Space Marine Heroes 2 - Part III

 

Fear the might of the Imperial Beard!

Very little progress on much of anything the past week in terms of painting, but there are a few notes on tools that will be included in this post. I have actually managed to paint all of the Crux Terminatus on the Blood Angels, but still still deciding on which colours to use for the Imperial Fist.

To start with however: the new paints from Citadel. I managed to try some out in store, and they are a solid addition to the Contrast range. It's also worth noting that the old glaze paints are essentially making a comeback - or at least the colours are. Although differing in intensity and being moved to the Contrast line, the colours are still there. Appropriate thinning will give any paint the ability to be used as a glaze, so this is indeed a welcome return to keep using some of those glaze colours with existing colour schemes. Paints change, but it's nice to keep army colours all the same, especially when it comes to something like a chapter or legion of Space Marines.

The shades are a mixed bag. Nuln Oil has changed dramatically. It's almost like a diluted form of the original, with a helping of Contrast Medium to make it pool slightly differently. The best use I can think of it for shading something tending towards white (marble, feathers, that sort of thing). Basically adding a shadow that doesn't shift the colour, keeping it as a grey tone. Agrax Earthshade appears to be ever so slightly a different hue, flows a little better than Nuln Oil, but also stains surfaces more. The new Agrax Earthshade is by no means a bad paint - I quite like it already and it has a lot of potential. It's just very different. Carroburg Crimson, however, is much the same as the existing, just not quite so watery. It flows well, stains a little, but doesn't pool overmuch. I'm really looking forward to trying that out on future models, and equally glad I don't have to hunt around for a replacement to my current method of painting Blood Angels!

On the topic of replacement shades: acrylic flow improver mixed with a contrast paint will turn it into a shade. It breaks the surface tension of the Contrast medium to make it behave far more like a shade, but is controlled slightly better than if just water was used. I've tried this out on Black Templar already, and it does work. Enough acrylic flow improver will turn any black in Nuln Oil really (Contrast or not), and I suspect Wyldwood could serve as a good Agrax Earthshade replacement. Will it be the same? No, but it might be good enough to not really matter.

And now onto some actual painting of a model! I just bought a headband magnifying set, i.e a headband with attachable lenses for magnification. It makes such a difference when painting eyes and very small details. How I got by without one I don't know. Everything is so much clearer, giving better control of the brush, and faster results. I still need to go back over the face of Beard Guy and fix a couple of points, but they are some of the better eyes I've done in a while - and that was the first practice run with the magnifying set! So I'll definitely be getting a lot more use out of those, so long as it's just for short stretches at a time. The change in focus itself can cause eye-strain, but only if over a long time.

I'm likely to switch from any sort of batched painting on the entire set and move to painting maybe three at a time. That was always the intention, now that all of them are fully assembled.

-- silly painter.