Textured Bases

 This post is slightly different to normal and won't focus much on painting, but instead creating textured bases - particularly by using textured rolling pins from Green Stuff World. This all stems from wanting bases that are more appropriate for certain environments, e.g Space Hulk settings, Imperial Palace, etc. Generic gravel or dirt doesn't quite fit in these circumstances.

I considered 3D printed base toppers, or resin sculpts, etc, but while effective for smaller groups (e.g kill teams) they lack enough variety for larger forces and the costs can add up quickly. While browsing for other parts, I came across the texture rolling pins from Green Stuff World. I'd seen them before, notably for Eldar, but this time I saw some designs that might fit what I was looking for. In the end I chose Ancestral Recall for ornate flooring that might fit the excessive opulence that is likely to appear around the Imperial Palace (and be therefore suitable for Custodian Guard), and Factory for industrial flooring, grating on ships, etc (Space Hulk comes to mind for these, or Boarding Actions).

Marbled floor with gold inlay.

My very first attempt, was to use an old glass jar to roll out green-stuff onto waxed paper, transfer it directly to a base and then use the texture roller on that. After some trimming around the edges and a quick bit of painting (more on that in a moment) the result was...pretty good. I did however learn some important lessons:

• Rolling out on wax paper was a bad idea as the paper kind of stuck to the green-stuff.
• Rolling directly onto a base gives uneven thickness.
• Leaving bits of the cured green-stuff seam causes imperfections in the end result. I made this mistake a lot.

For my next attempt I bought a cheap acrylic rolling pin, normally intended for icing sugar apparently, and cookie cutters of multiple sizes. While not the perfect size, the cookie cutters should get me close enough. This worked again remarkably well.

Old and beaten factory flooring.

A couple of mistakes with putty that had already cured, but the acrylic rolling pin gave a more even result. Next up I wanted to get consistent thickness however, and so I hunted around for a way of doing this. I've only been doing one base at a time, so in the end I went with layers of cardboard with a hole cut in the middle. I tried 4 layers, 3 layers, and 2 layers, leaving the 1 layer for the actual textured rolling pin. It seems that 2 layers for the acrylic smooth rolling pin, and 1 layer for the textured rolling pin, is the sweet spot for what I intend.

Ideal for black and yellow chevrons.

The cookie cutter is slightly larger than the top of the base, so after the green-stuff has cured for several hours I remove it from the flat surface (a piece of glass in my case) and glue it to a base. The glass has some Vasoline rubbed on it before I roll out the green-stuff to help lift it off, but I find it easier when it's cured enough to be rubbery, but not before it's like hardened rubber. A hobby knife helps to peel one section off, then I can use that to help lift the rest without tearing at the putty. After gluing to the base, the hobby knife can be used to slice away excess overhang - but a Dremel rotary tool most definitely helps to smooth that out and unify everything. Just make sure to wear a respirator mask when doing that.

Creating base toppers is fairly keyed in now.

I did one test to try create two bases at once, but this showed a particular uneven thickness that I should've been aware of. The cookie cutter should be used in the middle area of the green-stuff, as the outer edges will be pushed away from that and might have a reduced thickness.

I did contemplate for clay based toppers, but ultimately decided to stick with green-stuff. I can confidently create new prints now while avoiding the almost certain mess that comes with clay, and all while keeping the tools clean. I try to use excess putty for creating tubes, cabling, insignia that might prove useful one, etc, but there is definitely some waste. I'm not sure on the cost effectiveness of using all that green-stuff (clay would be _much_ cheaper here) but the results are good, I like the designs, and can create different sizes as and when I need them. If I were army painting, then yes I might just roll out some clay and create dozens of bases in one go, but an army painter I am not.

To round off, here are how I've painted each so far, starting with the marbled flooring:

• Black primer.
• The "baby wipe" technique and Wraithbone spray.
• Praxeti White drybrushed across most of the whiter areas, and catching edges.
• Basilicanum Grey and flow improver into the recesses.
• Pallid Wych Flesh along edges, certain raised areas, and generally glazed where I wanted it more white.
• Retributor Armour to pick out some of the flooring design.
• Not done yet, but I may pick out the smaller diamond tiles in Corvus Black later.

And for the factory flooring:

• Black primer, mostly to hide the green.
• Wraithbone over all of it.
• Space Wolves Grey (Contrast) over the whole base.
• Necron Compound drybrushed over the higher surfaces and metal grating.
• Basilicanum Grey in recesses, some glazing where necessary to tone things down a bit.
• Iron Warrior / Dawnstone mix across edges, some scratches, etc.
• Skrag Brown watered down for rust effects.

It's a bit of a convoluted process, but I do like the result. Not sure if I'll keep it - depends if I can think of a more efficient method to get something similar or not.

Still need to clean up a few edges and get painting on them all. With the process sorted, the novelty has started to wear off and I can instead plan the models that will go on top.

-- silly painter.

Legions Imperialis - Leviathan Siege Dreadnoughts

 

His name is "Plod".

These had been sitting in the prepared stage for a few weeks, and I finally got around to finishing them off. It didn't take long once I'd decided on a few colour choices.

These models I went with a simple black primer and then built up layers of Typhon Ash for highlights. Instead of immediately going for the next colour step, I decided to edge highlight with white first. The theory was that this would show through more than the Typhon Ash and give proper edge highlights without needing to colour match the Terradon Turquoise. It kind of worked, but I ended up cleaning a few placed with Lupercal Green anyway, so I'm not sure it was worth the effort. Gloss varnish and Black Legion with flow improver worked a treat as always for recess shading. I touched that up very slightly later with thinned black where necessary, but only where it was going to make a strong visual difference.

One of the major changes from previous attempts was to only edge highlight the black, without trying to perform any volumetric highlights. This saved a lot of effort and particularly with black isn't really noticeable compared to more detailed highlighting anyway. I do like how the green turned out, which for these dreadnoughts makes a difference because of the large, flat surfaces of the body - but even on the legs it's not really very noticeable. For "normal" troops, as I've previously considered, it's just not worth such attempts at all.

I am a dreadnought and I'm digging a hole...diggy diggy hole.

likewise with the metallics it's not worth putting in much effort. For this scale, edge highlights are everything - base, wash, maybe additional definition on raised areas if necessary.  I went with darker silvers because of the darker overall palette, and limited Runelord Brass to add variation where I wanted to break things up a bit, such as the hood over the head. A relatively small brush and light touches, and not even a wash is needed afterwards. 

The eyes are Troll Slayer Orange. I did do a very minor amount of volumetric highlights on the helmet simply because it's a focal point and helps to frame the eyes.

Not much else to say on these. Very quick to paint, mostly because I'm only aiming for a tabletop standard, but the end result is still rather solid and they look impressive enough when grouped together. Next are some more tanks, which I hope to have done by the end of the year - if I get time enough with the airbrush.

-- silly painter.

Sanguinary Guard - Part II

 

The return of nipples.

Some progress on the Sanguinary Guard kitbashing, although only one so far is actually painted to this stage. I wanted to test out some ideas with painting metallics through the airbrush, having learned how not to do things with the start of Dante. I also wasn't keen on spending quite as much time on these models, so the hope was that the airbrush would give me a solid start to the armour and I could more easily work from there; with many more golden armoured warriors to paint, doing it all by brush wasn't the most appealing.

I think I've come up with a good compromise, and in the process learned that metallics can given an amazingly smooth finish through an airbrush. It's actually far less smooth than it might first appear, but more on that in a moment.

The base coat is actually Dryad Bark. It's quite a dark brown to begin with, so multiple thin coats over the black primer were required to actually show anything, but it's worth the effort to do so as this will ultimately become the shadow colour.

Next up through the airbrush was Balthasar Gold, with a bare minimum of cleaning out the prior colour. Four drops of this along with three drops of thinner and three drops of flow improver, to make what is essentially a glaze consistency. Multiple thin coats are required to build up the opaqueness desired in places, but it also means no large mistakes can cover up the shadowed areas and it's easier to transition from them.

Normally I would want something like Gehenna's Gold, however that doesn't exist in the Air range and so I chose to go with Thallax Gold instead. Once more the previous colours received the bare minimum of a clean out: thinning down the paints reduces tip dry and makes it easier to flush the previous paint out, but a little mixed in won't hurt. Thallax Gold was mostly a Zenithal at this stage, highlighting various volumes as I saw fit and trying to leave previous coats visible. As before it was four drops of Thallax Gold, three drops of thinner, and three drops of flow improver, to create an almost glaze and using multiple thin coats to build up the highlights.

At this point the result was ultra smooth and gave an almost mirror shine to the whole model. Metallic paints are very forgiving when blending from one colour to another: the gloss hides much of the effort while the pigments and reflective material used naturally gives a kind of grain or noise to hide any speckle from the airbrush. The effect was so astoundingly smooth that I wonder why I didn't try this before - it's a great time saver compared to using a normal brush. It's only on (very) closer inspection that some of the "noise" is still clearly visible. This makes sense - the colour pigments and other materials will kind of float and spread out more when the metallics are thinned down, disassociating from each other and producing that result, however with multiple thin coats the effect is evened out substantially and the gloss finish hides much of the rest. The result is still superb when viewed from any kind of distance and so I'll continue with it, and besides when looking close enough the layer lines of the 3d printed parts are easily visible anyway.

One of the problems in the past with the metallic paints through an airbrush is that they rub off far too easily. To counter this I like to use a gloss shade over the top. A matt varnish can't be used because that ruins the shine of course, but a shade can still serve to lock the airbrushed stages down. I don't use it as a wash, but instead more of a glazed shade colour. Reikland Fleshshade (Gloss) It was used to give more warmth to the golds and help outline some areas. I'm still debating if I should go back in with Agrax Earthshade in key areas to further outline them, which is a decision I'll leave for later down the line.

Auric Armour Gold and Canoptek Alloy were used to apply further highlights, either as volumetric or edge highlighting where necessary. I generally use pure Auric Armour Gold (thinned to more than a layer paint, but slight less than a glaze) for building up some volumes or edge highlighting lower areas, with a mix of that and Canoptek Alloy (roughly 2:1 or perhaps 3:1, no hard & fast rules) for extreme edges or more focal points such as the "face", and some filigree.

Iron Hands Steel glazed into some areas allows for a silver colour, while keeping the golden reflection apparent. This is most easily seen on the spherical points on top of the jump pack.

Not shown because I forgot to get a photo is that testing a very small amount of Khorne Red mixed with Auric Armour Gold (really about 1:10, or 1:15) and glazed can give excellent contrast in areas - I've used it to outline and shadow some filigree on the back of the jump pack and it really adds to the depth of the model. I might consider doing more of this, but I think I'll leave it for for artistic details to help them stand out more.

And there we are. I'm continually pleased with how these models are turning out and looking forward to adding in more details. I won't paint all three to the same level at the same time, but just see how I go on individual models and paint as and when I feel like it. The wings I might try to make darker further down, getting more bright towards the top of the jump pack just because I like how that's framing the model so far. It might have been better to try and airbrush that effect, but it's too late to try on this model on account of that jump pack being already glued in place. A normal brush will have to tried one way or another.

-- silly painter

Sanguinary Guard - Part I

 

Black background wasn't the best choice.

Starting to put some sculpting lessons to good use with the parts received from the Crimson Lords campaign. I can still spot defects and layer lines, but the ordered parts are basically "good enough" and imperfections aren't noticeable from a distance.

The new Sanguinary Guard are, obviously, not the designs people were hoping for. The terrible helmets could've been forgiven and replaced with something else, but the lack of adornment and the lack of wings makes them simply not Sanguinary Guard. The excuse of "oh well, they're new to the post and armour hasn't been adapted" is disingenuous considering Mephiston, Dante, Astorath, and even a generic Captain all had their armour adapted. So it was that the Crimson Lords campaign became somewhat popular.

In the model shown I wanted to try and use the full front torso of older and smaller scale models. I needed to pick a model where the abdominal plate wasn't naturally too far tilted compared to the chest because I couldn't adjust that piece. Given what I know now, then a very (very) thin sheet of putty and sculpted impressions might be able to resolve that. I may just try that on one of the others.

The model torso needed to be clipped out and a good deal carved away behind the belt for the new torso to relatively fit. I didn't want there to be a lack of bulk so needed to pad out behind the torso rather than fit it directly flush. This was a lot more effort than it sounds. Green-stuff was used to fill initial gaps and give more surface for later Milliput layers to adhere to. There was quite a gap between the back and front of the torso and this needed to be filled, and the sides bulked out to fit properly. I'm not entirely happy with the end result, but it's good enough to stand up to a cursory inspection. The arm attachment points also needed to be filled out some more, and it's here that I was impatient slightly. This particular Milliput can be soft and difficult to file, especially if not cured for at least 24 hours. A sharp blade trimmed excess just fine, but I'll need to keep this in mind for future work.

The left arm is from the Crimson Lords pack, but the fist from the bits box of spare Intercessor arms. The right arm is the original with the shoulder pad removed and the hand replaced with a hand and sword from the 3D printed parts. The shoulder pads I'm still choosing, but I'll need to paint them separate so that the wings don't get in the way when painting. I actually learned more of how to use my own custom tools when fix the gun holster, which I now imagine to contain spare ammunition for the wrist mounted weapon. Leaving Milliput in the freezer overnight allows it to still be malleable, but with just enough resistance to allow for impressions to be made without tearing at it.

The helmet and wings are, of course, from the Crimson Lords pack. The wings interested me the most: everything else I could have work around, but those wings make it all worthwhile. I may have rushed to assemble and prime the model, but I wanted to know how it would all come together so that the next two are better informed. I did try to created moulds of the Blood Angels chapter badge, and then use thin pressings of Milliput to place them on the legs, but that didn't really work and I scraped it off. My sculpting isn't sufficient yet to tackle that, but perhaps in future I could put down a decal as a guide and slowly sculpt on top of it. I have ideas on how to experiment with that, namely using normal troop shoulder pads to sculpt a blood drop onto: simple, and might give better results than the mess I sometimes make of the decals. In the meantime, the legs and knee pads will probably just get freehand painting to mimic the style of the old Sanguinary Guard.

I'm pleased with the overall look. I think I would still have preferred a single main booster jump pack, but this is acceptable. A worthy successor to the older sculpts, and enough to keep me interested in painting for now.

-- silly painter.

Commander Dante - Part V (Showcase)

 

Angel of Death.

Despite not thinking I would manage this, I've actually been able to finish Dante over the last week. Everything just kind of fell into place, and I'm calling him done. Not that I'm entirely happy with everything: the axe blade in particular doesn't really do it for me, but I think I'll leave it as a reminder for later projects.

The base I think turned out better than I'd hoped. It doesn't clash with Dante, and I intentionally gave it a cooler, darker tone that was complimentary to the red, but contrasting to the warmth of Dante's armour. It's not actually much darker though: it's the glossy shine from the metallics that give that impression. Compared to the shaded areas, the base is actually a lighter tone. The rough painting approach is:

• Mechanicus Standard Grey / Black (3:1, or even 2:1, exact amount isn't important) as a base colour over everything.
• Chronos Blue drybrushed over all of the stone, with very light touches over the dirt and loose rubble.
• Stormfang Blue drybrushed as highlights over the previous step.
• Wrack White drybrushed onto the very edges of the stone, and again lightly over all of the dirt and loose rubble.
• Seraphim Sepia shade into random areas of the dirt. This isn't a heavy wash, just a light one to more or less glaze over them.
• Agrax Earthshade in the deeper recessed areas, and also glazed as a transition colour on stone, or where the previous shade was too red.
• Nuln Oil as a glaze more than a shade, mostly to define some of the carvings in the stone, or to darken some of the stone work. This is most noticeable where the broken pillar meets the ground.

I'm fairly pleased with the end result, and thankful that I made the decision earlier to strip the texture paint off and go with more of a "pillar crashed down from high into stone tiles" look. On a note about drybrushing: as it turns out, the Citadel paints for that are really good! They have the right consistency if using the right (_very_ slightly damp) brush, and moving between values slowly instead of any one large value jump (e.g white over black) helps smooth out transitions and helps prevent that grainy texture that drybrushing is so often associated with.

The half-tabbard is Barak-Nar Burgundy and Gal Vorbak Red, with mixes of black in there to shade things, and even the old Bloodletter Red to shift some of the volumetric highlights more. In general I didn't go for much in the way of extreme highlights, effectively only going as high as a mid-tone. This makes it look less reflective and more like material of some kind. I need to work on that kind of thing more, but I think the basic idea is sound.

Must have good type script for battle.

I haven't magically become very good at writing on scrolls (although a size 0 Windsor & Newton is making short work of purity seals), but for the right pauldron I used the opportunity to give self-printed decals a go. My printer isn't configured for super high quality to leave it at that, but it does give enough of an outline that I can fill in the rest with a fine-tipped paintbrush. It has that "cheating" feeling, but ultimately I chose the font, I cut it to size and applied it, and I painted over it to clean up the lines, and if it gives me excellent lettering every time then who really cares? I have a bunch of names printed out to use in future as well. The skull is a little too bright white, even after I dulled it down slightly, but I need to stop somewhere and it's not bad at all. I'd work on it more if this was for a competition, but that's all.

The axe has one component with Canoptek Alloy glazed onto it for more of a brass feel. This was mixed with Balthasar Gold to help shift the colour, but it turned out nicely enough. I'll keep that in mind for future reference.

Not much else that it's paint-by-numbers and which I haven't done many times before. I'm happy with the end result, and really upped my game with using metallics. The base turned out much better than I'd hoped, learned few tricks with drybrushing, and decals for words is a definite hit - plus, the model itself looks great.

-- silly painter.

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.