Sanguinary Guard (Heresy Era) - Part IV

 

Mr Ethereal Eyes

Slowly but surely I'm getting these models done, but I need to take a step back and consider the original intent of trying to paint up models without being too exact. Blends and transitions aren't so exact, or using quite so many colours to build up extreme contrast over a gradient. Simple but effective techniques and colour schemes. Some of this is driven by just wanting to get the models painted, and some by the nature of the sculpts themselves.

The helmet eye lenses are one such detail that encourage painting them different to my usual approach. They're quite sunken into the helmet and so need to be bright to draw attention. I decided to borrow something recently used on the Crimson Paladin:

• White (any) concentrated in the middle, thinned and glazed slightly as edge highlights on the surrounding area.
• Hexwraith Flame across the lens and thinly applied around the surrounding area. The edge highlights make it brighter, but cover more area to let it fade out slightly.
• Coelia Greenshade on the inner lens for definition.

Simple, maybe even too bright, but effective standing out.

Moving on from the lenses I wanted to focus on the bases next. Normally I would leave these to the last, but I wanted to sort them out to make them seem more finished (and hopefully then motivate me to actually complete everything). There are several different materials on these bases, but before I get to that I was noticing damaged pavement in the surrounding area and there are a few noteworthy observations.

• When the surface of pavement is damaged and worn away, the edges of the damage are quite dark. A combination of shadows, possibly water depositing dirt, and the underlying material not being faded from sunlight. It's very noticeable once you look at it. Shades are very good at emulating this, but this can be exaggerated with highlights. The foundations underneath are generally darker and more rocky because it hasn't been purposefully smoothed over, which naturally gives more colour variation. 
• Cracks in pavement in a humid, cool (but not overly cold), diffused sunlight environment are noticeably green. This comes from moss and other plant-life growing in the cracks, and they tend to spread out. The point is that cracks can definitely offer an indication of the general environment: green for humid, red for sunburned dust, ochre for sandy desert, and so on.
• Pavements are often patched. The patches will offer colour variation. Pavement is not uniform grey - water damage, resurfacing, loose stones, general wear & tear, there's quite a lot going on.

All of that in mind, I was trying several approaches but ultimately took inspiration from the bases for Legions Imperialis. The "ferrocrete" ended up as:

• Dawnstone base.
• Grey Seer to add some higlights.
• Mix some random colours from the palette and dab around the area. This is likely too much, but some glazes of Dawnstone or Grey Seer will knock them back and desaturate to tie it all together.
• Basilicanum Grey / Contrast Medium (1:1) and applied over the whole area. Thinner is better if uncertain.
• Use any of the previous steps to add highlights as necessary.

Metal plating was originally going to be shifted towards blue, but that doesn't work for the Sons of Horus, and it wasn't really working for Sanguinary Guard. It works for Blood Angels as a complementary colour, but across multiple colour schemes a more neutral choice is better:

• Iron Warriors base.
• Space Wolves Grey (Contrast). This is a very translucent colour and won't cover well, which is exactly what is wanted here.
• Gore-Grunta Fur (Contrast) very watered down to simulate general rust and dirt.
• Iron Hands Silver as damage, chipping, worn clean raised surfaces, etc.

For dirt underneath I'm going for something very simple:

• Thondia Brown for dirt, then mix with whatever bright colour on the palette to highlight.
• Ratling Grime (Contrast).

Finally the Aquila deserves to stand out and add more visual interest to the base:

• Hashut Copper
• Gauss Blaster Green, mixed with a random blue on the palette for verdigris

That pretty much covers it. The picture above is at a poor angle to show off everything, but that's ok as it's supposed to enhance the model above rather than take the spotlight anyway.

There's both a lot left to do, but equally not much. I know how to finish the models now and basically just need to find time to get on with it. That's not quite as easy as it sounds right now.

-- silly painter