Ancient Rylanor - Part III

 

Colours are great for hide & seek. You hide, he seeks.

The Year of the Dreadnought continues, and today there's enough of Ancient Rylanor to justify another post. All of the recessed shading has been done, some ambient occlusion, but the edge highlights are still not complete. I'm not sure if I'll do them before, or after the final matt varnish - perhaps before, as I can always add a little more after if the varnish knocks them back too much.

All of the grey metal is Iron Warriors and a Nuln Oil (Gloss). That's all so far - the gloss paint really does work well over the metallics, but creates very shiny recesses - however the varnish stage will fix that nicely. There are still a few details that I haven't picked out for this treatment, but I might end up switching to Leadbelcher for them anyway. The most obvious are....whatever they are above the head (searchlights maybe, shield projectors, something), and as that's a much brighter area in general then Leadbelcher might be a better base coat (or 5 coats to get coverage!).

Scrollwork across the torso uses the normal formula that I've detailed a while ago. but there is one slight problem: it's very difficult to write Rylanor across that! There's not much space to work with, so I might cheat slightly and just III in the centre to signify the 3rd Legion. I also need to raid my stash of transfers to find anything appropriate to put on shields and shoulders.

The golden trim associated with Emperor's Children is so far just a couple of colours: Retributor Armour and Reikland Fleshshade (Gloss). I'm intending to layer that up to a fairly desaturated gold, but still keep the hint of red in there as a complementary colour to the base purple. Trying to go too far into yellow will contrast too much and break the harmony of the model, and I want the the helmet lenses to be a more proper contrast colour (a sort of teal) to draw the eye there later.

The flamer is so far Warplock Bronze and some Balthasar Gold, though I might leave further work until after the fist has been glued into place. I will very likely paint the flamer fully before varnishing, as I don't intend for it to be too shiny; any soot from the flame would keep the shine away. The under-slung fuel tank I entirely forgot about and will need attending to later as well.

I've been trying to think during all of this how I might paint the base. I find snow and muddied bases fit well with the colours, but that won't fit the feel of what's there. I might go with marbled stone perhaps, or just a light standstone. It's going to take a while I think. As for battle damage, while the base has indications of battle I think I want to keep the dreadnought looking more parade-ready. There's no storyline reason behind this, it's just that I'm not sure how I would make battle damage that adds rather than detracts to the model.

An awful lot of detail remains (purity seals, shields, etc) and a fair amount of higlighting (e.g the head) but I'm pleased with the progress. I'm still painting three dreadnoughts at the same time, and while I could have finished any one of them by now, I figured that finishing three close together would bypass thinking about "still another two to go" (which is highly demotivating). That being said, given the extra details on this model then it's likely to be the last finished.

-- silly painter.