Commander Dante - Part II

 

I like to think he's just hopped off his flying Land Raider.

The focus of the last week has been to get Lord Dante's armour more or less finished. I might add spot highlights later, but I doubt it - I'm fairly happy with the result. There is a slight catch though: photographing this model is not an easy task, and the "golden angle" is slightly off the photographed axis; the highlights don't quite match up with the lights that I normally use. This is a model painted to be viewed in real life, not as a digital facsimile.

At any rate there wasn't a whole lot changed to the formula from before. I added some black to really darken a few outlines and increase general contrast. It's fairly subtle but really makes the model that much easier to read: despite the reflective conditions and angle of the photo, the sculpt is still easily discerned. In general the process is:

• Rhinox Hide / Balthasar Gold to provide coverage.
• Black mixed into that or just Rhinox Hide for the deepest recesses.
• Balthasar Gold mixed into the original mode, for initial volume highlighting.
• Gehenna's Gold / Balthasar Gold for further highlighting.
• Gehenna's Gold / Auric Armour Gold for edge highlights.
• Canoptek Alloy / Gehenna's Gold / Auric Armour Gold for extreme highlights (only done on the helmet so far, not pictured).

The amount to mix varies, and there's a lot of glazing, back & forth, remixing, adjusting highlights, etc, that's simply done on the fly. Knowing where to place highlights was simply a matter of angling the model against an overhead light and taking notes: the original airbrushing made this a trivial exercise. Bounce lights were likewise quite simply once metallics were glazed sufficiently in areas: the reflection could be seen immediately, and a higher value colour chosen to accentuate the effect. If I had to sum up the approach: make it slightly reflective, paint according to a light source, and exaggerate as much as possible because of scaling reasons. Also don't be afraid to layer, glaze, and mix metallic paints.

The white chest detail is only three paints: Mechanicus Standard Grey, Ulthuan Grey, Corax White. Mixed and glazed in that order. The Mechanicus Standard Grey serves as a recess shadow colour to outline the details, with Ulthuan Grey added to raise the brightness very slightly, and to shift ever so slightly into a blue hue. Corax White just raises the brightness more, but doesn't go quite as bright as something like White Scar. Going too close to a purer white would dull the metallic shine by comparison, and I want the White Scar for the brightest reflection points of gemstones. I've not decided how much better I could do on the white, but I think it will do. I purposefully stayed clear of Contrast paints over concern of using too much an obscuring some of the detail like I nearly did once before. There are of course other white details to be filled in with this scheme, but I need to paint some other models first I think.

Much yet to do on this model, but I'm enjoying this one quite a lot. With still a long time until it will be completed, with the armour done I can at least get an overall feel of how it will turn out. One hopes the Sanguinary Guard will be equally well done, whenever they are given a refresh.

-- silly painter