Blood Angels Legion Terminator Praetor - Part I

 

The new turnip-head helmet design.

To start the year off I thought I'd go with a model that's been sitting in the background for a while. I've actually already painted up the head because it's difficult (nearly impossible) to put in place once the body is fully assembled, but painting the body before full assembly would leave gaps. The solution was therefore to paint the head, glue that in place, glue the body together, and then mask around the head with a lump of blu-tac. Touching up around the head will need to be done later but should be relatively easy to do.

I was originally thinking I would paint this model up by hand instead of using the airbrush, but while that would most definitely look amazing, I eventually decided the time was better spent on experimenting on how to use the airbrush to give brighter highlights for Blood Angels. That's been a problem I've had for some time: there's not been enough difference between shadow and highlight regions and the models look kind of flat.

To start with I applied the usual base coat of Dryad Bark and Mephiston Red in a 1:1 ratio. Following that was pure Mephiston Red, and then Averland Sunset. I probably overdid the Averland Sunset too much and at least here it makes the pure Mephiston Red step a waste of time. I built up the Averland Sunset in a few layers to give smoother transitions and prevent overt speckling, but it also meant I covered up all of the pure Mephiston Red by accident.

I could alternatively have gone back to Evil Sunz Scarlett here, but using Averland Sunset has a particular benefit: I can see where the highlights will be before everything is unified. I can get lost in the transitions too easily when sticking to reds and that's part of what makes me lose track of the difference between shadow and highlight. I'll revisit this again one day when I'm more comfortable with trusting the process.

Wait, aren't I supposed to be red?

Knowing that the later filter will pull back the brightness, I decided that Averland Sunset wasn't high enough in value. I didn't want to add a brighter yellow as that would just look orange. Instead I had the cunning plan of adding another colour to brighten and desaturate the Averland Sunset while still staying clear of being too close to white. I've been using Typhon Ash recently and was familiar with its properties, so I ended mixing that with Averland Sunset in a 1:1 ratio and applying to make a few areas just that more bright. It's probably worth keeping the previous Averland Sunset step, however it's also likely a good idea to experiment with building up layers of this mix directly. Fewer steps means a faster turnaround time on the base coat and highlighting process, and that would benefit painting up squads.

Ah, that's more like it.

Using Blood Angels Red (Contrast) through the airbrush in multiple thin glazes gives a very saturated end result that I think is overall an improvement. There is of course a gloss varnish to help with recess shading, and when the matt varnish is applied there will be some loss of vibrancy, but I'm hoping edge highlighting will help trick the eye into restoring some of that. Evil Sunz Scarlett is still ever so slightly more vibrant, so I guess the next test might want to increase that pre-glazing highlight level even more to compensate.

There are enough other models in the works that I should find a test subject for all that I've learned here. As for this one, it's time to think of getting a base sorted before I proceed too much further.

-- silly painter.