Ancient Rylanor - Part IV (Showcase)

 

Purple Flame

Another Contemptor joins the "calling it done" group. There is a whole lot more that I could do: more highlights, more panel lining, subtle oil and grime colours, etc. I have more models to do however, and I'm happy enough knowing that it's not lack of skill stopping me - it's just wanting to do something else. Also I'm not going to proof-read this, so excuse any mistakes; this is not a professional blog, just notes on what I did and why.

Lack of weathering kind of worked in this case I think, and I'm glad I kept everything more clean just to show it off. The purple highlighting works quite well, and the airbrush grain isn't really visible beyond a few centimetres.

The trim metallics is simply continued with Liberator Gold for edges, and some glazing to restore shine, and then Canoptek Alloy for the higher edges and eagle. I wanted the eagle to stand out slightly, and it just seemed that extra highlight attention would do that. Canoptek is also starting to be a favourite colour to edge highlight with because it's very desaturated without being silver.

Some of the metal areas I kept dulled from the matt varnish as a style choice. The best example of this is the assault cannon: I didn't want it to be bright, I wanted dark without being black. Using metallics for colour, and then varnish to remove the shine and dull it slightly, works for weapon barrels.

The shield designs I didn't know what to do with. Too bright and it would draw too much attention, but it needed something artistic. I also couldn't decide what to write across the scroll, and for that I ended up showing the Legion number (III) - so I leaned into that to write a stylised version of III on the shields. A black shield background, with gold lettering - and that was done using an artificer brush, a good amount of concentration, and a magnifying headset. Simple, stylised, and without clashing against the rest of the model.

The left leg design I wanted as (probably) laurel wreath I painted up as a green just because I didn't want it to be metallic, and it shouldn't draw too much attention away from the face (helmet) area, especially with the teal around the latter. Viewed from the side however, and then it starts to be a bit distracting, so the shoulders have white decals (eagle heads from some Aeronautica kits). These decals are far too bright, as I suspected might happen, but I'm not going to try change that now. A slightly more grey would have been better perhaps, but I won't be doing that now. I'll need to plan how to do such things in future as I'm not sure just painting over the decal would work.

The base was another case of just playing around. Celstra Grey I think, but then thinned Basilicanum Grey over it, some Black Templar to outline some areas better, and then just drybrushing up with off-white and slightly blue paints. Somehow the drybrushing worked really well and makes the designs on the base really stand out and show more depth than is actually sculpted. The value contrast against the dreadnought body helps, the details are clearly visible, and how everything ties together makes this one of the better bases I've done recently. Agrax Earthshade was also used to surround some of the rubble to separate it from the surface it's sitting on, making it look like...rubble.

Not looking forward to more resin models, but I am getting better at dealing with them. Now I wonder if perhaps Rylanor is looking for ordnance.

The count now stands at 9.

-- silly painter.

Ancient Rylanor - Part III

 

Colours are great for hide & seek. You hide, he seeks.

The Year of the Dreadnought continues, and today there's enough of Ancient Rylanor to justify another post. All of the recessed shading has been done, some ambient occlusion, but the edge highlights are still not complete. I'm not sure if I'll do them before, or after the final matt varnish - perhaps before, as I can always add a little more after if the varnish knocks them back too much.

All of the grey metal is Iron Warriors and a Nuln Oil (Gloss). That's all so far - the gloss paint really does work well over the metallics, but creates very shiny recesses - however the varnish stage will fix that nicely. There are still a few details that I haven't picked out for this treatment, but I might end up switching to Leadbelcher for them anyway. The most obvious are....whatever they are above the head (searchlights maybe, shield projectors, something), and as that's a much brighter area in general then Leadbelcher might be a better base coat (or 5 coats to get coverage!).

Scrollwork across the torso uses the normal formula that I've detailed a while ago. but there is one slight problem: it's very difficult to write Rylanor across that! There's not much space to work with, so I might cheat slightly and just III in the centre to signify the 3rd Legion. I also need to raid my stash of transfers to find anything appropriate to put on shields and shoulders.

The golden trim associated with Emperor's Children is so far just a couple of colours: Retributor Armour and Reikland Fleshshade (Gloss). I'm intending to layer that up to a fairly desaturated gold, but still keep the hint of red in there as a complementary colour to the base purple. Trying to go too far into yellow will contrast too much and break the harmony of the model, and I want the the helmet lenses to be a more proper contrast colour (a sort of teal) to draw the eye there later.

The flamer is so far Warplock Bronze and some Balthasar Gold, though I might leave further work until after the fist has been glued into place. I will very likely paint the flamer fully before varnishing, as I don't intend for it to be too shiny; any soot from the flame would keep the shine away. The under-slung fuel tank I entirely forgot about and will need attending to later as well.

I've been trying to think during all of this how I might paint the base. I find snow and muddied bases fit well with the colours, but that won't fit the feel of what's there. I might go with marbled stone perhaps, or just a light standstone. It's going to take a while I think. As for battle damage, while the base has indications of battle I think I want to keep the dreadnought looking more parade-ready. There's no storyline reason behind this, it's just that I'm not sure how I would make battle damage that adds rather than detracts to the model.

An awful lot of detail remains (purity seals, shields, etc) and a fair amount of higlighting (e.g the head) but I'm pleased with the progress. I'm still painting three dreadnoughts at the same time, and while I could have finished any one of them by now, I figured that finishing three close together would bypass thinking about "still another two to go" (which is highly demotivating). That being said, given the extra details on this model then it's likely to be the last finished.

-- silly painter.

Ancient Rylanor - Part II

 

Favourite band: Deep Purple

Painting has been very slow going of late, and will continue to be that way for another couple of weeks (because reasons), but that doesn't mean I've done nothing. I've done a fair amount of airbrushing and preparation, including some purples for my take on Ancient Rylanor. The major problem is that I forget exactly what I did with the airbrushing - so what follows is a rough guide, but might not be entirely accurate.

I had mixed a blue (Night Lords Blue) into Chemos Purple as a base coat, and then straight Chemos Purple as a mid-tone. Genestealer Purple was then used to highlight, with then a bit of white mixed into that as a final more extreme highlight. Most of this was covered long ago when doing a test model for the third Legion, so I knew roughly how it might turn out, but with larger models like a dreadnought there are some differences.

One of the changes I've attempted here is to actually highlight bottom areas of the more vertical planes, which sort of helps the eye read the shape. Although it's a mostly vertical plane, there's slightly more area facing up at the bottom usually, so highlighting that helps give volume; at least that's theory behind it all, but mostly it just looks cool. The idea stemmed from a youtube video (Eric's Hobby Workshop I think, one on tanks) and so this seemed like a good place to explore how I highlight. Strangely enough, this is still actually how I highlight Space Marines now anyway.

One thing I did forget to mention was a kind of white Zenithal highlight that was done after the black primer. The intent was not for highlights at all, and nothing of that stage shows through, but it does give a good reference of where areas might be more naturally highlighted, and definitely helps pick out detail on a model. I do this regularly with more complex models now: heavily thinned white over the primer simply to help make the details more readable while I paint.

All told I'm quite happy with how the airbrushing turned out on this model. Purple seems to lend itself rather well to airbrushing and highlighting in general, perhaps because it's easy to work up from a dark blue to a nearly white all while maintaining readability as purple. There's likely a very good colour theory reason why this is the case, but I'm not recovered enough to confirm some ideas on that.

One of the larger pauses in painting came next simply because I didn't feel like doing it. It was a real struggle to get through, not really sure why, but the base metallic silver is just Iron Warrior. I will be comparing it against Leadbelcher later on to see which is "darker", but Iron Warrior just seems to have a slight amount of purple in the mix so seemed more natural to go with. I wanted to get this done before any varnish just because metallics over varnish aren't always the most pleasant of experiences and I'm hoping this will work better in future. It's tricky however because I do like to varnish at the end of airbrushing to seal everything in and help prevent chipping or rubbing off, and I had to be extra careful in trying to avoid mistakes.

After enough areas were covered with Iron Warrior for me to be happy with I then of course added a gloss varnish. This will help shades later, which I'm hoping will allow acrylic shades to act similarly to the oil shading done on the recent Titanicus models. There is one new approach to this varnish stage however: the size of the airbrush nozzle. Previously I used a larger nozzle because faster coverage, but sometimes it also meant a far too thick layer was applied. This time I used a much smaller (0.2mm) nozzle and some more distance for a finer and thinner spray over the model. This seemed to work really well, and I'm wondering if a thinner gloss layer will help metallic paint coverage, so another dreadnought has that ready to be tested soon.

Going forward on this model there is already the start of some Druchii Violet recess shading, although I might also use Drakenhof Nightshade in the deeper shadowed areas. I still want to do edge highlighting with Dechala Lilac as well, probably before a later matt varnish stage as I think it will still show through and I can always add more again later if it doesn't. Not sure how long it will take me to do all that, and I strongly suspect the new Dante model will land before then, but hopefully in a couple of weeks I can make some real progress.

-- silly painter.

Ancient Rylanor - Part I

 

Why put weapons inside the fist?

After a couple of weeks away, I've not returned to the multitude of in-progress models, but instead decided to try and assemble another Contemptor. I had the notion of using it to try and experiment with poses, but actually it became too difficult if the pieces weren't firmly held together. Instead I just kind of went with the flow to see what would happen, and this is what I ended up with.

It wasn't the most pleasant assembly experience in the world. I've had worse, but a few key points stuck out:

• Carving out flash and mistakes was an absolute pain.
• Some of the pieces don't quite align as nicely as they should.
• The torso was hitting the "hips" and needed some putty to lift it slightly.
• The pelvis joints need to swivel quite high if there's to be a slightly wider stance.

At one point I'd finally had enough of all cutting and carving and decided to go at it with a Dremel. Doing this outside, wearing a respirator, gloves, and properly cleaning afterwards should mitigate any health risks, and the absolute time saving was astounding. It's just so much easier using a Dremel to reach and drill out specific areas. I'm definitely using this again in future, it saves so much time and effort.

I ended up using Milliput in a few key areas to plug some holes, fill some gaps, add some rocks to the base, that sort of thing. I also used it inside the torso to lift it up very slightly. It's not much, but it allows the torso to clear the legs and give a more interesting pose.

The original idea was to have the assault cannon being pointed somewhere and firing, but when I put together the other arm I liked the idea more of pointing at some infantry or perhaps a bunker slight and sending forth a gout of flame. It makes no real sense to put the barrel of a weapon inside a power fist like that of course, so I would imagine the barrel and retract into the arm and shield of some kind would slide into place. It does look cool though. At any rate, with that decided on then it seemed natural to let the assault cannon angle downwards slightly while attention is momentarily elsewhere.

On the subject of the assault cannon, that was not pleasant to assemble, and even now it's not entirely as lined up as I would like. It's not going to be very noticeable, so I'll leave it alone, but in future I would actually consider trying to use the plastic kit instead for that. The resin body (and legs) are amazing, but the weapons might be better in plastic.

The head is not yet glued in place, and the same for the "fist" of the power fist. I'm leaving both of those to later just for ease of painting, but otherwise everything else is ready.

And why Rylanor? That's simple really. I didn't want to paint this up as a Blood Angels Contemptor simply because I have enough of those set aside (four in total) and so I needed to decide on a different Legion. I debated about much of it until I realised that with the eagle symbol it really does naturally fit with Emperor's Children, and from there it's only natural to paint the model as that most famous of their dreadnoughts: Ancient Rylanor.

I'm actually thinking to now leave this model for a little while, or perhaps just do some initial airbrush coats, and instead switching to assembling more Contemptors. No particular reason other than I'm on a bit of a roll and may as well try continue with that. Guess I'll see how I go.

-- silly painter.