Space Marine Heroes 2 - Part VIII (Showcase)

 

Skully

The Space Marine Heroes, Series 2, is now complete. Or at least all of the ones that I have - strictly speaking I'm missing the heavy flamer and standard bearer models, but I'm not that much of a collector that I have to go out and find them. And though this post is a "showcase", I'm just using that to indicate the last of this series rather than showcasing all of them together (mostly because laziness is victorious at the moment).

Most of the models were just going through the motions, so I decided to try a couple of things to see how they come out. Firstly was edge highlighting - I've actually done that after the matt varnish on the last couple of terminators just to see how much extra I can define the shapes of the model. They were already edge highlighted prior to the gloss varnish, so this is really re-application of edge highlights in specific areas. And it works well enough that I'm going t continue trying this out.

The "silver" adornments I've also started to base in Grey Knights Steel, which differentiates them from weapon casings or anything more "functional", and I think I'll keep that going forward as well.

Really, what purpose does the cape serve?

Something that really didn't work very well was attempting to cover gloss varnished areas with metallic paints. The coverage was just extremely poor. This is something I have an idea of how to fix: leave the gloss varnish until after important base coats. The metallic areas will get a wash anyway, which will leave behind enough medium that later layers will have something to stick to. This makes the new basic approach:

• Airbrush the armour to build up basic highlights and volumes.
• Fill in some base coats.
• Gloss varnish over the model - only a single thin coat is needed.
• Edge highlight the armour, and proceed as normal elsewhere.
• Matt varnish over the model.
• Reapply edge highlights if necessary.

That's quite a process to be going through if I'm honest, and I'm sure it will receive further refinement, but I'm hopeful that thinking less and just getting on with it for standard troops will let me speed up my painting game this year.

I'm still getting the hang of trying to paint textiles. They look too inflexible still, even if that's partially the photo. I've been practicing with stippling and using older brushes that no longer hold their tip to create texture on the surface, but I also need to reduce the highlight brightness in places.

The model count I'm allowed to buy is now 11.5, and hopefully before too long will climb higher.

-- silly painter.