Boarding Actions Terrain - Part III (Showcase)

 

Peekaboo.

The first piece of boarding actions terrain is for all intents and purposes, finished. If I can get more done then there could be some harmonisation with the top areas, but for now it'll do.

This first piece was really just for testing, and I mostly definitely have put in more effort than I intend for the rest. Not that I went all-out or anything, it's still quite a simple paint job, but future pieces will refine what I've done further simply to get numbers done and not focus on any kind of small details. Maybe.

The skulls here are Morghast Bone with Skeleton Horde over the top. Absolutely nothing fancy at all. Just enough to pick them out, but no fancy shadows, and not paying attention to the surrounding lighting - they're basically too bright and I don't care.

The lights themselves I considered for a while, and while looking at references and other people's work ended up trying the following for the reds:

• White Star (Two Thin Coats) across all the light. Two or three coats to build it up to a solid white.
• Yriel Yellow applied over the top. This was the reason for the white: to make the yellow brighter and cover better.
• White Star again, glazed slightly into the brighter points.
• Blood Angels Red contrast across the whole light. It shouldn't be allowed to pool too heavily, but some definition in the corners is desired.
• Doom Metal (Two Thin Coats) across the bars to aid in definition and increase contrast to make the light seem even brighter.
• Thin glazes of Blood Angels Red, dragging towards the light, for very small OSL.

This might seem many steps, but it never felt that way and the impact to the terrain is really worth it. The resulting red is very punchy, with the varnish later only minimally reducing the effect. The OSL is very subtle: just enough to be noticeable, but not enough to overwhelm anything. More of a hint than anything else to say that the lights are light sources.

For the blue light I swapped out the Blood Angels Red above with Talassar Blue, but all other steps were identical.

Warning: Space Marine beyond, with a massive gun.

Cables were highlighted with Incubi Darkness, which is again not terribly prominent but is still worth the effort. Metallics were highlighted with Iron Warriors and Iron hands, but only quite subtly. Really just small highlights on the edges and brighter reflective points.

Thunderhawk Blue gave edge highlights more strength on the wall and rivets. I could go brighter to increase readability, but also it's worth bearing in mind that these are terrain pieces which are there to enhance the spectacle of the models, not dominate the view alone.

It doesn't really show much in the photos, but I did add a little rust in places. I didn't want to go overboard with it, as despite everything the Imperium makes ships and installations which given the chance will last: and so their materials can't be terribly susceptible to just rusting on their own. I also didn't want to spend longer adding rust and dirt effects than it took to paint everything else combined. Ultimately I went for:

• Mournfang Brown, quite heavily thinned, and feathered out into surrounding areas where possible. Mostly on metal gratings, around pipes that have leaks patched, or deep recesses that might get moisture gathering.
• Skrag Brown, again quite thinned, within the previous step but not covering all of it.
• Deathclaw Brown sparingly added in the more heavily rusted areas. Less is more.

Afterwards I ended up using Purity Seal on the whole thing, and that was it. I did not go back with metallics afterwards - there just didn't seem to be any need.

Now I just need to remember how I painted the base coats originally and I can see about setting up more pieces.

-- silly painter.

Boarding Actions Terrain - Part II

 

...and behind door number one...

It's been quite some time since I last worked on the boarding actions terrain, and honestly there's not a whole lot done quite yet. It's been staring at me for quite some time, but I've never been able to figure out the style I want to go for.

Since the last time I went over just about all of it with a black ink (tending towards brown) mixed with copies amounts of flow improver to turn it into a wash of sorts, and then used a damp brush to clean up some of the surfaces. The inks I'm using reactivate with water sometimes, so this method is almost like an oil wash in some regards. The general idea was to add some definition to places but to allow the base to be dirtied up a bit more in general. I should have done a drybrush to highlight before then, or even some simple edge highlights - might need to go back in and do that later. The ink can leave behind tide marks if too much water is used, so I leaned into that for scratches, dirt, and general wear & tear lines by using Nuln Oil later.

The cabling took a long time to figure out that a base coat of Corvus Black is enough for most of it. Mixing in either Stegadon Scale Green, or even better Incubi Darkness, gives them a little more colour for highlights without making them too similar to the base colour.

Recently I've been finding uses for the Two Thin Coats range, notably Doom Metal, and that's now my go-to for junction boxes, access terminals, and the like. I'll highlight with something later (likely Iron Warriors), reserving final highlights after I varnish everything.

Most of the brass looking areas are so far Castellax Bronze (a layer paint but with good enough coverage to be a base paint) followed by Runelord Brass (the old layer paint version). Retributor Armour for some of the buttons on the terminal just for visual interest, and all of the above for the lettering on the panels. I might yet put a shade around the lettering to increase contrast there and make them stand out more.

Still plenty to go - the skulls, the lighting, the terminal screen, and rust in a few places would be suitable. I'm tempted to try a couple of things with the airbrush for the terminal screen for a cheap OSL effect, which will need to wait until I have the painting space setup again for that. Same again for the lights above the door maybe (one will be red, the other green, imagining it would show door status, pressurisation, or some such information) however I don't know if I want the OSL on the door itself. That door opens, and it would look weird if it kept some of the OSL when that was the case. I'll need to think some more about that.

-- silly painter.

Devastator Squad - Part IX (Showcase of a Cherub)

 

Not what you imagined for drone delivery services.

Rounding out the squad is the little cherub familiar, delivering a canister of prometheum presumably. If I remember the lore correctly, these are vat grown flesh heavily augmented to fulfil whatever role - more akin to lab meat than anything else. While the appearance fits within the religious overtones of the setting, a "normal" servitor that could carry more and be outfitted with a greater array of sensors would be far more fitting on a battlefield - but hey, creepy flying baby.

In painting this up I based the entire scheme on a triad of Two Thin Coats colours picked up from recent model show: Barbarian Brawn, Dwarven Skin, and Elven Skin. These were used for all the skin areas by layering, glazing, and mixing on the palette. Obviously quite a matt finish and I probably should put varnish over it, but as quick free style piece I didn't really care that much for this model.

Robes are far too long.

The robes (or whatever) are built up as mixtures of Barbarian Brawn (to tie everything together), Mechanicus Standard Grey, Celestra Grey, (both of those Citadel of course) and Trooper White from Two Thin Coats. I have a bottle of White Star but haven't opened it yet - Trooper White is similar enough on small details and mixes ever so slightly better into other paints because it's an off-white.

The wings are Mechanicus Standard Grey, then mixed with Celestra Grey, and finally mixed again with Trooper White. Different mixture ratios and the extra skin tone in the robes make them and the wings look very distinct, even if mostly the same paints were used.

Silver metal is Doom Metal (from TTC), and then the usual culprits from Citadel. I have a preference for this approach rather than sticking to washes between metallics because I can just put everything on the palette and don't really need to wait for a wash to dry before I can continue on that area.

The canister is again Doom Metal, then Warplock Bronze (Citadel) mixed in to highlight up, then I think it was Sycorax Bronze afterwards to add highlights in a more NMM style, particularly along the rounded ends. It took a few successive layers to built up enough metallic contrast that wasn't completely overpowered by the gloss finish, but I think it worked rather well in the end - so long as you pay attention to the various angles the model can be viewed from and place highlights accordingly.

The gold details are nothing very different except I used Warplock Bronze to glaze into some shadowed areas or where I wanted more contrast. The rest of the smaller details are just whatever I felt like at the time - put one paint down and mix with what's already on the palette to build up highlights and shadows. This isn't entirely haphazard because I'm getting an idea of how various paints will mix and can use that experience to minimise the number of different paints I'm using, but also it's sometimes worth not writing it down because the key idea is experimentation. If something works very well then I'll make notes if I think it should be replicated on future models. In this case though, I really was just playing around.

Fun little model in the end, quickly painted up (by my standards anyway) and now I can look at what else is pending to be done.

-- silly painter.

Devastator Squad - Part VIII

 

Never enough helmet lenses.

No, the squad still isn't finished. The Marines are, but not the squad. Turns out I had been leaving out a small familiar that needs to be quickly painted up, but more on that soon.

One of the things I've been still steering away from is bright edge highlighting. I went for something intense here, but not bright, so it's not as apparent in the final photos. This is partially a matter of taste, but also partially a matter of colour: as I've been trying different approaches to painting red armour, the orange tones of Wild Rider Red (my normal edge highlight colour) aren't quite matching anymore and I end up glazing back over them with Evil Sunz Scarlet. I may have gone too far on these models however, and I think the edge highlights are too little now.

I have a floating skull pet. Your argument is invalid.

The volumetric highlights have turned out well enough and are compensating to a degree for the underwhelming edge highlights. The airbrush stage setup a good sketch, but I still went back in with a brush after the final matt varnish to touch it up, which lead to a surprising development. First of all, the matt varnish did make some of the airbrushing noise fade - it's still there, but barely visible now. Trust the process I suppose. Second, a matt varnish will actually help dissipate surface cohesion of fluids on top (due to the roughed surface I suppose), which helps to feather out glazing. A little flow improver instead of water, and I was building up very smooth gradients very quickly. Using this helping hand I was able to reinforce volumetric highlights where they were lack, or create them if they were missing, to help tie the entire assembled model together.

Eat this.

For the missile launcher I tried just yellow and red that was on the palette to first build up a missile exhaust and then afterwards built up greys and black over the top to simulate smoke. In reality this would light up the rest of the model too (even in broad daylight) but sometimes a bit of artistic license is required. I didn't spend that long on the effect and it works ok - nothing too special, but the basic approach is sound and could be improved on with a little practice.

Let your worries just melt(a) away.

Reinforcing metallic paints with the mid-tone and then edge highlights all after the matt varnish works as expected still. I much prefer this way for metallic surfaces as opposed to pure NMM, but I am starting to take to a kind of hybrid approach: I've been starting to try and paint TMM but using NMM highlighting theory. One of the problems I personally see with NMM is that most will matt varnish afterwards, which makes the end result slightly dull and creates this dissonance of perception (the colours say metallic, but the lack of shine says paper). Using TMM gives the colours, shine, and while encourages a particular viewing angle it still works from others. The barrels of the multi-melta worked particularly nice with this approach so I'll continue to refine it.

That's not a laser pointer, this is a laser pointer.

I had a good deal of fun painting these models, even if they're considered older. They just have so much more character about them compared to more recent releases. I did buy Infernus Marines (for their poses) to kitbash with spare heavy weapons but unless I speed up my painting then don't expect to see that for a while. It was a slog to get through the Devastators but that wasn't the fault of the models, that was just "stuff going on". As mentioned before there is still the familiar to go, which I'll be using as a palette cleanser before figuring what I should tackle next.

-- silly painter.