Horus Lupercal - Part VI

 

Armed and armoured.

 

Finally some more of Horus has been painted. There's not a whole lot of information to add, so the focus for this post is on the talon metallics.

The sculpt itself has some excellent designs that lend naturally to NMM approaches for the talon, so I decided to keep with that, but use metallic paints. The key behind NMM is contrast: bright points next to dark shadows, and a range of paints were mixed in to try and create the various shades. Quite a bit of back and forth, but it went something along the lines of:

• Iron Hands Steel across all silver metal areas.
  
• Leadbelcher, thinned a little, as a first stage highlight. This was mixed with some Iron Hands Steel on the palette to help smooth this out.
• Basilicanum Grey (Contrast) mixed with some Contrast Medium to further darken some areas, or cover an area entirely (such as the bolter casing).
• Ironbreaker, thinned a little, to further highlight areas. Mixed with some of whatever was on the the palette to try have smooth transitions in places, but also unevenly dragged along edges to create a sharp highlight.
• Stormhost Silver along edges, tips, or corners just for bright highlight points.
• Grey Knights Steel on selected points ("bumps" along the inner talon, and the very tips of the talons). This is yet another reflection of Horus being the opposite of what the Imperium was intended; as the Grey Knights are armoured, Horus uses such a thing for weapons instead.
  

The uneven highlighting adds a little more variation to the model, gives characters, mimics scratches and wear. Horus has obviously kept his equipment in excellent condition, but has used it, and this uneven edge highlighting tricks the viewer into seeing it with more realism.

Still a very long way to go before this model is finished.

Horus about to "mic drop".

 

-- silly painter.

Dark Elf Sorceress - Part II

 

Not an incredibly long post, but the Sorceress is now finished.

The fingertips of the left hand are supposed to be showing some spell being cast, but I'm not sure it worked. Looks more like she just dipped her fingers in some paint. Stilll, it's a bit of contrast to the red, so I'll take it.

The staff is just Incubi Darkness with a bit of Corvus Black in places as shading, and some Lupercal Green as a small highlight line. Nothing fancy about it at all or else it might taken some focus away from the rest of the model.

Couldn't really get the face right, even though for once I'm happy enough with how the eyes turned out. A lot of back and forwards with the skin tones, and while the lighting has given it a more warmer red, I'm going to call it and say "good enough". This is meant to be a model to play with, not entered into a Golden Demon competition.

Overall I think the reds worked well. The NMM worked really well, and definitely makes the model far more interesting in the end. The staff head was actually painted with metallics, but in an NMM style so that it still looks the part after the varnish spray.

Basically, happy enough for the first adventurer to join my Hero Quest project.

-- silly painter.

Dark Elf Sorceress - Part I

 

This one has a fiery temper.

 

Just for something different, the next model in my Hero Quest remake is the replacement for the Wizard. I decided to use a Dark Elf Sorceress as the main model based on a similarity of pose and because I thought it might be fun to paint. Just one of those models that's fairly simple, but somehow carries a lot of character.

The original idea was simply to copy the reference colours, but at the last moment I decided that I'd give red hair another go, which messes with the entire look of the model and forced me to reconsider basically everything.

The hair didn't quite turn out as red as I'd like. It's more ginger than red. Still, it was a fun experiment. During painting, all brush strokes were kept in the one direction. This helps keep the natural shape and flow associated with hair.

• Rhinox Hide over all of the hair.
• Skrag Brown over most of the hair, but concentrating on more raised areas with a second coat, and then a third with the lighter areas. Obviously each coat was quite thin.
  
• Deathclaw Brown over more prominently raised areas, with maybe 30% coverage.
• Cadian Fleshtone on the tips and more reflective areas.
  
• Contrast Blood Angels Red, mixed with Contrast Medium at about a 1:4 ratio. This was covered over all of the hair just to give it more of a red tone.
• Contrast Iyanden Yellow, mixed with Contrast Medium at about a 1:4 ratio. This was applied on the tips and more reflective areas.
• Reikland Fleshshade in deeper areas, or wherever I felt it was too bright.

The photo isn't quite colour accurate, but it's close enough to the end result. It could use a little more vibrance, and slightly shifted more towards red, but this is why a single model is good to experiment on: it's not like I'm committed to painting a whole army this way.

The rest of the reds are, well, reds. I didn't keep specific notes on purpose, because I wanted to play and make the model unique. One of the best ways to do that is simply just add and mix colours on a palette and see how it goes, but there are still a few points of interest:

The red leather is a brighter red, with highlights that lend towards pink. There's not a whole lot of contrast, and very few desaturated highlights in an attempt to give a gloss appearance.

The NMM red tends more towards orange. Shadowed areas are burgundy mixed with black, with brighter points pink, then glazed with Wild Rider Red (which tends towards orange). This keeps the NMM components distinct from the red leather.

The cloth I intend to keep more towards burgundy, with fairly muted highlights.

There will be some metallics on the miniature, likely the head of the staff.

Skin is primarily Rakarth Flesh at this point, with some very weak shading to give some outline to the sculpt in preparation for next steps.

-- silly painter.

Necron NMM - Part IV

For battlefield repairs, Necrons use strips of gauss.

 Went ahead and finished the Necron model, which was fairly simple to do once the "copper" was finished. There isn't too much colour variation throughout the rest of the model, so relatively few paints were used.

For the inner skeleton structure, the blade of the weapon, and charging coils / heat sinks / whatever on the weapon:

• Incubi Darkness across the more prominent areas.
• Thunderhawk Blue highlighted over that.
• Fenrisian Grey as final edge highlights.

Baharroth Blue was used on the chest piece symbol, mostly because I didn't actually want it to stand out too much. Green would have made for good contrast, but would also have taken focus away from the face. As it is, the gun is doing that perhaps a little too much.

The weapon I had the idea to not paint as a uniform glow, but instead brighter towards one end to indicate power charging up and getting ready for firing. I could have made it a little more exaggerated, but essentially can't be bothered to do more on it now.

• Administratum Grey over all the glow areas.
• Ulthuan Grey over about two thirds of the glow area.
• White Scar over about one third of the glow area.
• Waywatcher Green (old glaze) across the whole glow area.
• Hexwraith Flame across about one third of the glow area, or any areas I wanted to nearly fluro in colour.

Standard approach for the rest of the weapon, with Eshin Grey and Dawnstone to highlight around the edges.

Ribbed cabling was Administratum Grey covered with Black Templar Contrast, then using brighter greys from the palette just to highlight some more. I could have pushed the contrast more for NMM there as well, but just didn't think it would have really added much to the model.

The base is the same as for most of everything else: Zandri Dust, Agrax Earthshade, Armageddon Dust drybrushed on top, and Terminatus Stone as a final drybrush step. I was a bit concerned it wouldn't work, but the lighter base complements the darker models tones well enough.

Happy enough with the final result, even if the NMM could have been improved on. At least I learned quite a lot, and the copper tones I think worked out very nicely. Still, I wouldn't want to paint an entire army this way.

-- silly painter.

Assault Intercessor Death Company (Next)

 

Steady aim, bringing pain.

 

Death Company number four in the assault intercessor range. Not much to say on the model really, everything is mostly the same as it was for the other models except for a lack of Blood Angel specific iconography. That was all painted or added with decals.

In the case of the left shoulder pad, the chapter symbol was a little too large, but I didn't have the proper size available.

The base is entirely from the moulded one supplied with the miniature. The rocks were given a very slight red tone on the base layer before drybrushing. There's a slight difference in appearance as a result, but it should still fit with the the other models overall.

Really enjoyed painting the assault Primaris, mostly because they reach the final assembly phase that much quicker for me.

-- silly painter.