Project 20 Marines - Part IV

 

Showing Raven Guard how it's done.

With the backpacks ready to go, I've been busy preparing the main body of each marine for the final airbrush highlight. This is when I realised a few things that could be done better, making this whole experiment not just about painting a lot of models in one go, but figuring out the best approaches to doing so. This takes extra time, but the experience gained is well worth it.

In particular, while busy edge highlighting with Wild Rider Red, it occurred to me that some of the edges would not be airbrushed over with Evil Sunz Scarlet later on. I was so busy just edge highlighting that I'd forgotten to really picture the end result. Such a small detail, but it will be important later: some edge highlights should be done with Evil Sunz Scarlet directly, or Mephiston Red. Having all three paints on the palette makes this take no less time, it's just a matter of picking the right one for each edge. Knowing that will take some more practice.

The other conundrum that's been occupying my thoughts is how to recess shade later. That takes a long time for me to do, and I wasn't particularly looking forward to it - perhaps had been delaying these models longer for that reason. So I decided to do something about and turn to oil washes. The little Tau drone is something used to experiment with that, and it worked so well that I will almost certainly be doing the same across all twenty marines (after confirming on a single test model of course).

Oil washes come with their own issues, and require more chemicals to work with, so this wasn't something I did on a whim. I prefer to have a small painting area that I can just use whenever I feel like it, and the oil washes do take a little bit of preparation. The thinner also smells; there are odourless mineral spirits, but these just mask the toxic chemical in the air, and I'd rather know if I'm not ventilating the room properly.

The basic idea with an oil wash being used for pin washing is:

• Apply a gloss varnish. This helps break surface tension.
• Mix an oil paint with some mineral spirits (or white spirits) to a wash consistency.
• Dab the wash into recesses, and the solution will naturally flow into surrounding recessed areas.
• Leave to dry for a few hours.
• Apply a matt varnish afterwards to remove the gloss.

The last step might be suitable for later where I normally apply that anyway, but it depends how well acrylic paints will apply on the gloss surface. I'll just have to see. Either way, before the last varnish step is the ideal time to apply transfers. It's also worth bearing in mind that pin washing doesn't have to be done immediately at this stage, it can well wait until much more of the model has been done.

The prototype for this approach is the Tau drone. It has lots of panels to outline, so served as a good practice for how it might work on a marine. I picked up Magenta (from Winsor & Newton) which seems to match Crimson Carroburg rather well, but it was thinned a little too much here. I also put a dot on one area and just used water with the brush to smooth it out. Using a very small dab of the spirits would have worked better and allowed a much smoother transition, but I can see the potential.

Next steps are to finish edge highlights, start on the final airbrush highlight, and then try a test model with the oil paint. It's extremely promising, and I'm hopeful it will take just one day to recess shade all the marines instead of taking a full week.

-- silly painter.