the knee pads - a bit of freehand could achieve the same thing. I guess a trip to the art store is in order.

-- silly painter

Commander Dante - Part III

 

Dante's Inferno Pistol

After what seems like an age, I've finally painted enough of Dante to fully assemble the model. There's obviously still a lot left to do, but now that everything is in place I'm hoping motivation will speed up the rest.

I might have reached this point a week sooner, except the base was looking pretty horrid and I decided to try and fix it up. I have a lot of trouble with bases actually, and it's the one thing that I wouldn't mind a 3D printer to help sort out. For this particular model there's a fallen pillar of some kind, but it's lying on top of a pile of rubble that looks almost like dirt. That just doesn't make much sense outside of ancient buildings in Greece or something. It should be something more recent, related to whatever battle and campaign that Dante is prosecuting. Originally I was going rubble strewn about and covered in dirt, but decided to scrape most of that off and instead have tried to adapt it to look more like a pillar or column has fallen from a height and smashed into some flooring (and maybe the halo of some large statue next to it). It won't be quite as effective compared to having thought of it much earlier, but I'm hoping it'll be acceptable. I still need to clean up some rough edges, glue pieces down, add some texture in places, prime and paint it all.

Painting-wise, not much to say really. The "white" iconography is just repeats of before, and most of the rest comes from my standard recipes (I should probably link to that somewhere again). I've tried a few silver metallics in areas, and it's not quite as effective yet as with the gold armour. I'll need to try glazing over a colour other than black - possibly Mechanicus Standard Grey, and see where that takes me.

The glossy nature of the armour is causing some photography problems which I honestly don't have the time to sort out right now, but in good lighting the model really does look a lot better. Actually the black pauldron trim looks far too dull in comparison and I might need to try give that a more satin finish later. I won't be varnishing the model in general because it will simply dull the armour too much, but then I'm not likely to be using it for gaming anyway.

The eyes of the mask are incredibly simple: white, and Talassar Blue over the top. With a very pointy brush and magnifying headset. I wasn't sure if blue would work, but again in proper lighting this really gives an impression of a golden figure with incredible power. It's a really good sculpt. Too bad the Sanguinary Guard models are...not. More about that and how to improve them in the coming weeks I hope.

Otherwise, that's all for Dante right now. Painting is slow going, but not stalled.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angels Furioso Dreadnought - Part III

Armless maybe, but harmless not.

Not too much to say here other than I'm starting to fill in some colours on the body of the last "boxnought" dreadnought. There are a few details remaining, but I can soon start on the arms I think.

The sarcophagus is the part that really brings everything to life (as is natural for a dreadnought), but it's also one of the simpler things to paint here. There's nothing fancy beyond my normal approaches, and I'm following the box art fairly closely. I forgot to put some silver around the side gems, which I'll need to very carefully do later, but the one "cheat" I suppose is actually the side cabling. I'm not using multiple different colours, no fancy hazard stripes, just all metallics, black, or some variation thereof. I used to take far too much time selecting appropriate cable colours, and now I kind of don't bother without a very good reason. It's simply a time saver.

The armour I'm still highlighting gently in places. The airbrushing back then did most of the work, but was lacking in a few key areas, most notably the feet. I'm concentrating most of the manual touch-up around them. I'm also leaning into highlighting lower panes of flat surfaces to give more depth and shape to then, and I think it does help. It's possibly not very physically accurate, but it looks nice and helps readability.

The base I'm going for another marbling look, but with perhaps some more weathering added later on. I think I know why some previous attempts never turned out quite right and so this time I'm going to work slightly in reverse: the thin marbling lines will be added next, and then some of the more gentle striations. This should prevent the thing lines from overpowering everything, and blending them in more. I find marbling to be about subtlety more than anything else.

And that's about all for now. The metallic surfaces haven't had additional highlights yet, and I might wait until after varnishing for that, or I could do some basic highlights first, then pick out details again afterwards. I'll see how motivated I am.

-- silly painter.

More Misfortune

 The next animation dropped today, and as I feared: woke through & through. Girlboss soldier who is more moral and upstanding than any male counterpart, saves the day, better in battle than any other, etc etc etc. I was going to write that the Commissar would be mentally broken in battle and the girlboss would have to save him, but they made the Commissar broken _before_ the battle (during which, of course, the girlboss has to save him).

Enough of the Cadians everywhere. That's pure narrative laziness at this point. Try be more original.

Enough of every single damned 'hero' character being a girlboss. Iron Within? Girlboss in charge and better than anyone else. Broken Lance? Girlboss in charge and better than anyone else, naturally has to put down a failed male character. The Tithes? Even the Astartes-centric story was female in charge of Cadians. The others had female in every single position of power, without fail. Tech-adept female, psykers female, in-charge soldiers female - but the problem is female and always bossing around, putting down, and showing up male characters. Every single time. Even the Commissar mentions being a burden to his mother: not his parents, specifically his mother. 

The forced ideology is painfully obvious, and it's ruining the entire franchise. I see the new Kill Team models and immediately they show of course: female girlboss in charge of everything. Does the kit come with options? Near as I can tell, yes, but I can't see the kit without thinking of that now, without thinking of the animations, the ideology being bludgeoned into everything and the massive attempts at indoctrination. The grimdark setting is supposed to be a parody of such things, not an instruction manual. I don't see the setting, the parody, or even the hobby.

It's all just so unnecessary too. Games Workshop was handling diversity just fine a few years ago. Diversity does not mean "gender swap some leader and try to put down men at every opportunity". That's just pure bigotry, hatred, and sexism. Just make a good character instead, focus on a good story, and people will barely notice any diversity at all.

So I've cancelled my WH+ subscription. I'm suddenly no longer interested in the new Sanguinary Guard, even for kitbashing purposes. Or the new Blood Angels Captain. Or much of any new 40k models at all outside of Lemartes and Astorath. I'm going to just start pulling back from 40k entirely now, because all I see is agenda everywhere, and I shouldn't need to battle just to enjoy the hobby. 30k and Imperialis fortunately remain....for now.

Does this one person matter? No, not likely. To repeat: it's not diversity I mind, it's the constant being lectured to that I mind. I'm simply stepping away until that nonsense fades. I'm hoping it will, but not expecting it anytime soon. To anyone thinking "no great loss", or "glad to see you go if you think that" then just remember: the more people stay away because of this, the less of the hobby there will be. It's a hobby to enjoy, not a platform to preach, and if people start leaving because that's no longer the case, then it's not a going to be a hobby anymore, and won't be entertaining.

In the meantime, I have plenty in my backlog to paint up. So I guess there's a silver lining: not spending money on new models.

-- silly painter

Mermaid of Warsaw - Part II

 

Wow! Look at that rock!

There's not a whole lot of difference yet on the model, however I was recently playing around with oil paints again, specifically with the Zorn Palette (or close to it, as I don't have the official paints). I have a particular interest in that palette because of the skin tones that are seemingly trivial to make using it. Red, yellow, black, and white. Mixed in whatever ratios work.

One of the tricks behind skin tones is that skin is generally based on orange. Not like an orangutan, but the particular palette here can create nearly all the basics. There might be some shifts into green or blue depending on environmental factors (shading, lights, etc), but that should be simple enough with just adding those as necessary.

Working with oils is quite the joy on larger models where smooth blending is important. The long working time and ease of smoothing out colours just makes everything so much more pleasant. Notably some of the skin highlights here, and obviously yellow for the hair, but I also worked on the rock. Black was thinned slightly and dabbed around some areas, and then a grey was mixed up and kind of drybrushed (referring to the brush motion, not the paint consistency) across to build up some highlights. This workes surprisingly well. Oils have a natural translucency that also let some of the airbrushed colours show through, and I used that to act as secondary reflections from the body of the mermaid.

The hair is mostly playing with the yellow paint. No pattern or thought, I was just playing with the idea of drybrushing using oils. The desaturated yellow hair on the models's left doesn't fit with the lighting angle and I'll need to go back in and fix that next time, but I kind of like the drybrushing idea. The hair does need more depth though, and I probably should fade out some of the blues, otherwise it looks too much like coloured stone instead of hair flowing in the wind. I have some ideas on that.

I'll likely continue to play with the oils before I switch back to acrylics for finer detail work, but I definitely need to sort out some better brushes. Oils need smoothing out, and short, stiff bristles work better for that kind of thing. I have some older brushes that aren't any good (Army Painter ones that never worked as they were supposed to) so I might trim the ends down and see how that goes.

The skin tones need some blending out in places more (the abdomen for example), or building up entirely (the back). I'm also considering using some of the mineral spirits to make a wash for the hair and scales. The rock could use browns and perhaps some greens closer to the waterline as well. Still, the main colours are blocked in and I'm getting an idea at least of where the model will go. Just hope I'll be able to keep up some kind of painting routine to actually get it done.

-- silly painter