Legions Imperialis - Deredeo Dreadnoughts

 

Oreo Dreadnought

(Warning: long day, a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes below no doubt, and I can't be bothered to proof read and find them.)

Pursuing more testing of small scale Legions Imperialis, I've managed to work on some Deredeo Dreadnoughts. They're honestly not my favourite design, just personal preference, but do provide some interesting shapes to serve as a test platform.

For these I opted to try a base coat of Night Lords Blue with Typhon Ash kind of Zenithal'd over the top. I put some extra emphasis on the upper body area, the upper missile racks, and the base of the legs. I also drybrushed Wraithbone over the top because I felt like I hadn't gone bright enough and wanted to try and catch some edges - but edge highlighting on models this size are rather pointless to do everywhere. A gloss varnished followed by flow improver mixed with Black Legion sorted out the shading, which actually isn't too visible aside from around the legs. It's still easy enough to do that I think I'll keep this step.

Black Legion was again used to base all of the black areas, and I still prefer that paint over anything else when doing this. The pigment count is very high and the paint consistency works well even over the gloss varnish. Troll Slayer Orange for the eyes to try and make them stand out, but they're barely visible at any sort of distance.

I did try some fluro acrylic paint, but that was a complete mess. The consistency was wrong, opacity was wrong, everything about it was just wrong for this usage - but that's what you get for using canvas paints on little models. It was worth the experimentation to see if it might be useful in future, but I think I'll stick to dedicated miniature paints for now.

Back to the black details and initially I was trying to do some volumetric highlights, but my patience was wearing thin. Lack of time to paint coupled with not really liking the model, and eventually I just stopped and instead only went with edge highlighting. Here's the biggest takeaway from this test: other than boxy tanks, and perhaps even not then, it's simply not worth trying to do volumetric highlights on this sort of scale. Save it for the Titans and larger vehicles. Anything smaller than a tank, just use a solid base coat and edge highlights to make it readable. It will give a cleaner look, take less time, and be far more impressive on the tabletop.

When Rifleman from Battletech goes grimdark.

The other major mistake on these was just a little playing about with Runelord Brass. I put Spiritstone Red over the top of that for the missile rack sensor array. It's a nice colour, it works well standalone, but it's far too bright here and attracts all the attention even with a matt varnish.

Lastly, I still need some practice with the airbrush. I suspect I didn't leave enough time between coats of Terradon Turquoise, which resulted in a grainy appearance instead of the smooth finish that I'd like. Practice will help I'm sure. The next models on my list (more dreadnoughts) I'm going to try give white edge highlights before that step, just to see if it will show through.

And no, I'm not drilling out those gun barrels.

-- silly painter.

Starting Sculpting

 

Sanguinary Grey

I've not had any time for painting at all for the last couple of weeks, but a few things are in progress. Which is slightly odd; I was going to try finish off some in-progress projects this year, but instead I've been just adding more. It's not that bad though, because I have been starting to try my hand at some proper sculpting.

The inspiration for this most definitely comes from Trovarion. I have no doubts that it would take quite a while before I'm as good as he is, but I need to start somewhere. I've been poking around green stuff and milliput for quite some time, but mostly just to fill gaps rather than actually seriously try to sculpt anything. Then along came the refreshed Sanguinary Guard.

It's important to recognise my own personal takes on what has gone wrong with some of the Blood Angels models recently released, as this is the motivation behind wanting to sculpt. I was actually looking at the Blood Angels Captain and wondering what it was that I simply didn't like about that model. The design seems to mostly be fine - muscle sculpted armour, various appropriate details, the head options are fine. Then I looked at the knee pads and it suddenly made sense. The old miniature designers knew a lot more about their craft I suspect, because they needed to when hand sculpting. Part of this is composition: and when there's subtle details creating ornate, artisan armour then surfaces devoid of detail stand out like a sore thumb. The knee pads in the older Sanguinary Guard have an iconic detail, but that means curved surface detail is balanced throughout the entire model. The chest plates on the new Captain are too bare - for all the prude social anxiety these days, nipples serve an artistic purpose of breaking up all of that surface area. Blur your eyes when looking at that new model and all you'll see are bug-eyed chest plates and a knee pads. The same can be said for the new Sanguinary Guard, who also suffer from another problem: they're all the same. There's no individualism, no soul to any of the designs, which is antithetical to what Sanguinary Guard should be.

The solution is therefore to try and kitbash and convert my own. I don't particularly want to pay full price for models that I simply don't like without major work being done on them. My own attempts are going to fall well short of display quality, so again I don't want to invest money into something that I know will end up mediocre at best. Even with the replacement parts from the Crimson Lords campaign from Greytide Studios, some sculpting is likely to be required.

Where now to begin? I bought some of the old push-fit Assault Intercessors. They're cheap, have good poses that will work without needing bases to make them look like they're flying about the place. There are also five on the sprue, giving me two to practice with.

The first attempt here was to see how well an old ("firstborn") torso would fit with the Primaris scale. It doesn't. I had to carve out most of the chest to fit one of the old upgrade sprue pieces, and even then the position is off: it's too high. The nipples looked odd. I've kind of solved that by trying to fill in the gaps and add a scroll to pad out the chest details and obscure the nipples. Here we come to the first problem: green-stuff doesn't file nicely.

Silicone clay shapers work very well to smooth out green-stuff, but it's an almost rubbery finish. It's workable when new, but after trying the freezer trick (placing uncured green-stuff into a sealed bag and freezing it to use again the next day) it wasn't quite as pliable. It's easy to knead, good to bulk out areas, but for a smooth finish and holding detail it simply isn't what I'm looking for. Another problem when sculpting is having the material stick to the surface: injection moulded plastic can be very smooth, and green-stuff will not stick readily to it. It might help to roughen the surface beforehand, which I will try next time.

As a complete opposite, removing green-stuff from some areas is proving difficult. I don't want to remove all of it, just carve out under the chest piece where I'd put too much. The thinking was that I could clean it up later. As it turns out, I should ensure surfaces are shaped as smooth as possible (with roughened surfaces) beforehand, as then later I only need to smooth out the putty - and while it's curing I should be careful to trim away excess then rather then trying to carve it out later. It's simply easier, particularly with green stuff, to keep the excess putty to a minimum. I did this with the holster, which doesn't fit with Sanguinary Guard, by trimming the shape down and filling in gaps to create just another pouch. Green-stuff might work here alright: it has a natural finish that fits to the texture of pouches, smooths out well enough, and I don't need to file away excess.

I would like a couple of extra tools to poke shapes with. I have some which are ok, but I might buy another one or two if they look appropriate. I'll also consider using vasoline to keep the putty from sticking to the tools.

When sculpting details, it's easy to smooth across a general shape. Something like scrolls, however, require some more thought. I need to practice creating thin strips of putty that are in roughly the right shape, then somehow transferring them to the model. Either that, or put a roll on and directly poke it to the proper shape. I think for future scrolls I should make the central strip, let that cure, and then add details on the ends. Curved patches are probably better as circular blobs that I try to poke pieces out of rather than rolls that I curve around - again, particularly with green-stuff. I may find milliput handles differently here.

I've started small on this model, and so far there's nothing that a bit of clever painting can't hide. I'll try to add some blood drop shaped gems to the left greave next, though I'm in two minds of how to approach that. I could either try to sculpt the shape in place, or make a stamp to press a blob of putty into the proper shape. The latter might have problems if the putty comes away on the stamp. I might try by hand first just for the practice.

The next model I try I'll likely keep the basic chest piece, but replace the central skull with a blood drop. After that, the third I'll probably try to make bare, add a blood drop in the middle, and nipples to the side. I'm not sure that I'll directly carve out grooves on the knee pads - a bit of freehand could achieve the same thing. I guess a trip to the art store is in order.

-- silly painter

Commander Dante - Part III

 

Dante's Inferno Pistol

After what seems like an age, I've finally painted enough of Dante to fully assemble the model. There's obviously still a lot left to do, but now that everything is in place I'm hoping motivation will speed up the rest.

I might have reached this point a week sooner, except the base was looking pretty horrid and I decided to try and fix it up. I have a lot of trouble with bases actually, and it's the one thing that I wouldn't mind a 3D printer to help sort out. For this particular model there's a fallen pillar of some kind, but it's lying on top of a pile of rubble that looks almost like dirt. That just doesn't make much sense outside of ancient buildings in Greece or something. It should be something more recent, related to whatever battle and campaign that Dante is prosecuting. Originally I was going rubble strewn about and covered in dirt, but decided to scrape most of that off and instead have tried to adapt it to look more like a pillar or column has fallen from a height and smashed into some flooring (and maybe the halo of some large statue next to it). It won't be quite as effective compared to having thought of it much earlier, but I'm hoping it'll be acceptable. I still need to clean up some rough edges, glue pieces down, add some texture in places, prime and paint it all.

Painting-wise, not much to say really. The "white" iconography is just repeats of before, and most of the rest comes from my standard recipes (I should probably link to that somewhere again). I've tried a few silver metallics in areas, and it's not quite as effective yet as with the gold armour. I'll need to try glazing over a colour other than black - possibly Mechanicus Standard Grey, and see where that takes me.

The glossy nature of the armour is causing some photography problems which I honestly don't have the time to sort out right now, but in good lighting the model really does look a lot better. Actually the black pauldron trim looks far too dull in comparison and I might need to try give that a more satin finish later. I won't be varnishing the model in general because it will simply dull the armour too much, but then I'm not likely to be using it for gaming anyway.

The eyes of the mask are incredibly simple: white, and Talassar Blue over the top. With a very pointy brush and magnifying headset. I wasn't sure if blue would work, but again in proper lighting this really gives an impression of a golden figure with incredible power. It's a really good sculpt. Too bad the Sanguinary Guard models are...not. More about that and how to improve them in the coming weeks I hope.

Otherwise, that's all for Dante right now. Painting is slow going, but not stalled.

-- silly painter.