Commander Dante - Work in Progress #3 (and final)

As the last in this series of posts on Commander Dante, there's not a whole lot more to say about remaining details. There are a few notes though, so I'll go over each in brief.

I missed talking about the belt buckle in previous posts, and yes, it was never meant to have blue tinted wings. That would be too much, and a little variety doesn't hurt.

The hidden shoulder pad I actually used a very fine pen to write his name on, although looking at it I'm sure I'd like to use a brush next time. Words are difficult to do correctly, but I'm sure a very fine brush is better suited to such detail. Where the fine pen does work great is on small dots and dashes on the purity seals (can't be seen in the photos above). This is something that can be achieved with a brush too, but using a pen is simply easier. The only downside to the pen is that the ink takes a while to dry, and has a gloss rather than a matte finish.

There was also a decal of a skull applied to the hidden shoulder pad. I used that to experiment with mostly because it would be hidden in the end anyway. The decal was perhaps unsuitable to the shoulder pad however, and suffered from that terrible problem of folding, or edges sticking out where it doesn't quite conform to the curved surface. Cutting small slits in places helps with this, but I find that it also doubles up in certain places, making the decal look "odd" on the crease lines. Painting over it can help, but only if the decal lies flat. I did use a coat of Lahmian Medium to seal the decal, touching up the edges with Auric Armour Gold to help blend everything into the underlying paint better. I definitely need more experience with decals.

Lastly here, the base. Finecast miniature bases seem to continue the tradition of coming with a large gap down the middle of the base. I used a putty similar to blu-tac to seal over this, however masking tape is actually just as effective. Given a layer or two of paint and it can be barely seen. The base here was given a layer of Armageddon Dust, followed by a drybrushing with Underhive Ash, and then a touch of Longbeard Grey drybrushed over that. The lighter colour of the grey helps break it up a bit, although certainly some other colours might help some more. I didn't want the base to overshadow the model however, and so stuck with something very simple. The texture paints work rather well - it's like painting small sand onto the base. I will experiment with texture paints more in the future.

Overall I'm fairly happy with the finish. The gold works well, and the blue tint to the wings also turned out respectable. The axe head doesn't really look how I want it to however, so I may at some point in the future do some more work there.

Now, time to apply what I've learned to other models.

  -- silly painter

Commander Dante - Work in Progress #2

This post is about the details other than the base gold armour. To start with, the base colours are used.

The usual black is applied where it's obvious, but the strangest part may be the wing iconography. The wings were based with Caledor Sky, with the tops and blood drop done with Celestra Grey. From another model being used to practice with, I had tried a blue wash over light colours for wings, but it didn't really turn out too well. In hindsight, a lighter blue might have been a better option, but I wasn't sure how much would show through in the end.

Mechanicus Standard Grey was used with the joints, for opposite reasons to the wings. Normally I would paint them black, and then highlight over the top. This time I'm reversing that and using a lighter colour, with the intention of using Nuln Oil later to make the recesses darker. This is something that did turn out rather well.

Rhinox Hide for the pouches, and Khorne Red for the axe handle. The handle I wanted darker than the blood drop gems, so a darker base is used. Caliban Green on the wreath on the head, Warplock Bronze on the mask tubing, Rakarth Flesh on the scrolls, and Mephiston Red on the seals rounded out the base colours.

With the base done, it was time to start layering.

Mephiston Red, although a base paint, was thinly applied to any blood drop gems. Watering it down slightly let it be applied more smoothly, and also gave it a brighter colour due to the underlying Celestra Grey. Ulthuan Grey was brushed onto the wings, although it's there that a bit more work should have been done to cover the blue. As it is, I feel the blue stands out too much rather than acting as more of a shadow colouring. Better brushes would have let me paint individual wing "feathers" to solve this issue, which is something to try next time. Still, it's not so bad, and the tips, also painted with Ulthuan Grey, help give a whiter appearance.

Leadbelcher was applied to any gun or other shiny weapon areas. Again, this is a base colour, but it looks far better when applied over a black coat, so I consider it more of a layer paint. I also gave a highlight of Ironbreaker to most of the same areas.

Nuln Oil was applied to the armour joints, which gave a far better look than trying to highlight the edges. I'll be using this method on future models.
It's not really apparent in the photos, but a tip picked up from a Games Workshop "colour card" (used to show their recommended paints for Blood Angels) helped with highlighting black edges. Eshin Grey was brushed onto the jump pack cabling, and along the gun edges. Black is one of those tricky colours to highlight, and while I wasn't impressed with my first efforts (really must get a better brush soon), I'm convinced that Eshin Grey will be more effective with a bit of practice.

A shade of Carroburg Crimson was given to the purity seals, just to darken them a little when compared to the gems. It was also applied to the axe handle.

Kabalite Green on the wreath finished this stage. The wreath is one of those tricky parts, because it's a fairly minor component, but the contrast of green against the golds and reds is crucial to balancing out the head when compared to the rest of the model.

Above is the next stage of highlights and layering. Blood drop gems were given a watered down Abaddon Black darkened tip, Wild Rider Red highlighted base, and a white dot inside the black to give it that gemstone quality. While this is sometimes effective, I'll probably work on that method come the next model.

A little Runefang Steel on weapon edges gave them a brighter look, after shading with Nuln Oil (and spilling it in the process - darn).

Scrolls and parchment were shaded with Agrax Earthshade, and then highlighted with Karak Stone. During the shade phase, I also made sure to apply a little in the corners where the scrolls meet the armour. This gives a darkened border to a) help those elements stand out, and b) makes the join look more shadowed. It's difficult to describe the difference without better quality photos, but the results are far better this way, and it's again something I'll be doing more of going forward.

A glaze of Bloodletter was given to the shaft of the axe, just because I thought it would look better than all silver. It does. All silver is sometimes abused a little too much, and models can be far more interesting with a subtle change in hue (perfect for glaze work). The axe head was given two coats of Guilliman Blue glaze for that glowing energy look. It's an ok effect, and worked with the Dreadnought, but isn't as effective here. I may give some light blue edge highlights later.

The wings were given a final highlight of White Scar. This time, I tried to carefully paint each "feather", one by one. It worked rather well in the end, and is again something I'll be doing more of in future. While they might appear ideal for drybrushing, I find wings need to be more exact than I can currently to with drybrushing, which is perhaps better suited to armour edges, hair, fur, etc. Or I just need to get better at drybrushing.

Last details (for now) are the pouches, touchups to armour (not visible from these photos), and a bit of colouring to the gun. But first....

The scrolls and parchment were given a final coat, or two in the case of the shoulder pad, layer of Screaming Skull. This turned out quite well, and would likely work rather well with Dark Angel robes. With the wings already highlighted to white, I didn't want the parchment to be as bright and so didn't highlight them all the way to white.

The head wreath was given a final highlight of Warpstone Glow. I might be tempted to mix a little white with that and do another highlight down the track, but I'm happy enough with it for the moment.

The pouches on the model's right were highlighted with Gorthor Brown on the edges, just to give them some form. The right holster, on the other hand I decided was too brown, and something more fancy befitting a Commander would be needed. A thinned down coat of Screamer Pink, followed by a shade of Carroburg Crimson gave it a very velvet appearance, and really does give a much better finish than brown. I did not highlight the edges - instead, I simply made sure the shade wasn't applied there, and gave extra shade towards the centre areas. I haven't felt the need to highlight the edges after that, so that's another trick to keep in mind.

Although not really visible in the photos here, I did end up using small amount of Brass Scorpion on the gun barrel to give it a blasted look. The layer was actually a little too much at first, so I then went over some of it with a very thin layer of Ironbreaker. I would actually blend the Ironbreaker in towards the more blasted areas where possible, ensuring the brass look didn't vanish. The effect is quite reasonable, and I'll be exploring that combination with further models.

So this time a lot of techniques were learned that can be put to good use with future models. This is something you really only get to experiment with from those extra special models, another good reason to not leave them to paint until last.

'til next time.

  -- silly painter

Commander Dante - Work in Progress #1

Mostly as an excursion in metallic gold painting, Command Dante is also the first of the Citadel Finecast models for me to paint. The Finecast parts are very detailed, but suffer from soft plastic and quite often some faults from the manufacturing process. Dante's jump pack suffered heavily from this, and I don't have any green stuff to repair it. It's hoped that it won't be too visible when finished, but it could always be disguised as battle damage.

I did some reading first on Sanguinary Guard to determine how to approach the gold colour. There are two ways to painting gold: with or without metallic paints. The metallics have a habit of picking up reflections very easily, and so aren't suitable for models expecting to be photographed. They do however look rather well for some in store models I've seen.

With regards to metallic paints, I found that the layer paints are a little thinner than others, and so highlight rather well. It was mainly because of this that I felt Commander Dante could be painted to a fairly high degree of quality.

The first step, as always, is the base coat. Normally this would be black, however I wanted the golden armour to have a lighter tone, so the base coat was done white instead.

 Ceramite White provided the base coat, being careful to apply it thinly so as not to obscure any detail. As I've mentioned before, that particular paint is a little thicker than others, so watering it down every so slightly did help. If it gets watered down too much it has a tendency to settle in the lower areas. Adding a touch of paint to thicken and then spread it around other areas helps reduce that problem.

 With the base coat done, Balthasar Gold was used as the base gold colour. It's a fairly dark colour, closer to copper, but building up highlighting layers will make the finished result much lighter. I did avoid areas that won't be painted gold, which is mostly because my rule of thumb is: use the fewest layers as required. This helps to avoid obscuring detail with too much paint, a leftover habit from the Tamiya paint days.

 After the base armour colour was done, I covered the armour quite liberally with the shade Seraphim Sepia. The observant viewer will note that I'm only doing the armour for now. There's no special reason for this other than it let me paint the most common colour with worrying too much about painting somewhere I shouln't; other areas will be painted later. I reasoned that painting over the armour by accident could be fairly easily fixed later (which is mostly true).
Seraphim Sepia matches the golden colour fairly well, although the muscle shapes in the armour required a little coaxing to get the wash to settle how I wanted. Don't worry if when applying the shade it looks to cover up any deail - when it dries out, the detail will be back.

 The first stage highlight was done with Gehenna's Gold. This was applied to pretty much all raised areas, with a little more attention paid to sharper edges. The face had the cheekbone areas, the chin, nose, and eyebrows given a little more care because I really wanted a contrast between dark and light to bring out the mask's expression.
Picking out the raised areas of the armour, where it's shaped as muscle, is fairly easy but does require a bit of patience and good tip to the brush. Other areas, such as the hair, required more of a drybrush type effect, otherwise paint would spread unevenly and destroy the good work of the shade.
Quite often one layer of the paint wasn't enough and a second would have to be applied. This is normal, and actually gives a better finish than if using one thick layer. It also lets the highlight blend a little better.

 The second stage highlighting was done with Auric Armour Gold. This worked particularly well for the face, and really makes it stand out and gives the whole model that extra bit of character. The photos above should hopefully show the effect well enough.
This highlight was most heavily used on the edges, but I did apply a thin layer across larger areas too, with a little in the middle and then spreading it out to the edges. This was done to increase the overall brightness. Auric Armour also reflects light rather well, so good lighting will pick up the edges painted with it.

The overall golden colour of the armour worked quite well, although as I've mentioned it's not very good for photography. I only have one real gripe with the result - it's perhaps a little darker than what I was going for. This could probably fixed in future models by mixing in perhaps a little Runefang Steel, but I try to avoid mixing paint colours. The only reason for this is that it means mixing the right proportions for an even look - and that means a spare paint bottle and testing out different proportions of different colours. Too much hassle for me at this point in time; sticking to gradual layering works just as well most of the time, and lets me reproduce the result more easily.
Also, the slightly darker tone actually accentuates the brighter points, and gives the model a grittier, battle ready look.

Next time I'll start on the non-gold areas.

  -- silly painter



-- Additional: I later added a glaze of Lamenters Yellow just to see how it would look. It works well to give that extra glow to some areas, and so used most heavily on the halo. It's a very subtle effect, but those subtle things can make all the difference.

Death Company Dreadnought

No work in progress photos of this guy, just another (mostly) finished model. The main reason for painting something that will become a centre piece of any army so quickly is simple: keeping the interest going. Painting masses of normal troops can get boring, so I decided to take my time and do this one.

A Death Company Dreadnought is predominately black. Highlights on vehicles are also easier due to long and sharp armour plate edges, and there's a lot of metallic colours that are some of the easiest highlights to get away with. Washes over metallic colours are also easy - it's mostly Nuln Oil. Some Seraphim Sepia and Agrax Earthshade was used for a rusted or scorched look.

The crosses also provided the first change of some Blood Angel highlighting with red. Nothing special - it's just a base of Mephiston Red with Wild Rider Red along the edges. Care had to be taken here: too thick detracts, too thin doesn't show up at all. A nice fine brush helps here.

Some of black armour plating was highlighted by using the side of a very wide and flat brush to get Celestra Grey along edges. This is mostly a drybrushing technique, even if the paint is a base paint. It worked rather well, but the key is to keep it to the edges and drybrush only. If it builds up too much, then the grey is too bright and it doesn't work. That took a bit of figuring out, and I'll likely use a different technique for black armour highlights in future.

The claws were a base of Leadbelcher, with Ironbreaker for highlighting. This was then given a glaze of Guilliman Blue (2 coats). Lothern Blue was layered onto the tips and some edges for some extra glowing power effect. Overall it worked rather well, but it's a little uneven in some places. I could have gone for the normal effect seen in Games Workshop photos, but I felt that a power claw should be metallic with a blue glow, not just blue with highlights in general. Not sure if that makes sense in words, but just compare the image with other photos off the 'net. The more glaze also means the claws aren't as bright in comparison to the rest of the model and complement rather than stand out too much.

The torso sarcophagus was very simple compared to other styles I've seen. No highlighting was done at all in the end because I felt that the coppery colour fit too well. It's just a couple of coats of Balthasar Gold. The reference image has a normal metal colour, but that's just too much silver on one model.

The (model's) left shoulder insignia is Yriel Yellow, with a Fuegan Orange wash (a couple of coats), and Flash Gitz Yellow for the highlights. It's far more impressive than in the photo, particularly because a very fine brush kept the detail in place. It works well as a non-metallic gold, and is more photogenic than the metallic paints. Something to keep in mind if I ever enter painting competitions. The halo over the cup is Gehenna's Gold tipped with Auric Armour Gold, but the second highlight is barely visible on such a small area. It would still serve well for other models however, such as Commander Dante.

The Blood Angel insignias were based with White Scar, with Drakenhof Nightshade applied as a wash on the wings. This didn't really turn out fanastically, so I've looked at alternate methods in other models. The blue, however, works well and gives it a much cleaner look than using something like Nuln Oil. The middle blood drop gem is stock standard: Mephiston Red as a base, with Abaddon Black used to darken the top, and Wild Rider Red highlighting the bottom. A small dot of white gives the gem-like appearance. Care must be taken with the white dot however - it's easy to make it too large, and just as easy to make it too small (after which corrections typically make it too large).

I did try some Dark Reaper as another black highlighting paint, which might work well in some specific areas (it's actually next to the red crosses in some places), but doesn't work for the edges of armour plating. It can also be seen on the grapples above the torso. It's a good paint for bordering an area of brighter colour, rather than trying to highlight black, so at least that experiment was useful.

The base was just messing about really. I can't even remember what I did to that, but it somehow works. It was mostly some work with different grey paints, and a wash (possibly Agrax Earthshade, but I'm not sure) to give it some browns.

And that's it for the already painted models. Commander Dante is up next, because I wanted to see how the gold colours would turn out on something more large scale, but I've been taking photos as the painting of that model progresses so the format will be a bit more "work in progress" than "here's the finished model".

  -- silly painter

First Models

In starting to paint again, the most typical model was chosen: a Space Marine. Standard tactical squad members have broad areas for armour, making applying paint far easier, and giving nice hard edges for highlighting work. They don't have much tricky detail, and so are very good for learning the paints.

Now, the photos are taken with a phone camera. So they're not good. A good camera costs money, and that money is currently being spent elsewhere on things such as buying far too many models and painting accessories.

The first model painted was simply a test. The idea was to see how bright the colours would turn out, how well they would mix and blend, that sort of thing. It would also help to see just how steady the hand still is.

The finished model is seen above. Note that the base has not been painted - this is something that must be finished at a later time, but I've never been much for painting bases. It looks kind of silly having desert sand when playing games within murky depths of a hive city. Seeing as the painting is more for the painting, however, and not the gaming, then the bases will get attention later.
A base coat of Abaddon Black was used, over which Caliban Green was applied. Leadbelcher was applied to the appropriate metal areas, and Mephiston Red to the gun and shoulder insignia. I did try Ceramite White on the other should pad, and the center chest, but it proves to be a somewhat thicker paint than I was expecting. It needs a little watering down if it's going to be used for these things. Later I patched up the details with White Scar, which is a much nicer white to work with, although it needs two coats to work properly.
With the base coat on, a simple wash with Nuln Oil over the metal areas and Agrax Earthshade on the chest (and the skull on the gun). This is about the extent of where things used to be; highlights with these paints are something new to work with. Dry brushing was tried on the backpack (it's visible behind the head), but that didn't really work. Blending colours was easier with Tamiya paints - they wouldn't dry so fast, so you could mix things in a bit. Citadel paints, however, dry a bit clearer and allow the underlying colour to come through. So the first layer of highlight was done with Warpstone Glow. This didn't really should up too much, but did show promise of use to step into another colour for highlighting with. I also tried it to raise the colour of some areas - it can be seen on the (model's) left shoulder pad, just below the white wing but above the trim. It can't be seen in the photo, but I wasn't happy with the blending there.
Blending with Citadel paints is different to when using Tamiya. With the Tamiya acrylics, you can get away with putting a small bit of each colour (from base to highlight) and mixing them in place. This produces a nice and gradual gradient towards the highlighted point. With the Citadel paints, it's a bit trickier: first water down the paint a little (getting this right takes practice) and then apply paint to the highlighted point. Wiping the excess off the brush (or using another brush), the paint is then "pulled" outwards. I find this is best done by starting on a dry area, and then using circular motions to gradually spread a small amount of the (hopefully still wet) paint outwards. This is done two or three times until the desired final gradient is achieved. It's not really that easy to get correct, but does work nicely if done right. I still find the Tamiya method better, but those paints are (or at least used to be) thicker, and ran the risk of obscuring detail, so couldn't be used in more complex areas.
Meh.
Moot green was used as a final stage highlight along the armour edges. This didn't turn out on the first go - I was using the brush all wrong. Plus, the brushes from Citadel aren't very good and became fuzzy very fast. Ironbreaker was used to highlight the metal areas, with Wild Rider Red used sparingly on the red of the gun and the eyes. A dot of White Scar in the eyes, and a little more along the chest insignia, and that's mostly it. That's not all of it of course (some browns for areas not shown in the photo, for example), but the main idea was on highlighting.

Lessons learned: hold the brush at the correct angle for the highlight, and don't overdo the highlight. The Ironbreaker was applied too much in some places, where as the Moot Green is missing in some places. The highlighting should be used to bring out edges, but the catch is that if not used on adjacent edges, then those adjacent edges look...well...bad. The model's right shoulder pad trim shows this. Highlight paints take a little getting used to, and they have to be chosen carefully, but are worth the effort, and the layer paints really are layers - they don't completely obscure the underlying colour.
Washes are best applied a little more thickly (but not too thick) on the other hand. They're not applied the same as layer paints, and you're not meant to be as careful. Adding just a small amount to the brush doesn't work: a fair bit should be applied in one go. Most of it is just water, and only practice will show just what it really looks like when dried out.

 Using the experience from the first model, and second was quickly painted.

The highlighting was much better this time around. It's still a little too sharp and bright in some places (it doesn't really show up in the photo, but it's worst on the legs), which means that the Moot Green was applied a little too thick, but overall it's a definite improvement.
Not much more to say really. The second model was basically an iteration over the first. Now that the paints felt more comfortable, it was time for....a Furioso Dreadnought. Yep, I skipped right past paint more standard Marines, and when straight to something more complex. That, however, is for another post.

  -- silly painter

Well, it's probably about time to start a record of adventures in resuming the tedious, time consuming, and eye-straining art of miniature painting.

As is obvious, this is about getting back into painting; I'm not new to painting miniatures, though I haven't been without a paintbrush in my hands for several years. It originally started with Warhammer 40,000 (as these things often do). Well, technically it start with model aeroplanes, tanks, battleships and submarines, but that was more for colour and not about the actual painting. With W40K, it became apparent the playing with grey plastic models wasn't as much fun as fully painting ones, and so I started with a paintbrush on Orks and Space Marines.
Tamiya acrylic paints were those lying about the house at that time, so I started with them in a poorly ventilated area and a weak desk lamp. Cutting a long and thoroughly boring story short, I eventually bought some Citadel Miniature paints, using those and the Tamiya paints as appropriate (for subjective definitions of appropriate).

Then I moved continents and left all models and paints behind.

Fast forward several years, and the Citadel Ultimate Paint Set caught my eye. On impulse, I bought the set, paintbrushes, some tools, painting workspace, and some models to start with again. This introduces a problem of sorts: too many paints! It's sometimes far easier to use a small selection of paints - you get to know what effects you can achieve with them, how they'll turn out, what the colours will look like, how much water to mix in, etc. With a large paint set comes having to learn how to use the paints all over again, but it does mean access to a broader range of techniques, for example I'd never used glazes before.

This is where this little blog comes in. The main purpose is to keep track of how a model looks through the stages of painting, what paints are applied, and some thoughts on what works and what doesn't. At the time of writing, some models are finished and I'll post them up in the coming days, followed by a work in progress of Commander Dante.

  -- silly painter