Custodian Wardens - Part I

 

Probably buried his head in the sand.

Rather unfortunately, I had assembled some Custodian Wardens earlier in the year and was always planning to paint them alongside some of the 30k models. Or maybe fortunately: I wouldn't be painting them at all with the crass bullshit being delivered in 30k Custodes.

I'll not go much into it other than: the way it was handled was pathetic, and the new designs with boob armour are again taking away choice. Give people head swap options, don't force specific ideologies onto everyone. I'll grab that dreadnought probably, heavily convert it, but the agenda driven troops have turned me right off the whole faction. On a side note, I'd been eyeing off Daughters of Khaine and now they're going the prude route and destroying the entire character of the faction.

Anyway, onto painting. There's not a whole lot done so I'll try be quick about it (note: glossy armour doesn't show up nicely in the photos I take, but the actual model does look much better). The first few layers use an airbrush:

• Dryad Bark Air to cover the entire model. This will serve as the basic shadow colour, but also helps give a richer gold tone rather than applying the gold direct over a black primer.
• Balthasar Gold Air over most of the model, leaving only the direct downward facing surfaces as Dryad Bark. The gold is best thinned and applied in multiple layers - which goes the same for everything following.
• Valdor Gold Air as a mostly Zenithal coat. This isn't entirely apparent, more or less makes the model a little more desaturated, but it still helps the next layers.
• Thallax Gold Air mostly covering the Zenithal, but letting it bleed into other areas if they were missed before. Thin coats is still the name of the game. This colour in particular really gives a rich golden colour to work with.
• Imperial Gold Shade (Vallejo TMM), applied with a brush. This paint helps give definition but does shift the colour very slightly. It works best when covering an entire surface but then encouraging the pigment towards recesses. It can be feathered off larger surfaces if necessary.
• Cryptek Armourshade Gloss, thinned at least 1:1 (if not more) with acrylic flow improver and then used to further define some of the shapes. I mostly guided this around recesses considered to be "underneath". Try not to let this pool too heavily because the gloss nature of the paint will be at odds for a shadow area. I may try to use Warplock Bronze for wing designs to give darker contrast to recessed parts without the extreme gloss of the shade, and then build that up through the gold layers. I'll think on that one.
• Thallax Gold Air / Liberator Gold mixed roughly 1:1 and glazed for initial highlights. I intend to work up to pure Liberator Gold at a later stage, but haven't done that yet.

The cloth is for the moment just Barak-Nar Burgundy, which will be the shadow colour and I'll highlight up to a red afterwards. Even this colour could perhaps be mixed with black to really deepen the folds - something to explore.

And that's really it. The shading and glazed highlight stages take quite a long time and so most of the rest of the squad are still waiting on those steps.

I played with feeding Omega Blue (TTC range metallic) through the airbrush with thinner and learned that while it does work, don't just use thinner. Use at least equal amounts of flow improver to stop it being so watery. While yes this did work and would be great for essentially airbrush glazing (I do have some ideas of where to take that), it took a few layers to build up a strong base colour. If doing that, just use a brush.

That's about all for now. For reasons, I won't be able to post for another two, possibly three weeks and then it'll be probably back to Sons of Horus assault troops.

-- silly painter.