Blood Angels Librarian Dreadnought - Part VII (Showcase)

 

Space wizard in a robot suit.

I'm calling the Librarian Dreadnought done. As is typical, there's always more I could do, but I think it's time to move on to another piece now. I'm overall satisfied with the end result, and I think as a model it holds up well even after all this time. The character that it portrays beats any of the more modern dreadnought designs.

The red I think worked out quite well. I was a bit concerned that the varnish would tone everything back too far, but I think it's ok. The photo doesn't really do it justice - the gradients are a little smoother in reality, particularly on the right shoulder, but I'm hopeful that as I continue to refine it a little then it will become what I wanted airbrushing to achieve in the first place. I'll still paint special models by hand, but it can replace squad based work...maybe. I'll find out with the assault squad.

The force weapon I kind of just stopped with. I could go back in an do a lot more detail, but basically I just didn't feel like it. I probably would have if there wasn't a sculpted design already in place, though now I think about it I could just make that design glow.

It's about here that I was considering again about why I paint, and what I want to achieve. Ideally I'd like to move onto single miniature work one day. That's the goal. To do that however, I'd need to put aside painting up armies, as there's just no time otherwise. So instead I'm focusing on above average tabletop standard for squads, a little higher for characters, and building up an army in that style. It won't ever win a painting competition, but it sure looks nice on display and I can experiment a little more easily. All speed painting techniques, all hacks to make me paint faster, are only done without sacrificing quality.

All that said, I think I'll have to get out an extra-special model soon and really go to town with it, over time.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angels Librarian Dreadnought - Part VI

 

Put your...hands? In the air!

Some progress on this Dreadnought, even if it's painstakingly slow due to being basically incredibly busy right now. Still, progress is progress and it shouldn't be that much longer before I can call it done.

The major change has been to the base, where I went with a black marble again. Actually I also left some of the airbrushed red in places to give it some colour from that, but mostly I just played around with various colours to give the characteristic veins of marble. In doing so, I believe I've come up with some new ideas on painting marble.

One of the steps that's often missed with generic baby wipe and airbrush is that marble has shades, not just lines. Shades and transitions between them can often inform where to places veins actually, and soften some of the harder lines later. Normally I just fill in some colour and then feather it out randomly to help define these shades, but then I was playing with contrast paints and actually using something like them and allowing some "coffee staining" to take effect gives an easy, random, and convincing edge to act as a guide later on. The trick is to make sure it all flows in one general direction instead of being circular. Overlapping this effect (allowing drying time between of course) can even help give some depth impression, before and after building up some the striations. I want to explore this more later, and will definitely search for an excuse to do that - possibly with the next Dreadnought.

As a minor point, the colours were Abaddon Black, Corvus Black, Eshin Grey, and Mechanicus Standard Grey, with a little white or pale yellow mixed in places if I wanted something that little bit brighter.

When the marbling was done, I still wanted to add some shadows and highlights. Space Wolves Grey glazed into areas worked rather well to add shadow and some ambient occlusion, while Apothecary White acted as a general brightening filter. Using Apothecary White in a more concentrated fashion also helped give definition to the broken sides; marble has a quality where broken edges look brighter, and this was a fast and mostly acceptable way to achieve that look. A little Wyldwood around some areas in various concentrations (glaze vs shade) gave some more earthen tones, though I might add a little more rubble and dust before I'm done.

Moving onto metallics, I played with mixing blues, purples, yellows, and browns to get a machine oil look on pistons. In the end I mostly went with Snakebite Leather. On its own it's almost like a fresh lubricant oil, perfect for those parts which receive regular maintenance. Adding a blue or purple helps dirty it some more, edging it closer to thickened grease. I'll have to remember this when it comes to Imperial Knights.

Space Wolves Grey works nicely over Grey Knights Steel as well. I played with this on the force weapon, but there's not much to show there yet. It darkens without shifting the colour away too much, and I want to experiment with that to paint metallics in a NMM style.

Next up I'll be working on the scrolls, purity seals, etc, to put "writing" on them, and then I can probably lock everything in place with a varnish. Then I'll be able to see how well the reds turn out. I did edge highlight in a few places, but much of that will be toned back with the matt varnish and will need re-applying later. I just need a couple of days without being too otherwise busy and I could get it all done, but let's see how that goes. I'm not counting on it.

-- silly painter