Flesh Tearer Reiver - Part I

 

Seen my knife? Let me give you a closer look.

Playing around with a freebie model makes for good experimentation, so I decided to see how well airbrushing in different stages would be on a Reiver. Normally I'll base, shade, and highlight with an airbrush before then going in with a normal brush. This time, I wondered how well pre-edge highlights would show through.

The basic idea is to base the model with an airbrush first, then edge highlight with a normal brush, then perform a normal highlight with the airbrush. I find the edge highlights can be a bit strong sometimes, and wanted to soften them slightly. I don't have to worry as much about transitions, and cleaning up a base coat is easier when there aren't carefully blended gradients to be concerned with.

First step was Khorne Red. Flesh Tearers colours are more towards the blue end of a red spectrum, which this base colour provides.

Cadian Fleshtone provides edge highlights next. The stronger the highlight, the more will show through after the next step. This is rather similar to how the Contrast range is used.

Wazdakka Red was then mixed with some Aircaste Thinner to highlight with. I thinned it a little too much however, and ultimately had to use a brush later to add more to a few areas. Something to keep in mind when mixing layer paints for use in an airbrush.

Did it work? To a degree, yes. It's a little more muted in places than I would have liked, but shows through well enough in others for me to be convinced of the usefulness in further exploration. I may try this on my normal Blood Angels formula as well, but that will have to work differently. Wild Rider Red will almost certainly be as muted, if not more. I could use that to advantage: there's no reason I can't apply a second edge highlight later to bring out selected edges, leaving others to be defined without the Tron appearance.

-- silly painter.

Imperial Thunderbolt - Part V (Showcase)

 

Not the flying circus.

Thunderbolts were finished some days ago, but I've not had a chance to post about them yet owing to various problems. In fact, I don't really remember everything I did since the last post, so I guess this is something very quick.

The metallics I started in typical fashion, but ended up switching to drybrushing for the highlights. This gave a much grittier look to them, which fit perfectly with the overall style for these planes. Fairly plain, very little highlighting, really just letting the airbrush steps show on through to give a more practical feel. Very little fancy painting at all, which strangely was difficult to do - I wanted to go to far with them, but every time I tried it just didn't look right. I hope I've still captured the workhorse nature of the planes in what's there.

Another thing I didn't do: weathering. There are little touches here and there: some darkened areas near the engine exhaust, a few very small drybrushed wear & tear around the canopy where I imagined the pilots would be getting in and out of. No wing scratches, no scorch marks, etc. It might look alright with such weathering, but on inspection of various photos of planes, not much of that is visible at full scale, let alone on a small model. Flex from the wings of Spitfires showed common wear to the paint, but that doesn't fit these models. So I ended up not weathering them - if I tried, I'd very likely ruin the look. Perhaps I can practice on some tanks at some point, where weathering definitely fits more.

Not seen there is some yellows thinned down with water and washed into areas to simulate jet propulsion glow. A little Fuegan Orange afterwards to shift the colour a little as well. 

That's really it. I may consider completing my Aeronautica models soon by doing a couple of Marauders, but first I'll likely get back to 40k.

On that note, there could be 3 or 4 weeks of "not much" now. I have some other priorities to attend to, after which I'll have much more time for painting and will hopefully start to get a lot more done, with more interesting posts.

-- silly painter.

Imperial Thunderbolt - Part IV

 

The pilot is seeing red.

These models are taking ages to paint. This is purely because of lack of time: work, a cold, a few other things getting in the way. So this is yet another short post, but an update anyway to show that even with short time, progress, however slow, is being made.

The canopy was was a little bit of fun. I tried to make it seem brighter towards the front, but didn't want reflective dots like with eye lenses in helmets. Just didn't seem like it would fit: such a bright reflection point would be lost in the size of a canopy, and instead be generally a more bright area. Perhaps didn't push the brightness far enough, but the darker tone suits the workhorse nature of the Thunderbolts anyway.

• Gal Vorbak Red over the canopy.
• Wazdakka Red layered and blended to the front. At the very front I also added some cream tone to the mix, making it very bright to the front. This is pulled back later.
• Abaddon Black thinned towards the rear of the canopy.
• Blood Angels Red (Contrast) glazed over the canopy to tie everything together and give a more saturated red.

The frame of the canopy was the usual Eshin Grey, Dawnstone, and whichever black on the palette - basically the same as I do for black armour on Space Marines.

A little Fenrisian Grey for a few edge highlights on top, and as the basic missile colour underneath. I tried not to overdo it, and in fact it probably didn't need any edge highlighting at all. I stopped short of going around panels - it just doesn't fit the feel of the model to do that.

Thunderhawk Blue for trim highlights, with Coelia Greenshade in recesses rounds off the highlighting. 

Getting very close to the metallics stage now, and weathering, but still a few smaller details I'd like to take care of. One example is the missile colourings: after a little research, it seems that yellow stripes around the head indicate high explosives (the warhead), with brown for low explosives (the rocket). Black for the fins, because why not.

Pretty much want to rush though and finish these models, but likely won't have them done by my intended target date. So it'll be another slightly late post again, hopefully with them finished by that time.

-- silly painter.