Terminators 02

A shorter post today to summarise a few things. Not much in the way of pictures (really need to get a proper camera one day...), but there isn't much of a need I suppose.

First off, terminator helmets continued. I went with blue lenses just to set them apart from the green lenses of tactical marines, and to hint that the internals of terminator armour is a little different. As I noted before, the lenses on terminator helmets are actually raised instead of sunk in slightly, but they're also a little smaller, so a very fine brush is essential here.
In the end, the lenses were done with:

• Genestealer Purple (base). This just makes them a little lighter when building up the layers. It's not essential, and was more me playing around, but regardless the base colour should not be black.
• Alaitoc Blue (thin layer). Mostly as a darkening step, but only a thin layer to give colour. 
• Lothern Blue (layer highlight). This was applied along the bottom of the lens, trying to be careful to leave a slightly darker line along the top. I didn't really succeed too well with that, but if done right it looks good. Highlighting too high I find can give the terminator a impression of being amused.
• White Scar (highlight dot). Just a very small dot was applied to the back of each lens. It can be seen in the above photo, and really gives that reflective material appearance.

Note that I haven't applied a wash, but darker blue would be my choice if I felt it was needed. I judged that the existing shading was sufficient, however, so was just very careful with the highlighting.

The muzzle was a bit simpler. I didn't want to use a metallic paint, mostly because I felt that it was too easy to just use that and I wanted to do something different, but also because the metallic paints might be too shiny and draw attention away from the lenses. I do appear to be painting things rather darker than bright, but then these are engineered warriors going into battle, not a carnival parade. So, the muzzle:

• Mechanicus Standard Grey (base). This is the same as applied to the joints on Dante.
• Nuln Oil (wash). Same as with the joints.
• Eshin Grey (layer). Only needed if the wash is a little heavy, or you feel that it's just a little too dark. 
• Russ Grey (layer highlight). Edges and raised areas.

I'm overall happy with the result, even if it doesn't truly look metallic. I actually tried Fenrisian Grey as the final highlight at first, but it was simply too bright and the muzzle stood out more than the lenses, so had to pull it back with Eshin on my first attempt. It also could be used as a colour scheme for rock, but as a replacement for metallic paints I think it's a good start.

A final note is the power cabling with assault terminators. There are cables running to thunder hammers, storm shields, and lightning claws, and again I didn't want a metallic paint. I wanted something that looked like it might have some kind of electrical shielding, reasoning that beneath the outer insulation would be armour or additional protective shields that might also serve as grounding wires.

• Black. With this, there's really no need for a wash later.
• Dark Reaper (layer). Applied to raised areas, but leaving black in the grooves.
• Thunderhawk Blue (layer highlight). Not applied to the entire cable circumference, but more used to give a slight, if muted, shine.

And that's it.

Final note: the helmet of Lemartes (yes, still painting him in very small sections at a time) has a similar scheme the terminator helmet muzzle. The back reinforcements of Lemartes' helmet were given a more metallic look by using Mechanicus, Nuln Oil, Dawnstone (very thin), then Fenrisian Grey as a final edge highlight. The photo turned out poorly, so it's not attached, but it worked very well. The lighter colours were more suitable due to the white of the skull mask, and do give a more metal appearance.

-- silly painter.