Sanguinary Guard - Part V (Showcase)

 

Have to wonder if he sculpted his own armour.

Sanguinary Guard are now considered complete. The bases are very simple, I could do an awful lot more there, but they're not the focus. The skulls are there purely to put skulls on bases (the pack of skulls was a gift) and to basically mark a model as done.

There's not too much not already covered from a painting perspective, so I'll be brief about that: the swords. The hilts are a mix of Warplock Bronze, Balthasar Gold, and Screaming Bell. Nothing fancy, just mix and layer. The blades are another matter, and I'm still not sure they worked how I wanted - but I definitely feel like there's potential to be had. I wanted the blades to be darker; bright blades would clash with the reflective armour and break the framing of the core of the model by unbalancing it. I also couldn't just leave them black. NMM might work, but I'd need to keep it very dark, which doesn't sell that technique too well, and I also wanted something to give them a hint of energy or inner power. And red. Ultimately this went something along the lines of:

• Black along the length of the blade.
• Corvus Black / Mechanicus Standard Grey to highlight the end, but also the base of the blade.
• Mechanicus Standard Grey / Ulthuan Grey to edge highlight the end and tip of the blade.
• Flesh Tearer's Red (Contrast) in multiple thin coats at the base of the blade, feathering it out into the middle.
• Stormshield varnish for extra protection and to unify the finish.

The second last step gives red because Blood Angels, but also darkens the base of the blade again. This kind of colour transition is an idea I used on Nekima and Mephiston to give that semi-mystical energy feel to the sword without relying on traditional power weapon effects. Note that because I don't give a unifying matt varnish to these models on account of the heavy use of metallics, I gave the sword blade a standalone varnish. These are the parts likely to come into contact with other surfaces and chip or have paint rub off.

His temper isn't a problem. For him.

I tried to give lettering a glow on the third sword, but silly me went and tried it over white. That just made everything pink. I should have gone for white, then yellow, and then red. I did play around with darkening metallics with whatever blacks and greys were on my palette, and that worked to a degree - enough that it's viable when the hilt is silver and the blade shouldn't match.

Not a whole lot more to say about the painting - it's all quite apparent, already covered, or nearly inconsequential (e.g "just use whatever is on the palette to make it semi-interesting"). So instead I'll mention some reflection on how the kitbashing, custom parts, and sculpting turned out.

First point is the 3d printed parts. This was the most obvious choice to give the models wings. There are other options I could have explored, but none would have looked half as good and taken twice as long. They fit with the model well, are a nice design, and with that I'm generally pleased. The print quality however shows that more traditional approaches with plastic or cast resin still reign supreme. Plastic cement is pretty damned useful too. Tidy up from supports is still needed on 3d printed parts, layer lines are very obvious in multiple places, and a multitude of artefacts are all around the place. I've done my best to cover up some of this, but it could've used some putty and sanding to improve on it all. This is just something to consider: unless dialling in your own 3d printer and spending a long time getting everything just right, imperfections from third party sellers are going to happen. Most of the problems aren't visible at the distance seen on a tabletop, but I wouldn't approve in a painting competition.

Sculpting little pieces on worked great. I could seem myself improving the more I played with it, and it's a skill I think I could master very quickly if I wanted and had the time for. It's the latter which is a problem, but I do want to continue to customise models in this way. Blood drop gemstones ended up being one of the easier things to sculpt as it turns out, however trying to make an impression of a larger detail and later glue it to the model wasn't as effective. Better to just sculpt directly onto a surface. Also, roughening up the surface really helps the putty stick.

Helmet is in the workshop.

The kitbashing itself I think worked well enough. Obviously the poses don't quite fit a model in flight or attacking with a jump pack, but the official models don't do that well either. It's really hard to have a dynamic pose with a flight capable model, despite some obvious designer best efforts, and I obviously can't do any better - but let it be known that I think some of the models from GW do execute such poses very well. Despite all of that, kitbashing was necessary to bring back the feel of Sanguinary Guard, and I really like the great range of options available to do just that. Each model has a unique pose, an individual look, and a sense of personality. There's stories that each one can tell, hints that their armour is still a work in progress by each of them, and yet they're elite warriors upholding the history and legends of those that came before.

Sure, the results aren't perfect, but the kitbashing was a good choice, and ultimately a cheaper one for me given that I already had a lot of spare parts to work with.

Finally, the paper under the bases is there to help remove the models. I magnetise the bases and they're otherwise hard up against steel washers. That could damage the magnets, but also the strength of the magnet might be more than the glue holding them to the base, so the bit of paper is just there to help slide the model of the washer.

-- silly painter.

Wraithlord - Part II

 

Back in black.

Not exactly going to be a long post, but I wanted to record a small experiment with the Wraithlord. The basic summary is: highlighting black by undercoating with off-white.

I've been using Typhon Ash a lot recently, mostly because it's the closest I could get to wraithbone in an airbrush paint and I have two bottles of it and need to use it up now. After the airbrush mania a few weeks back, I had the inspiration to see what I could do about black.

Black is very difficult to to work with. It's an absence of colour, and so any colour added stands out in very stark contrast. Grey tones end up flat, but picking the wrong slightly-cool or slightly-warm tones can mess up the entire feel of it. I have trouble with volumetric highlights for some of these reasons: smooth gradients with black are extremely difficult, best done with glazes, and are very time consuming. My physical accurate black often has fewer such highlights in reality, or they're very subtle, but that doesn't help a miniature stand out and be readable by the viewer. Some liberties need to be taken, but they often just end up looking like stone.

The Wraithlord has shapes that lend itself naturally to an airbrush. It's larger, curved surfaces are ideal for building up gradients with an airbrush, and a less than perfect finish might be explained by the Aeldari material used for most of their construction (wraithbone). I'm improving with the airbrush a lot, particularly in getting smoother gradients out from multiple passes, and basically thought I'd give it a go. If I end up collecting any Eldar then it's likely I'd paint them up as Ulthwe.

Typhon Ash would give me a warmer tone to the finish, in theory. So I used that to build up where I wanted highlights and tried to keep the upper part of the model brighter. I had to correct myself while doing this step because it's easy to get lost in details and forget about the larger picture. Once happy with this step, I then used Black Templar (Contrast) to bring back a black finish, more heavily in the lower areas and surfaces facing downwards. The end result is that is looks kind of....grey, like darkened stone. This fits for a Wraithlord, but I chose Black Templar for a reason: Abaddon Black is darker still and I could use that to nudge the contrast where I wanted.

The left leg has some experimentation with colours from the palette where I wanted to get more of a feel about how this would turn out. Mechanicus Standard Grey, White Scar, Ulthuan Grey, and Abaddon Black in varying degrees to shade some areas more, and highlight others. Edges and tops of the "bumps" make them stand out more, defining the shapes without necessarily brightening things too much. Upper areas of the model I'd use brighter edge highlights. It's working well enough, but I'm not sure how motivated I am to continue. I can see how using very small and bright edge highlights can make it look reflective and smooth, where the dulled effect I'm going for definitely gives a rougher, matt finish impression. I would certainly like to explore the shiny side of things, but I'm not sure that fits theme of this model too well. Perhaps i can try that on the blade later.

Final note: I missed a lot of paint when stripping the original model, and again when priming it. Patches of red were showing up underneath, and actually it looked really cool, almost like there was some nightmare glow from below. I'll have to keep that in mind for future reference.

-- silly painter

Sanguinary Guard - Part IV

 

Teaches bifurcation.

Slow going with painting, but I've been poking away at the Sanguinary Guard as time permits. Most of the efforts have been going into metallics, which seems to have ended up being about ninety percent of the models. This poses a particular challenge: metallics are difficult to provide contrast with.

The gloss finish of metallics covers up a lot of mistakes, helps smooth out transitions, but so much so that it makes it difficult to build up volumetric and edge highlights. To that end, I went slightly heavier with the Canoptek Alloy on the edges just to give them a little something extra. Polished gold might give desaturated reflections, which normally I'd use a light silver for, however I just don't like how that typically looks. This approach still leaves me with some wriggle room to use pure Canoptek Alloy on detailing and tie everything together. The only other way around this would be to repeat the approach on Dante, which for the time constraints I'd already ruled out on these models.

I do have some silver detailing, which is quite straight forward:

• Iron Warriors
• Iron Hands Steel
• Runefang Steel

I'm also playing with the idea of using Corvus Black in places to give extra depth, so that I don't need to bother with a shade. If nothing else, the black is still serving as a foundation to build the metallics up from. In general though, the above combination gives a good amount of contrast that can be worked with to make the smaller details pop.

There's nothing unusual with the bases, other than perhaps I could add some skulls for a little visual interest.

Now I simply need to fill in all the remaining details - of which there are many. Pouches, gemstones, purity seals, some of the weapons, the eyes, etc. As far as experiments go, they've fulfilled all the goals I'd set out to achieve - and now I just want to finish them. I'll therefore likely focus on the Sanguinary Guard for the next week and see how close I can get to that. It would be nice to finish something before the end of the month.

-- silly painter

Devastator Squad - Part I

 

Vast targeting array, and still needs to point where to shoot.

In some kind of effort to try out the adjustments I've been making to painting up red armour, I've assembled (or mostly assembled) a Devastator squad. The helmets are of course blue and will be attached later, but the bodies give a few different details that could be used to adjust the result if it didn't turn out.

After the usual black primer and Dryad Bark / Mephiston Red (1:1) base coat, I then mixed up Averland Sunset and Typhon Ash in about a 3:4 ratio and layered up some highlights. I think I might have pushed it too much, but really tried to focus on the backpack, torso, arms, and lower legs. I was using the "workhorse" airbrush (the cheaper one that's much easier to clean out and that I allow myself to treat a little roughly) for this - the more expensive H&S gives a far smoother result, but I don't have a cap to properly perform backflow and clean it out. Given the cold temperatures, I opted for whichever took less time overall.

Following the Blood Angels Red coat, I realised that once again, not enough contrast between shadow and highlight. I'm still too heavy with the previous stage. I put a glaze of Dryad Bark back through the airbrush to darken some areas again: lower half of the knee pads, under the arms, lower chest-plate, that kind of thing. This helped bring things back to roughly how I wanted them, but I'd rather not have to do that all the time.

For the rest of the Devastators, which I haven't hit with the Contrast colour yet, I may use unmixed Typhon Ash to highlight a few key points on the upper areas just to push the brightness slightly more. I can always glaze back the colours later, but the whole point of the airbrush on squads is to get acceptable results without too many time consuming steps - I think this approach still has merit, but needs further fine-tuning.

In future I'll try again with Averland Sunset, mix in Typhon Ash again for smaller highlights, and then more Typhon Ash for highlights on the upper areas, all the while trying to keep from flooding the entire model with each step. In the meantime, I have Devastators to finish, and there's another project I'm starting while there's airbrushing time - but I suspect that will be all the works in progress until I can get some of them finished.

-- silly painter.

Legions Imperialis - Sicaran Battle Tanks (Part II)

 

An edgy, colourful variety of tank.

There hasn't been a whole lot of progress on the Sicaran tanks recently, but I did manage to finally get the bulk of the armour finished and an impression of how well the (hopefully) more refined approach would turn out.

Last time it was simply building up Typhon Ash, later mixed with White Scar, to ensure the vibrancy showed through. I think that worked well enough that I'll simply continue with that approach in future. Terradon Turquoise was applied in a couple of coats but managed to maintain some of the shading and highlighting. I could have mixed in slightly more White Scar, but on the other hand the edge highlights here help give the appearance of brighter colours.

After the usual coat of gloss varnish, and before edge highlights, I once again went with Black Legion (Contrast) mixed with acrylic flow improver. I wasn't exactly super careful with it, but neither was I being too messy. I did on occasion (particularly on the top areas of the body near the turret) heaving wash nearly all of it, and then quickly wipe away excess with a cleaned brush. This is much quicker than carefully panel lining, and keeps any staining to a minimum. I wouldn't do this on larger scales, but it worked excellently here.

The main armour highlight colours are Gauss Blaster Green and Sons of Horus Green. Gauss Blaster applied to brighter (normally upward facing) edges, Sons of Horus on others but also layered over Gauss Blaster to pull back some of the brightness and help tie everything together. I also mixed the two colours together basically as I felt like it, wanting edges visible but not trying to cosplay as a Tron character. I think so far it worked, even though I'm aware the matt varnish later will tone it back.

Black Legion (Contrast) was used to cover the tracks and black armour panels because of its good coverage and ability to be applied over gloss varnish. The armour panels still had Eshin Grey and Abaddon Black blended together over them - and none of this has been done on the turrets yet. The tracks I was unsure about. I wanted them darker, metallic, but also dirty and distinct from the armour panels. I also didn't want to spend weeks on them. Ultimately it was as simple as Iron Warriors in a couple of layers (this does not have to be completely smooth, just a couple of rough coats) and then Ratling Grime (Contrast) over the top. The Ratling Grime I researched and bought specifically to try this out with - and I'm intending to use it elsewhere for oil stains, or general...grime.

That brings the tanks to their current state. The weapons need blacking and metallics applied, and the housing on the turrets for the weapons will probably be black as well, which is why I didn't bother to highlight those yet. There are a few viewports that need picking out, lenses, other small details - all over which is going to take time. I'm definitely spending more of that on these particular models compared to the Rhinos, but these are also centrepieces. Also I couldn't decide on the turrets, so I'm painting them all - meaning four tanks, but eight turrets in total.

-- silly painter.

Captain Karlaen Kitbash - Part II

 

That Carnifex is....hammered.

Continuing to paint up various works in progress as I'm inspired as resulted in some paint applied to the Captain Karlaen kitbashing effort. The red I airbrushed at the same time, and in the same manner, as the recent Praetor - mostly to avoid wasting too much paint, but also to confirm the result with a second model. Not much to say about the result which hasn't already been covered. Then I was watching a random YouTube video, by The Feral Painter if I remember rightly, and was inspired to paint the head of the vanquished Carnifex.

Painting the base would allow me to attach the model completely and keep it on the painting handle, but I'll mention now that I could have waited longer to get the cape finished first. It will be more difficult to access that now, but I figured difficult doesn't mean impossible, and with the top icon having snapped off twice already then I was eager to get the model assembled and more easily handled.

Back to the base, the initial black primer was done before adding Armageddon Dust around the edge, and then a quick dusting with Wraithbone primer gave what I thought was a solid foundational colour for just about everything. I then used a simple base coat of Wraithbone out of the pot to give more even coverage over the Carnifex head. One thing I have noticed: the pot version is a very subtly different colour, a little more saturated compared to the spray primer.

In the most basic overview for the fleshy areas:

• Wraithbone over everything.
• Baneblade Brown painted into shaded areas, mixed with the previous colour to blend as necessary.
• Druchii Violet thinned with flow improver (or Lahmian Medium, or just water) and glazed over everything. Try to avoid it pooling too much, and use a second pass in the deeper recessed areas.
• Volupus Pink thinned with Contrast Medium and glazed over the lips, some of the prominent fleshy sections, and any apparent wounds.
• Wraithbone layered to highlight areas again as necessary. I used much more on the rib-cage in the hopes of giving a more rigid look compared to the varied browns, pinks, and violets on the head.

The carapace in turn is:

• Naggaroth Night / Black (1:1 ratio) over the carapace. I did leave some places with only one coat to give variation, but for the most part two coats.
• Naggaroth Night thinned and layered to build up basic highlights. None of the typical carapace lines are done yet, this instead informs where they might go later.
• Naggaroth Night / Dechala Lilac (1:1 ratio) to start edge highlights and building up some of those carapace lines.
• Dechala Lilac to build up extreme highlight points, and make some of the carapace lines more prominent. A little water goes a long way to build this up in layers and blend it together.

The usual disclaimer applies to all of this: there's a lot of going between the stages to fix, blend, rework, and adjust while painting. It's not a one step, then another, then another, then done approach: everything was on the wet palette and I pick and mixed as I wanted.

The blood and entrails I used Flesh Tearer's Red for, but I'm not sure it's quite suitable. I might adjust the colour with a little more purple later. Carroburg Crimson in the eye to outline that, however it still looks partially alive. I might use a blue to darken it later.

I'm not done with the base yet. There are details such as the teeth to fill in yet, and the ferrocrete (or whatever it is) could use some more attention. So far I'm happy with how this model is turning out, and I do have a spare Tyranid model somewhere that I could practice this scheme on - just that I'm not in any particular hurry to start on that model. Yet. Cheers to The Feral Painter for the ideas here.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angels Legion Terminator Praetor - Part I

 

The new turnip-head helmet design.

To start the year off I thought I'd go with a model that's been sitting in the background for a while. I've actually already painted up the head because it's difficult (nearly impossible) to put in place once the body is fully assembled, but painting the body before full assembly would leave gaps. The solution was therefore to paint the head, glue that in place, glue the body together, and then mask around the head with a lump of blu-tac. Touching up around the head will need to be done later but should be relatively easy to do.

I was originally thinking I would paint this model up by hand instead of using the airbrush, but while that would most definitely look amazing, I eventually decided the time was better spent on experimenting on how to use the airbrush to give brighter highlights for Blood Angels. That's been a problem I've had for some time: there's not been enough difference between shadow and highlight regions and the models look kind of flat.

To start with I applied the usual base coat of Dryad Bark and Mephiston Red in a 1:1 ratio. Following that was pure Mephiston Red, and then Averland Sunset. I probably overdid the Averland Sunset too much and at least here it makes the pure Mephiston Red step a waste of time. I built up the Averland Sunset in a few layers to give smoother transitions and prevent overt speckling, but it also meant I covered up all of the pure Mephiston Red by accident.

I could alternatively have gone back to Evil Sunz Scarlett here, but using Averland Sunset has a particular benefit: I can see where the highlights will be before everything is unified. I can get lost in the transitions too easily when sticking to reds and that's part of what makes me lose track of the difference between shadow and highlight. I'll revisit this again one day when I'm more comfortable with trusting the process.

Wait, aren't I supposed to be red?

Knowing that the later filter will pull back the brightness, I decided that Averland Sunset wasn't high enough in value. I didn't want to add a brighter yellow as that would just look orange. Instead I had the cunning plan of adding another colour to brighten and desaturate the Averland Sunset while still staying clear of being too close to white. I've been using Typhon Ash recently and was familiar with its properties, so I ended mixing that with Averland Sunset in a 1:1 ratio and applying to make a few areas just that more bright. It's probably worth keeping the previous Averland Sunset step, however it's also likely a good idea to experiment with building up layers of this mix directly. Fewer steps means a faster turnaround time on the base coat and highlighting process, and that would benefit painting up squads.

Ah, that's more like it.

Using Blood Angels Red (Contrast) through the airbrush in multiple thin glazes gives a very saturated end result that I think is overall an improvement. There is of course a gloss varnish to help with recess shading, and when the matt varnish is applied there will be some loss of vibrancy, but I'm hoping edge highlighting will help trick the eye into restoring some of that. Evil Sunz Scarlett is still ever so slightly more vibrant, so I guess the next test might want to increase that pre-glazing highlight level even more to compensate.

There are enough other models in the works that I should find a test subject for all that I've learned here. As for this one, it's time to think of getting a base sorted before I proceed too much further.

-- silly painter.