Brother-Sergeant Victorno

Found my head!

Poking around this model in the background (alongside Horus) and thought I'd show how he's coming along. Officially called Brother-Sergeant Victorno, from the Space Marine Heroes - Series 2 range, I'm really trying to angle the highlighting as though the source of light comes from the thunder hammer as a bit of experimentation.

There's some reflection from the shading stage. It seems I didn't mix the Carroburg Crimson properly before using it, and everything just went glossy. I'll use some Stormshield varnish at a later point to fix that.

Most interesting point that made me decide to post this was the bone coloured skulls, and the scroll banner work. I used a different formula to normal as a bit of experimentation.

• Morghast Bone. This is similar to Zandri Dust, but a little lighter. Ushabti Bone works well as a direct highlight colour, though I didn't use that here.
• Skeleton Horde. Contrast paint, only on the bone icons.
• Seraphim Sepia, only on the scroll banners.
• Seraphim Sepia and Skeleton Horde are very similar colours, mostly differing in paint consistency. This affects how it pools and dries, with the contrast paint normally making for a lighter surface.
• Screaming Skull highlight across everything, but needs to be very thin or it just saturates out the detail.
• Pallid Wych Flesh on the bone icons. I messed up the kneepad a little bit and had to go back and fix that.

So this ends up with the bone colours much closer to white than the banners, and ends up saving about a single step to my normal approach. I need to explore this a bit more before I decide on its usefulness. The contrast paint doesn't give such a harsh shaded definition on the top areas, which I normally have much trouble with, so I'm interested in its glaze-like properties more than anything else.

The wreath on the shield will very likely be the green I enjoy doing for them, as there's already enough silver and gold about, neither of which would really match against the centre bone colour properly.

I'm starting to get a feel of how this model will end up, so I may have to dedicate a little time to finishing it soon.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angel Intercessor (finished)

Locked and loaded.

A very short post just as proof of the next Intercessor Marine having been finished. I've gone for darker lighting to reduce the glare off the top surfaces, but I might have gone a bit far. Works with the gun though. Still can't get enough light to really show the airbrushed darker area, as they're mostly in the naturally dark areas anyway.

The decals aren't matching as nicely against the surfaces for some reason, with the transparent edging showing too much. I may need a stronger solvent, or perhaps apply the decal before the varnish spray step. I'll the try the latter next time.

No grass on the base. I normally put a tuft or two on, however for this model to make it different I went with less is more; the base seems balanced enough with the pose that I didn't want to overload it and detract from the Marine.

Not shown is the right pauldron company insignia. I've run out of white decal variants, so applied a black decal instead and painted over it with Grey Seer and White Scar. It's not as smooth as I could make it - next time, it would be better to use multiple thinner coats, but I was rushing a little. Celestra Grey would also be a good alternative for the base colour.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angel Intercessor

Whatever he's looking at is about to have a very bad day.

This post isn't really about much more than showing the basic level of completeness that I find works best before assembling the entire model.

When to assemble a model is entirely dependent upon how easy it is to reach all areas with a brush after assembly. Normally for a Space Marine it's easier to paint the aquila (or whatever chestpiece) without a boltgun in the way, as is the case for pouches around the belt as well. In this case the right holster is easily accessed and so I've left it for later.

Why not simply finish the model before assembly? Short version: motivation. It's more motivating to finish a model that's fully assembled. A secondary reason is also that perhaps some highlighting doesn't look right afterwards and needs to be adjusted to make everything cohesive, though by now I've had enough practice on Marines that this isn't such an issue.

Basically planning a model helps greatly, and the experience of planning these Intercessors allows me now to paint them very quickly, and to a high standard.

Still to do though:

• The base. Doing that soon will allow the Marine to be glued onto it fully.
• Varnish the whole model. This should be done before any more metallics are applied.
• Final silver highlights.
• Purity seal.
• Right holster.
• Gun detail.
• Decals.

Sounds like a lot (and it is really), but each step should only take a few minutes.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angel Intercessor

Some assembly required.

After finishing the termagants, it's time to work on another Intercessor. They're great for airbrush practice, and it's still a case of doing one at a time to experiment with various airbrush approaches.

So today it's a focus on using the airbrush.

First of all, I've finally figured proper ways to clean the airbrush both between paints, and at a final step before storage, without needing to strip it down to individual parts. A proper squeeze bottle of water, a receptacle for cleaning it into, the trick of backflow by blocking the nozzle and pumping air through it, and a jar of 1:1 cleaner/water. The latter is used after mostly cleaning the airbrush, just to try rinse out any leftover particles inside - literally dip the whole front of the airbrush in and blast away. Obviously do this inside a proper extractor hood, and while wearing a proper filter mask.
Oh, and cotton buds. I've been using them inside the cup feed with the needle still inserted and it appears to work ok.

Basically, spend a bit of time figuring out how to clean the airbrush, and you'll save a lot of effort (and time) switching paints around.

This next Intercessor was prepared in the usual way: trim from the sprue, clean surfaces, assemble the minimum for ease of painting, and then prime with black. I did cover some areas with PVA glue first, to mask them from any spray (including the primer) so that the plastic glue used for final assembly will have clean surfaces to bond together. This is a really simple trick: just paint some PVA onto appropriate areas, and peel it off at some later stage. No scratching or filing back the surface, and it doesn't seem to remove paint from anywhere else.

Wanting a more vibrant red this time around, I ended up with the following next steps:

• Spray can of Mephiston Red over the whole model.
• 1:1 Mephiston Red / Dryad Bark airbrush in shadowed areas. Mostly just point from underneath and spray around.
• Mephiston Red airbrush from above, covering most raised surfaces and trying to leave some of the previous step as appropriate.
• Evil Sunz Scarlet airbrush for smaller highlight areas. This stage works best by not giving full air flow through the airbrush, which is possible with dual-trigger variants (otherwise just adjust air pressure), giving a smaller cone of spray.

While this worked, it's still not giving enough contrast between light and dark areas for my liking. Also, the last step can create a speckled effect between transitions - not noticeable at a distance, but annoying once it's seen.
To fix these issues, the next model may introduce some slight variation again: a second coat of the shaded areas just to give some extra depth, and a final pass at the very end with Mephiston Red, possibly thinned down a little. Almost a glazing pass to try filter out some of the speckle. It might only be needed across the transition areas too, rather than the whole model. Something to explore once this Marine is finished.

The picture above also has the traditional brush step of using Carroburg Crimson in recessed areas; still an absolutely necessary step to really give definition to the whole model.

-- silly painter.

Nidrick and Friends

'Nids on the run.

Look at how they move, just like a flock of birds.

It took a bit of an effort, but the whole set of termagants is now done. To tabletop standard anyway. There is a lot more I could do to individual models, and there are mistakes that I'm ignoring, but it's a learning experience in batch painting.

Since the last time, I've tweaked a few things to either speed up the process, or because it just looks better:

• No drilling out "barrel holes"! They were often off-centre anyway, and on these models a small black dot looks just about the same.
• Wraithbone spray directly over black, no Corax White spray at all. It's better to make the first spray a bit thin and then do another later. Also, really shake a new spray can, otherwise the paint can be very thick on the model, and will ruin detail most effectively. Mostly recovered with some clever painting, but ideally I should have stripped the paint and started again.
• Pre-mixed Volupus Pink and Contrast Medium. This was done by putting each into a dropper bottle, and then measuring it out back into the original Volupus Pink bottle. This ended up as a 1:8 (pink to medium) ratio, which is much lighter than the original test, but also allows the drybrush of Wraithbone to be skipped entirely.
• Barak-Nar Burgundy for the tongues. For more important models I'll also highlight this with something, but in this case it was covering up some red tests anyway.
• Stormfang drybrush on the base. It was too dark previously, and so just a light drybrush to raise some detail makes all the difference.
• Rhinox Hide around the rim of each base. I debated leaving it as black, but after a test it was determined that a dark brown just looked that much better.

As far as lessons learned go, if I were to paint these models again (a strong possibility if I want to build and sell a tyranid army), then I would batch paint the arms separately. It makes getting into certain areas that much easier. Fortunately the left/right pairs can be grouped and put onto any model, so there's no need to track which pair of arms belongs to which particular body.

I would possibly do some initial contrast coats without the base attached, which does make holding the model more difficult, but if that's solved then it again makes accessing various areas that much easier. Easier access to areas of the model improves both speed of painting and the quality of the finished model, so it's well worth planning such things in advance, especially for large batches of models.

With batched painting I do find it easier to not actually do all the same area of every model all at once. I might do four models at a time with, say, assembly and priming. Then I'll do some initial step. Then I'll go back and assemble another four and prime them. Then I'll do the next step on the original batch of four models, followed by the first step on the next batch of four, and so on. By switching steps often, it prevents boredom from setting in too quickly. This was really the key to getting twelve termagants finished in just over a week (a very fast pace for me).

-- silly painter.

Nidrick

nid nid nid nid

Here is Nidrick the Termagant, finished apart from a coat of Purity Seal (which will be done when there's more to batch together). I'm also considering Rhinox Hide to edge the base in, however that considered a minor detail and will also be done in batches.

The finishing touches to Nidrick were the claws and hooves. This was a simple matter of:

• Flesh Tearers Red, which is truly an amazing contrast paint if used right.
• Evil Sunz Scarlet to add some lines and give some grain, similar to the purple carapace.

I did a small test with Cadian Fleshtone used before the Evil Sunz Scarlet (making the edges even brighter), and that's definitely something to use on more special models (Carnifex, Hive Tyrant, that kind of thing), but it's simply not worth the effort here.

The base is simple, but time consuming if done one at a time. Further models will only have it done in batches.

• Green Stuff to cover any holes in the base.
• Astrogranite everywhere. It helps to move this up to the feet in places and make it look like the termagant is pressing down into the earth beneath.
• Mechanicus Standard Grey, very watered down, to cover any black base showing through, or any Green Stuff that hasn't been covered properly. This is slightly darker than Astrogranite, but the next steps tie it all together.
• PVA glue, watered down, and spread over the base. The entire purpose of this is to prevent the texture paint from easily falling off. Paints and Purity Seal should help protect the glue from degrading later. Wait for this to fully dry before continuing.
• Drakenhof Nightshade over the entire base.
• Agrax Earthshade in patches.

And that's it. I could do more on the base, but that of course takes more time and effort - something I'm keen to avoid on such a small base, especially when it might be lost among the crowd/brood.

This is truly a tabletop quality model. I've spotted a few mistakes, fixed a couple, but others I'm not going to bother with. I'll need that mindset if I'm to get an army of these things painting relatively quickly. That being said, I'm still very pleased with how Nidrick turned out and have learned a lot more of how to use contrast paints.

Next step is to batch paint three more termagants and make sure the process is ok, before premixing paints and continuing with the rest.

-- silly painter.

Termagant (Hive Fleet Leviathan)

(Tyra)Nidrick the Termagant.

Starting off the year with a resolution: to paint and sell some Tyranids from the Deathstorm boxed set. Termagants aren't in that set, but they are in most Tyranid armies and so I bought some to test out how to paint the little buggers.

This is the start of a tabletop quality (or is that battle ready now?) army painting project. I'm not intending to go all out on the models, because the whole idea is reduce the plastic mountain I have stashed away. There is a chance that I'll become too attached to the paint job and won't want to sell the models - but then at least I'll have experience with more than just Space Marines.

I'm using contrast paints, and broadly following some online tutorials from WarhammerTV. I want something a little better quality to sell, so I've made a few tweaks to the formulae, but given the organic nature of 'nids, contrast paints seem the way to go.

So the first step on Nidrick the Termagant was a black primer spray. This isn't for colour purposes so much as that spray being an awesome primer. Over the top of that was a spray of Corax White. Only a single coat, which lets some of the black peek through in recessed areas. This helps give depth to the model later on.
Final base step was a coat of Wraithbone. I used the base paint for this, but future models I'll just grab the spray and use that instead. The time savings of using the spray will be well worth it, especially for batched painting.

Then the fun with contrast paints begins. I've put the Contrast Medium and Volupus Pink into dropper bottles to accurately remix the ratios in future.

• 4:1 ratio of Contrast Medium / Volupus Pink, applied over the whole model. This was somewhat stronger than I originally intended, but ended up in my favour.
• Wraithbone drybrushed all over the model. This tones down the strength of the first contrast coat, adds extra highlighting, and gives more of an organic texture to the 'nid.
• Wraithbone directly painted onto the eye areas (Nidrick and his weapon's eye). They will be coloured differently later, but I didn't want the pink to show through.
• Volupus Pink directly in joints, or flexible points between the exoskeleton. Also added around the mouth. Any brush with a fine point is suitable to keep it neat.
• Shyish Purple contrast liberally applied to the carapace. I had a concern it would be too dark, or too blotchy, but for this sized model (or rather, for the carapace segment sizes) it works nearly flawless. The few blotchy areas actually give the carapace a more natural feel, without being overly obvious. Very impressed by the result with that.
• Iyanden Yellow contrast applied to the eyes. Fine brush tip helps.
• Guilliman Flesh contrast applied to weapon ribbing, and to Nidrick's teeth.
• Wraithbone used to pick out the teeth. As this is only tabletop quality, I'm not willing to go much beyond that.
• Seraphim Sepia wash over the weapon "ammo". This was just to differentiate it from everything else.
• Bloodletter glaze over the weapon. Two or three layers were applied to give it enough red. This step was to make the weapon a different organism: bonded to the termagant, but not the same creature. Bloodletter because red is the typical Hive Fleet Leviathan colour for weapons. I had considered a dark red, but ultimately I thought that didn't reflect how closely the weapon is bonded to the termagant. Considering that Bloodletter is no longer available, my next choice would be incredibly thinned Blood Angels Red contrast.
• Xereus Purple applied in fast stripe motions to the carapace edges.
• Genestealer Purple applied in fast stripe motions again, covering about half of the previous step. More important models may have additional carapace highlighting with an edge paint, but considering the numbers of termagants I'll have to paint up, I didn't think it was worth it in this case.

The model isn't quite finished. I'll add an iris to the weapon's eye, and I've yet to do the claws and hooves. Need to grab an extra paint from the local Warhammer store, or else I'd have this model completed within a single day. Which is awesome.

To be honest, I'm not sure I could do a better job with more traditional methods of painting Tyranids. The same result, sure, but using the contrast paints has most definitely sped up the process dramatically while maintaining a high standard.

-- silly painter.