Blood Angels Champion - Part V (Showcase)

 

You're mine.

There's not too much to really say other than this model is now considered complete. I could, as always, do a lot more. Push the highlights more, particularly on the red armour and pauldron gold trimming. The armour, most notably, could be held up to the standard of the right leg but everywhere.

After the matt varnish, the final glazed highlights are, as usual, extremely simple and most effective. It takes me between twenty minutes to half an hour to complete it all, but the result is by far well worth it. It restores vibrancy and really helps to define the model as a whole. Spending more time on this step would no doubt help turn it into a competition winner - but only if I added a couple more colours on the palette to deepen shadows as well. Need to stop somewhere.

The centre chest detailing was highlighted with Castellax Bronze, and then an equal parts mix with Sycorax Bronze. It's a very neutral brown result that keeps the chest from drawing too much attention away from the golden helm, but there's enough value contrast to clearly define the shape. There's still room to push the highlights further if needed, which I can keep in mind when using something similar on other models.

The writing on the scroll (model's right pauldron) is simply a decal, but cut into three pieces and carefully aligned. I possibly could have aligned it better. I also could have painted over the top, but it was already well enough readable that I didn't bother. Look closely and the printing dots are visible, but I simply didn't fancy spending an hour to fix that up - not when I'm happy with the result as it stands, and besides I don't paint over other decals normally. Just as long as I don't pretend it's freehand then it's fine.

Everything else is fairly run of the mill. I think the whole model comes together well enough, and it's certainly unique. A mixture of kitbashing, third party parts, and even a little putty in key places, and there's a distinctly Blood Angel feel coming out of a "Bladeguard" veteran. Only four more of these models to go, but I'll do them one at a time. The next will undoubtedly have a shield handy.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angels Champion - Part IV

 

Champion and Dedork.

Progress. Very slow, but progress.

The base has been done and now has an Ork skull with grass growing next to it. A special character model such as this probably deserves a more blinged-out base, but fitting him in with the rest of the models means I'm going for something a bit simpler. The skull rather than freshly hewn head means it wasn't this champion's work, but it seemed appropriate given the swords.

I'm trying something new with the swords here, and have actually already changed it up a bit, but the basic idea is: dark metal sword to make a blue metal "glow" appear brighter by contrast. I still don't like the look of generic everything-blue power swords, and so I keep experimenting. The tips being blue help define shape, but that's the part already adjusted in other models: using silvers instead. Steel swords in good condition should be very well polished and reflective, which works nicely with NMM techniques, but I figure power swords need different materials to help them work and so the darker metal colour of Doom Metal (TTC) shouldn't be too out of place but really makes the Omega Blue (TTC) seem that much more vibrant.

In this case the blue tips of the swords unbalanced everything too much and I need to draw attention back towards the torso and helmet. The small accents of green in the eye lenses isn't large enough to do that on its own, so I needed something close enough to blue to balance out the swords and lead the viewer on a path there. It's subtle, but the purple gems on the pauldrons is what I ended up going with. Just that little bit of colour variety that doesn't make the swords stand out quite so much, and draws a line towards the helmet. This also means the details on the shins shouldn't stand out too much, which is what lead me to using Grey Knight's Steel on the central blood drop symbol. It's not quite blue (actually more purple I think), but happened to be on my palette at the time. The symbol to the sides I'll paint up as red - it will add visual interest, but shouldn't draw attention away from the rest of the model.

I might try mixing Castellax Bronze with Sycorax Bronze to highlight the chest detailing. I haven't tried it yet but I'm hoping it'll be enough to highlight without going too bright - and I might need to leave it until after the matt varnish anyway.

I'll definitely try to get the smaller details filled in soon so that I might get to the final stages of this model. It's about time I finished it really. I have plenty of other models that have been painted in the background too, however keeping momentum up is difficult and actually finishing a project always helps.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angels Champion - Part III

 

He slices, he dices...

Been a few weeks since any update because very good reasons, but I'm back at semi-regular painting again and decided to block in a few colours. There's not a whole lot of painting information really, this is just trying to get a sense of the final look of the model, which itself is often just as important.

The base is very bare right now and definitely will need some attention. Rocks, scrub, a skull or two, and it should be passable, but this kind of model normally deserves something a little better. This basing is chosen to fit with the rest of the army, but Astartes are unlikely to be found in that environment without something else to indicate fortifications, enemy troops, etc; Astartes would not fight across open terrain in such a fashion. They're a surgical strike force that targets the enemy directly and would be susceptible to enemy artillery when trying to combat in the open like that. They would instead be delivered close to the enemy and strike hard and fast, and thus the bases would show signs of something: bricks, pavement, discarded items, tracks, wires, sludge, etc. I'll need to consider it for the other models in the eventual squad as well.

The armour will almost certainly have a final glazing pass after the matt varnish to help it compete against all the metallics. That will be simple enough and I think so far the idea of the airbrush only being used as a foundation to build upon is working well.

The swords will see a splash of colour later, but I do want to keep them quite dark. The brighter colours surrounding the chest and head currently draw attention that way and I'd like to keep that intact if I can.

Steel Legion Drab and Zandri Dust are very similar, especially with the latter covered in Agrax Earthshade, which is good to note for future reference. The former could probably be highlighted with the latter. Too bad both paints are in bad shape for me and will need replacing before too long. They've each lasted some 13 years though, so all things considered I'm happy with them.

The model is shaping up nicely, but I need to keep an eye on the volumes. They will make all the difference between simply good from the details, and great.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angels Champion - Part II

 

The chest is watching you.

The "Bladeguard" without a shield is painted enough to be fully assembled. I really wanted this done for motivational purposes, but it also helps to better guide the colour scheme, which I haven't yet fully decided upon. The photo is colour adjusted slightly because the gloss varnish reflections washed the colours out too much: the reds are perhaps slightly deeper than in actuality, but it's not too far off.

Airbrushing this model I returned to the tried & true formula of:

• Mephiston Red / Dryad Bark (1:1) base coat.
• Mephiston Red initial highlight.
• Evil Sunz Scarlet second highlight.

Knowing how to thin the paints, build up layers, and control the airbrush more than I once did, the end result was pretty inspiring, but I didn't focus on that being the final steps. I would almost certainly adjust things later with a brush anyway, so I was focused on a foundation to build upon. I went back with a paint brush to add glazes in a few places, but it was relatively minor and didn't take long. With that in mind, it was gloss varnish and shading time.

The shading I did not bother with even trying to panel line. If I'm going to clean up later, why bother? Also there's so much detail that it would've been pointless anyway: just give an overall wash and fix up later if necessary. As it turns out, with one drop of flow improver to one drop of the shade paint (Crimson Carroburg, the more Contrast-like version) and everything just kind of worked. A few minor places weren't quite how I wanted, but even they weren't bad. Using the normal acrylic versions of the airbrush paints and I had everything fixed up, re-highlighted, and even basic edge highlighted in about 20 minutes (speed painting for me).

By this stage there are three rounds of working on the red armour highlights, and yet it's still faster than before. I'm mostly working with glazes and very soft reinforcement of what is already there, and even then the primary reason for not doing everything at the end is that I want to keep the visuals with me as I paint other areas. Painting it last would mean I lose track of the mental end picture and would be making far too mistakes from trying too hard. Lean into layering and glazing to keep the model looking nice, and each subsequent step will be shorter and easier.

I've decided on my normal gold recipe for armour trim, with Castellax Bronze for the filigree and detailing. This should provide colour variation and interest without clashing colours. Cryptek Armourshade mixed with flow improver in a 1:1 ratio gives shading without going too dark. I'm not sure what to do next with that - I don't want to go too bright or colourful, but it needs something to pick out highlights and for definition. Studs are Doom Metal (TTC) with silver initial highlights, but I need to go back in there and push the highlights more while also respecting the volume of the leg. That just means the studs closer to the middle will be highlighted more brightly.

There's obviously a lot of blocking in yet to do, the base needs some attention, and more besides, but I think the pose is striking and this will become one of my nicer models in the end.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angels Champion - Part I

 

Looks this pissed without the Black Rage.

I've been assembling a couple of models in the background, having finally decided to get started on some of my "Bladeguard" stand-ins. I don't see the official models as particularly evoking the aesthetic taste of Blood Angels; the official models are simply too generic and lacking the detailing that Blood Angels would surely include on their armour. So I decided to look around for a way to improve upon that and stumbled across the Seraphim Knights from Kromlech. I also bought some shields from Kromlech as they also seemed more ornate than hunting down more official variants. The result is that I have five main bodies, but only three shields. I'd have to do something with a couple of them.

I struck upon the idea of a Champion, dual wielding power swords, striding forward to engage his next target. The body and shoulder pads are from Kromlech, with the left arm from a Primaris upgrade sprue. It has a vial attached with rope that was at the wrong angle for how I positioned the arm, so the vial needed to be removed and reattached, with a little green-stuff to blend it back into the model. It's not visible in the photo above.

The backpack is very plain for now, and I intend to hand paint some filigree there later. I could try sculpt more, but lacking time for such things right now I just wanted to get the model started. I did need to fill in the attachment point of the backpack just because the back of the Kromlech model is a smooth surface and there wouldn't otherwise be anywhere for glue to find purchase. I might need to pin things later anyway as superglue doesn't seem to stick very well to whatever resin Kromlech use.

The helmet in the photo is a stand-in. I'll be using a plain one instead, leaving the squad leader marking for another model.

The right arm ended up being a little more tricky than everything else combined. I found an arm from spares that had roughly the right angle and trimmed away the boltgun and hand. I then found a hand from another spare arm which was holding a knife, which is more suitable to the handling of a sword. There was a lot of careful cutting away to preserve that hand. I then took the power sword from a terminator arm on the Primaris upgrade sprue (which really took a lot of very careful cutting) and glued in place on the hand. Next the bottom of the sword was added, with a small amount of green-stuff to fill gaps and solidify the connection. Next the hand was pinned to the arm at a slight angle to better position the sword how I wanted, and some green-stuff ribbing used to fill the gap. More green-stuff was used together with super-glue to attach the arms to the torso.

The shoulder pads were also attached by using a small amount of green-stuff to give better surface contact for the glue. I was a little impatient in doing this so not everything is perfect, but it's good enough. While I was using green-stuff, I also padded under the feet ever so slightly to give room on the base for later adding texture paints. This avoids trying to keep the texture paint free of the feet to not "bury" them, while allowing for a better connection to the base and more stability on the painting handles. The downside is that I need to be more careful painting the bases themselves, but it will probably be worth the tradeoff.

Now that everything is primed, I'm probably going back to an airbrush soon with my old forumla of painting red (without Contrast) to build up the initial highlights. The photo above will serve as a reference for that, but I'm expecting to need a few manual tweaks later as well. The intent of the airbrushing before was to get the volume highlighting entirely done, but now I'm starting to see it as an initial basis to build upon. this should let me be more free with the airbrushing stage, but I'll want to match paints better so I'll stick to the normal and air ranges of Citadel for that.

-- silly painter

Sanguinary Guard - Part V (Showcase)

 

Have to wonder if he sculpted his own armour.

Sanguinary Guard are now considered complete. The bases are very simple, I could do an awful lot more there, but they're not the focus. The skulls are there purely to put skulls on bases (the pack of skulls was a gift) and to basically mark a model as done.

There's not too much not already covered from a painting perspective, so I'll be brief about that: the swords. The hilts are a mix of Warplock Bronze, Balthasar Gold, and Screaming Bell. Nothing fancy, just mix and layer. The blades are another matter, and I'm still not sure they worked how I wanted - but I definitely feel like there's potential to be had. I wanted the blades to be darker; bright blades would clash with the reflective armour and break the framing of the core of the model by unbalancing it. I also couldn't just leave them black. NMM might work, but I'd need to keep it very dark, which doesn't sell that technique too well, and I also wanted something to give them a hint of energy or inner power. And red. Ultimately this went something along the lines of:

• Black along the length of the blade.
• Corvus Black / Mechanicus Standard Grey to highlight the end, but also the base of the blade.
• Mechanicus Standard Grey / Ulthuan Grey to edge highlight the end and tip of the blade.
• Flesh Tearer's Red (Contrast) in multiple thin coats at the base of the blade, feathering it out into the middle.
• Stormshield varnish for extra protection and to unify the finish.

The second last step gives red because Blood Angels, but also darkens the base of the blade again. This kind of colour transition is an idea I used on Nekima and Mephiston to give that semi-mystical energy feel to the sword without relying on traditional power weapon effects. Note that because I don't give a unifying matt varnish to these models on account of the heavy use of metallics, I gave the sword blade a standalone varnish. These are the parts likely to come into contact with other surfaces and chip or have paint rub off.

His temper isn't a problem. For him.

I tried to give lettering a glow on the third sword, but silly me went and tried it over white. That just made everything pink. I should have gone for white, then yellow, and then red. I did play around with darkening metallics with whatever blacks and greys were on my palette, and that worked to a degree - enough that it's viable when the hilt is silver and the blade shouldn't match.

Not a whole lot more to say about the painting - it's all quite apparent, already covered, or nearly inconsequential (e.g "just use whatever is on the palette to make it semi-interesting"). So instead I'll mention some reflection on how the kitbashing, custom parts, and sculpting turned out.

First point is the 3d printed parts. This was the most obvious choice to give the models wings. There are other options I could have explored, but none would have looked half as good and taken twice as long. They fit with the model well, are a nice design, and with that I'm generally pleased. The print quality however shows that more traditional approaches with plastic or cast resin still reign supreme. Plastic cement is pretty damned useful too. Tidy up from supports is still needed on 3d printed parts, layer lines are very obvious in multiple places, and a multitude of artefacts are all around the place. I've done my best to cover up some of this, but it could've used some putty and sanding to improve on it all. This is just something to consider: unless dialling in your own 3d printer and spending a long time getting everything just right, imperfections from third party sellers are going to happen. Most of the problems aren't visible at the distance seen on a tabletop, but I wouldn't approve in a painting competition.

Sculpting little pieces on worked great. I could seem myself improving the more I played with it, and it's a skill I think I could master very quickly if I wanted and had the time for. It's the latter which is a problem, but I do want to continue to customise models in this way. Blood drop gemstones ended up being one of the easier things to sculpt as it turns out, however trying to make an impression of a larger detail and later glue it to the model wasn't as effective. Better to just sculpt directly onto a surface. Also, roughening up the surface really helps the putty stick.

Helmet is in the workshop.

The kitbashing itself I think worked well enough. Obviously the poses don't quite fit a model in flight or attacking with a jump pack, but the official models don't do that well either. It's really hard to have a dynamic pose with a flight capable model, despite some obvious designer best efforts, and I obviously can't do any better - but let it be known that I think some of the models from GW do execute such poses very well. Despite all of that, kitbashing was necessary to bring back the feel of Sanguinary Guard, and I really like the great range of options available to do just that. Each model has a unique pose, an individual look, and a sense of personality. There's stories that each one can tell, hints that their armour is still a work in progress by each of them, and yet they're elite warriors upholding the history and legends of those that came before.

Sure, the results aren't perfect, but the kitbashing was a good choice, and ultimately a cheaper one for me given that I already had a lot of spare parts to work with.

Finally, the paper under the bases is there to help remove the models. I magnetise the bases and they're otherwise hard up against steel washers. That could damage the magnets, but also the strength of the magnet might be more than the glue holding them to the base, so the bit of paper is just there to help slide the model of the washer.

-- silly painter.

Sanguinary Guard - Part IV

 

Teaches bifurcation.

Slow going with painting, but I've been poking away at the Sanguinary Guard as time permits. Most of the efforts have been going into metallics, which seems to have ended up being about ninety percent of the models. This poses a particular challenge: metallics are difficult to provide contrast with.

The gloss finish of metallics covers up a lot of mistakes, helps smooth out transitions, but so much so that it makes it difficult to build up volumetric and edge highlights. To that end, I went slightly heavier with the Canoptek Alloy on the edges just to give them a little something extra. Polished gold might give desaturated reflections, which normally I'd use a light silver for, however I just don't like how that typically looks. This approach still leaves me with some wriggle room to use pure Canoptek Alloy on detailing and tie everything together. The only other way around this would be to repeat the approach on Dante, which for the time constraints I'd already ruled out on these models.

I do have some silver detailing, which is quite straight forward:

• Iron Warriors
• Iron Hands Steel
• Runefang Steel

I'm also playing with the idea of using Corvus Black in places to give extra depth, so that I don't need to bother with a shade. If nothing else, the black is still serving as a foundation to build the metallics up from. In general though, the above combination gives a good amount of contrast that can be worked with to make the smaller details pop.

There's nothing unusual with the bases, other than perhaps I could add some skulls for a little visual interest.

Now I simply need to fill in all the remaining details - of which there are many. Pouches, gemstones, purity seals, some of the weapons, the eyes, etc. As far as experiments go, they've fulfilled all the goals I'd set out to achieve - and now I just want to finish them. I'll therefore likely focus on the Sanguinary Guard for the next week and see how close I can get to that. It would be nice to finish something before the end of the month.

-- silly painter

Sanguinary Guard - Part III

 

The greater the bling, the greater the warrior.

Some recent progress on the Sanguinary Guard, and enough to fully assemble the initial test model. This was the first one that I'd airbrushed the armour, added edge highlights, shading, etc. It took me a while however to decide on how the next most important feature should be painted: the wings.

I'm still baffled by Games Workshop's decision to remove the iconic wings from the Sanguinary Guard. The helmets look derpy, but they're far more easily replaced; the wings are what make them such a special unit aesthetically amongst all the Space Marines. Whatever the reasoning behind the decision, the replacement parts work just as effectively as the original, but I didn't want to paint white wings fully white. A brighter white would simply overpower everything else, and leaves nowhere to go if I wanted something else highlighted more extreme. This really only leaves shades of grey, hints of blue, to work with, and I still intended to follow through painting the higher feathers brighter than the lower ones, encouraging the eye to be drawn upward.

The process involved a lot of paints to get the look I was after, and while I'm not sure all of them are required, having such a range to mix and move between was rather useful.

• Mechanicus Standard Grey
• Dawnstone
• Grey Seer
• Ulthuan Grey
• Corax White

I started with the darkest (Mechanicus) and worked by way up feather by feather, keeping the recesses darkened to provide an outline. The whole process took quite a good deal of time, and I while the results are fair, I wasn't a fan of repeating that again. Ultimately I probably would've saved time if I had just done that, but experimentation would inform future such attempts what might and might not work for me.

Biggus Swordus.

I tried to drybrush the next wings, which was actually before I had airbrushed them. I figured I could just mask off the feathers later. The drybrushing didn't catch the feathers as well as I'd hoped - mostly it was stuck to the edges and didn't fill in each as I wanted. Stippling may have worked, but that also would've filled in the recesses too much and I wouldn't have the control over edges.

Next I tried to airbrush the colour gradient in. Trying to do that in bands across feather rows did not work at all, however using the entire wing as a single shape and building up a gradient that way did give nicer results. Gloss varnish and an oil wash help bring back definition, but I still needed to touch up places later with a normal brush. It's for this reason that I think in future I should simply just paint it all by hand; it takes time, but with fewer steps it's quicker overall. A coat of Stormshield varnish later to pull everything back to the same finish rounds out the feathers, but the varnish should also help protect the paint when masking it off for airbrushing.

Masking off the feathers also took me some time to consider. I wasn't sure if PVA glue would peel off the paint, and trying in a small area showed that it didn't - but metal tool used to lift up the glue sure did leave scratches. Blu-tac was far too difficult to put into the right shape, and I don't have any silly-putty, so in the end I went with PVA glue and a plastic tool to help scrape it off later. That mostly worked, but I did have to use water and an older brush to wipe off some of the more stubborn bits. Note to self: PVA is water soluble, making it ideal of this kind of thing. A few spots didn't mask properly of course, but they were trivial to clean up later with remaining paint from the palette.

Whatever he's facing is about to regret its life choices.

Something else I'm experimenting with lately is an alternate glue to superglue. The frosting from superglue has been causing a bit of hassle and I'd like to avoid that if possible. From unrelated activities I have a bottle of Gorilla Glue (Clear), and it apparently bonds quite well but requires some pressure for a couple of hours first. That's not always possible for these models, so in future I should probably just avoid using an excess of superglue to begin with.

I'm planning next to paint up enough of the rest of the Sanguinary Guard to have them fully assembled as well. I have a rough idea of the colours I'd like, but there's enough doubt that this might continue to slow me down. I need to break up the large gold areas with something of visual interest, but less is more sometimes and it would be difficult to paint up that gold again with a brush.

-- silly painter

Sanguinary Guard - Part II

 

The return of nipples.

Some progress on the Sanguinary Guard kitbashing, although only one so far is actually painted to this stage. I wanted to test out some ideas with painting metallics through the airbrush, having learned how not to do things with the start of Dante. I also wasn't keen on spending quite as much time on these models, so the hope was that the airbrush would give me a solid start to the armour and I could more easily work from there; with many more golden armoured warriors to paint, doing it all by brush wasn't the most appealing.

I think I've come up with a good compromise, and in the process learned that metallics can given an amazingly smooth finish through an airbrush. It's actually far less smooth than it might first appear, but more on that in a moment.

The base coat is actually Dryad Bark. It's quite a dark brown to begin with, so multiple thin coats over the black primer were required to actually show anything, but it's worth the effort to do so as this will ultimately become the shadow colour.

Next up through the airbrush was Balthasar Gold, with a bare minimum of cleaning out the prior colour. Four drops of this along with three drops of thinner and three drops of flow improver, to make what is essentially a glaze consistency. Multiple thin coats are required to build up the opaqueness desired in places, but it also means no large mistakes can cover up the shadowed areas and it's easier to transition from them.

Normally I would want something like Gehenna's Gold, however that doesn't exist in the Air range and so I chose to go with Thallax Gold instead. Once more the previous colours received the bare minimum of a clean out: thinning down the paints reduces tip dry and makes it easier to flush the previous paint out, but a little mixed in won't hurt. Thallax Gold was mostly a Zenithal at this stage, highlighting various volumes as I saw fit and trying to leave previous coats visible. As before it was four drops of Thallax Gold, three drops of thinner, and three drops of flow improver, to create an almost glaze and using multiple thin coats to build up the highlights.

At this point the result was ultra smooth and gave an almost mirror shine to the whole model. Metallic paints are very forgiving when blending from one colour to another: the gloss hides much of the effort while the pigments and reflective material used naturally gives a kind of grain or noise to hide any speckle from the airbrush. The effect was so astoundingly smooth that I wonder why I didn't try this before - it's a great time saver compared to using a normal brush. It's only on (very) closer inspection that some of the "noise" is still clearly visible. This makes sense - the colour pigments and other materials will kind of float and spread out more when the metallics are thinned down, disassociating from each other and producing that result, however with multiple thin coats the effect is evened out substantially and the gloss finish hides much of the rest. The result is still superb when viewed from any kind of distance and so I'll continue with it, and besides when looking close enough the layer lines of the 3d printed parts are easily visible anyway.

One of the problems in the past with the metallic paints through an airbrush is that they rub off far too easily. To counter this I like to use a gloss shade over the top. A matt varnish can't be used because that ruins the shine of course, but a shade can still serve to lock the airbrushed stages down. I don't use it as a wash, but instead more of a glazed shade colour. Reikland Fleshshade (Gloss) It was used to give more warmth to the golds and help outline some areas. I'm still debating if I should go back in with Agrax Earthshade in key areas to further outline them, which is a decision I'll leave for later down the line.

Auric Armour Gold and Canoptek Alloy were used to apply further highlights, either as volumetric or edge highlighting where necessary. I generally use pure Auric Armour Gold (thinned to more than a layer paint, but slight less than a glaze) for building up some volumes or edge highlighting lower areas, with a mix of that and Canoptek Alloy (roughly 2:1 or perhaps 3:1, no hard & fast rules) for extreme edges or more focal points such as the "face", and some filigree.

Iron Hands Steel glazed into some areas allows for a silver colour, while keeping the golden reflection apparent. This is most easily seen on the spherical points on top of the jump pack.

Not shown because I forgot to get a photo is that testing a very small amount of Khorne Red mixed with Auric Armour Gold (really about 1:10, or 1:15) and glazed can give excellent contrast in areas - I've used it to outline and shadow some filigree on the back of the jump pack and it really adds to the depth of the model. I might consider doing more of this, but I think I'll leave it for for artistic details to help them stand out more.

And there we are. I'm continually pleased with how these models are turning out and looking forward to adding in more details. I won't paint all three to the same level at the same time, but just see how I go on individual models and paint as and when I feel like it. The wings I might try to make darker further down, getting more bright towards the top of the jump pack just because I like how that's framing the model so far. It might have been better to try and airbrush that effect, but it's too late to try on this model on account of that jump pack being already glued in place. A normal brush will have to tried one way or another.

-- silly painter

Sanguinary Guard - Part I

 

Black background wasn't the best choice.

Starting to put some sculpting lessons to good use with the parts received from the Crimson Lords campaign. I can still spot defects and layer lines, but the ordered parts are basically "good enough" and imperfections aren't noticeable from a distance.

The new Sanguinary Guard are, obviously, not the designs people were hoping for. The terrible helmets could've been forgiven and replaced with something else, but the lack of adornment and the lack of wings makes them simply not Sanguinary Guard. The excuse of "oh well, they're new to the post and armour hasn't been adapted" is disingenuous considering Mephiston, Dante, Astorath, and even a generic Captain all had their armour adapted. So it was that the Crimson Lords campaign became somewhat popular.

In the model shown I wanted to try and use the full front torso of older and smaller scale models. I needed to pick a model where the abdominal plate wasn't naturally too far tilted compared to the chest because I couldn't adjust that piece. Given what I know now, then a very (very) thin sheet of putty and sculpted impressions might be able to resolve that. I may just try that on one of the others.

The model torso needed to be clipped out and a good deal carved away behind the belt for the new torso to relatively fit. I didn't want there to be a lack of bulk so needed to pad out behind the torso rather than fit it directly flush. This was a lot more effort than it sounds. Green-stuff was used to fill initial gaps and give more surface for later Milliput layers to adhere to. There was quite a gap between the back and front of the torso and this needed to be filled, and the sides bulked out to fit properly. I'm not entirely happy with the end result, but it's good enough to stand up to a cursory inspection. The arm attachment points also needed to be filled out some more, and it's here that I was impatient slightly. This particular Milliput can be soft and difficult to file, especially if not cured for at least 24 hours. A sharp blade trimmed excess just fine, but I'll need to keep this in mind for future work.

The left arm is from the Crimson Lords pack, but the fist from the bits box of spare Intercessor arms. The right arm is the original with the shoulder pad removed and the hand replaced with a hand and sword from the 3D printed parts. The shoulder pads I'm still choosing, but I'll need to paint them separate so that the wings don't get in the way when painting. I actually learned more of how to use my own custom tools when fix the gun holster, which I now imagine to contain spare ammunition for the wrist mounted weapon. Leaving Milliput in the freezer overnight allows it to still be malleable, but with just enough resistance to allow for impressions to be made without tearing at it.

The helmet and wings are, of course, from the Crimson Lords pack. The wings interested me the most: everything else I could have work around, but those wings make it all worthwhile. I may have rushed to assemble and prime the model, but I wanted to know how it would all come together so that the next two are better informed. I did try to created moulds of the Blood Angels chapter badge, and then use thin pressings of Milliput to place them on the legs, but that didn't really work and I scraped it off. My sculpting isn't sufficient yet to tackle that, but perhaps in future I could put down a decal as a guide and slowly sculpt on top of it. I have ideas on how to experiment with that, namely using normal troop shoulder pads to sculpt a blood drop onto: simple, and might give better results than the mess I sometimes make of the decals. In the meantime, the legs and knee pads will probably just get freehand painting to mimic the style of the old Sanguinary Guard.

I'm pleased with the overall look. I think I would still have preferred a single main booster jump pack, but this is acceptable. A worthy successor to the older sculpts, and enough to keep me interested in painting for now.

-- silly painter.

Commander Dante - Part V (Showcase)

 

Angel of Death.

Despite not thinking I would manage this, I've actually been able to finish Dante over the last week. Everything just kind of fell into place, and I'm calling him done. Not that I'm entirely happy with everything: the axe blade in particular doesn't really do it for me, but I think I'll leave it as a reminder for later projects.

The base I think turned out better than I'd hoped. It doesn't clash with Dante, and I intentionally gave it a cooler, darker tone that was complimentary to the red, but contrasting to the warmth of Dante's armour. It's not actually much darker though: it's the glossy shine from the metallics that give that impression. Compared to the shaded areas, the base is actually a lighter tone. The rough painting approach is:

• Mechanicus Standard Grey / Black (3:1, or even 2:1, exact amount isn't important) as a base colour over everything.
• Chronos Blue drybrushed over all of the stone, with very light touches over the dirt and loose rubble.
• Stormfang Blue drybrushed as highlights over the previous step.
• Wrack White drybrushed onto the very edges of the stone, and again lightly over all of the dirt and loose rubble.
• Seraphim Sepia shade into random areas of the dirt. This isn't a heavy wash, just a light one to more or less glaze over them.
• Agrax Earthshade in the deeper recessed areas, and also glazed as a transition colour on stone, or where the previous shade was too red.
• Nuln Oil as a glaze more than a shade, mostly to define some of the carvings in the stone, or to darken some of the stone work. This is most noticeable where the broken pillar meets the ground.

I'm fairly pleased with the end result, and thankful that I made the decision earlier to strip the texture paint off and go with more of a "pillar crashed down from high into stone tiles" look. On a note about drybrushing: as it turns out, the Citadel paints for that are really good! They have the right consistency if using the right (_very_ slightly damp) brush, and moving between values slowly instead of any one large value jump (e.g white over black) helps smooth out transitions and helps prevent that grainy texture that drybrushing is so often associated with.

The half-tabbard is Barak-Nar Burgundy and Gal Vorbak Red, with mixes of black in there to shade things, and even the old Bloodletter Red to shift some of the volumetric highlights more. In general I didn't go for much in the way of extreme highlights, effectively only going as high as a mid-tone. This makes it look less reflective and more like material of some kind. I need to work on that kind of thing more, but I think the basic idea is sound.

Must have good type script for battle.

I haven't magically become very good at writing on scrolls (although a size 0 Windsor & Newton is making short work of purity seals), but for the right pauldron I used the opportunity to give self-printed decals a go. My printer isn't configured for super high quality to leave it at that, but it does give enough of an outline that I can fill in the rest with a fine-tipped paintbrush. It has that "cheating" feeling, but ultimately I chose the font, I cut it to size and applied it, and I painted over it to clean up the lines, and if it gives me excellent lettering every time then who really cares? I have a bunch of names printed out to use in future as well. The skull is a little too bright white, even after I dulled it down slightly, but I need to stop somewhere and it's not bad at all. I'd work on it more if this was for a competition, but that's all.

The axe has one component with Canoptek Alloy glazed onto it for more of a brass feel. This was mixed with Balthasar Gold to help shift the colour, but it turned out nicely enough. I'll keep that in mind for future reference.

Not much else that it's paint-by-numbers and which I haven't done many times before. I'm happy with the end result, and really upped my game with using metallics. The base turned out much better than I'd hoped, learned few tricks with drybrushing, and decals for words is a definite hit - plus, the model itself looks great.

-- silly painter.

Commander Dante - Part IV

 

Now officially more bling than Sanguinary Guard.

In what I hope will be the penultimate post on this more recent version of Commander Dante, there's actually very little change since the last time. The winged iconography has been filled in, some of the silver metallics have been started, the grip on the axe haft done, and the base given a new primer layer.

By far the most interesting choice I've been exploring has been the metallics. I knew I wanted to try more mixing metallic paints with non-metallics, wanted to try paint them in an NMM style, and wanted to keep more glazing. The problem is really that black is a terrible colour to start that with and so I went with a darker grey instead. So far I've found this works acceptably well:

• Mechanicus Standard Grey / Abaddon Black (4:1, doesn't need to be specific). This creates a dark grey without being too black - the ratio isn't too important, just need it darker than Mechanicus Standard Grey on its own, but lighter than Corvus Black.
• Stormhost Silver, glazed. I prefer to use a small amount of flow improver or Lahmian Medium rather than water to help get the glaze consistency but without the reflective particles flowing too far out of the way.
• Stormhost Silver more directly layered for edge highlights.

I like how this turned out. It could use some more experimentation to get everything just right, for example I didn't mix the metallic and grey colours together (because I'd swapped out the palette by then) which would help smooth things out. I think there's potential in the contrast it gives. I still need to glaze over a blue of some description, just for the weapon glow effect.

The other very minor (and not visible in the photo) new idea is actually for the axe grip. That was done as normal for such things by now:

• Doombull Brown
• Tuskgor Fur to highlight.
• Carroburg Crimson shade.

However this time on the opposite side from what's visible, I mixed a very small amount of black into Doombull Brown and used that as a shadow colour. It makes a very dark and leathery brown which I'm definitely going to look into later. I may also try mixing Rhinox Hide and see how that turns out, although I'm not convinced it will be any better. I suspect this will be one of the few occasions where black is more suitable for the dual reason of it darkening and desaturating the mix.

The base so far is mostly Mechanicus Standard Grey, some black mixed in there just to play around with some areas, but nothing too noteworthy. I had some complicated plans for the base, but the darker and more muted tones play off the shine and relatively brighter appearance of Dante. A combination of drybrushing and washes will likely carry the lion's share of the work on the base.

The weapons need to be finished, gemstones painted in, a little more purity seal writing, the base, and of course the half tabard are yet to be done. It's simultaneously not much left to do, but also will take plenty of time owing to how different each piece is and how much I'll need to change approaches on each area. I doubt I'll have a quiet week to finish this model, but maybe in the next two weeks (or longer if I get sidetracked onto other projects).

-- silly painter.

Starting Sculpting

 

Sanguinary Grey

I've not had any time for painting at all for the last couple of weeks, but a few things are in progress. Which is slightly odd; I was going to try finish off some in-progress projects this year, but instead I've been just adding more. It's not that bad though, because I have been starting to try my hand at some proper sculpting.

The inspiration for this most definitely comes from Trovarion. I have no doubts that it would take quite a while before I'm as good as he is, but I need to start somewhere. I've been poking around green stuff and milliput for quite some time, but mostly just to fill gaps rather than actually seriously try to sculpt anything. Then along came the refreshed Sanguinary Guard.

It's important to recognise my own personal takes on what has gone wrong with some of the Blood Angels models recently released, as this is the motivation behind wanting to sculpt. I was actually looking at the Blood Angels Captain and wondering what it was that I simply didn't like about that model. The design seems to mostly be fine - muscle sculpted armour, various appropriate details, the head options are fine. Then I looked at the knee pads and it suddenly made sense. The old miniature designers knew a lot more about their craft I suspect, because they needed to when hand sculpting. Part of this is composition: and when there's subtle details creating ornate, artisan armour then surfaces devoid of detail stand out like a sore thumb. The knee pads in the older Sanguinary Guard have an iconic detail, but that means curved surface detail is balanced throughout the entire model. The chest plates on the new Captain are too bare - for all the prude social anxiety these days, nipples serve an artistic purpose of breaking up all of that surface area. Blur your eyes when looking at that new model and all you'll see are bug-eyed chest plates and a knee pads. The same can be said for the new Sanguinary Guard, who also suffer from another problem: they're all the same. There's no individualism, no soul to any of the designs, which is antithetical to what Sanguinary Guard should be.

The solution is therefore to try and kitbash and convert my own. I don't particularly want to pay full price for models that I simply don't like without major work being done on them. My own attempts are going to fall well short of display quality, so again I don't want to invest money into something that I know will end up mediocre at best. Even with the replacement parts from the Crimson Lords campaign from Greytide Studios, some sculpting is likely to be required.

Where now to begin? I bought some of the old push-fit Assault Intercessors. They're cheap, have good poses that will work without needing bases to make them look like they're flying about the place. There are also five on the sprue, giving me two to practice with.

The first attempt here was to see how well an old ("firstborn") torso would fit with the Primaris scale. It doesn't. I had to carve out most of the chest to fit one of the old upgrade sprue pieces, and even then the position is off: it's too high. The nipples looked odd. I've kind of solved that by trying to fill in the gaps and add a scroll to pad out the chest details and obscure the nipples. Here we come to the first problem: green-stuff doesn't file nicely.

Silicone clay shapers work very well to smooth out green-stuff, but it's an almost rubbery finish. It's workable when new, but after trying the freezer trick (placing uncured green-stuff into a sealed bag and freezing it to use again the next day) it wasn't quite as pliable. It's easy to knead, good to bulk out areas, but for a smooth finish and holding detail it simply isn't what I'm looking for. Another problem when sculpting is having the material stick to the surface: injection moulded plastic can be very smooth, and green-stuff will not stick readily to it. It might help to roughen the surface beforehand, which I will try next time.

As a complete opposite, removing green-stuff from some areas is proving difficult. I don't want to remove all of it, just carve out under the chest piece where I'd put too much. The thinking was that I could clean it up later. As it turns out, I should ensure surfaces are shaped as smooth as possible (with roughened surfaces) beforehand, as then later I only need to smooth out the putty - and while it's curing I should be careful to trim away excess then rather then trying to carve it out later. It's simply easier, particularly with green stuff, to keep the excess putty to a minimum. I did this with the holster, which doesn't fit with Sanguinary Guard, by trimming the shape down and filling in gaps to create just another pouch. Green-stuff might work here alright: it has a natural finish that fits to the texture of pouches, smooths out well enough, and I don't need to file away excess.

I would like a couple of extra tools to poke shapes with. I have some which are ok, but I might buy another one or two if they look appropriate. I'll also consider using vasoline to keep the putty from sticking to the tools.

When sculpting details, it's easy to smooth across a general shape. Something like scrolls, however, require some more thought. I need to practice creating thin strips of putty that are in roughly the right shape, then somehow transferring them to the model. Either that, or put a roll on and directly poke it to the proper shape. I think for future scrolls I should make the central strip, let that cure, and then add details on the ends. Curved patches are probably better as circular blobs that I try to poke pieces out of rather than rolls that I curve around - again, particularly with green-stuff. I may find milliput handles differently here.

I've started small on this model, and so far there's nothing that a bit of clever painting can't hide. I'll try to add some blood drop shaped gems to the left greave next, though I'm in two minds of how to approach that. I could either try to sculpt the shape in place, or make a stamp to press a blob of putty into the proper shape. The latter might have problems if the putty comes away on the stamp. I might try by hand first just for the practice.

The next model I try I'll likely keep the basic chest piece, but replace the central skull with a blood drop. After that, the third I'll probably try to make bare, add a blood drop in the middle, and nipples to the side. I'm not sure that I'll directly carve out grooves on the knee pads - a bit of freehand could achieve the same thing. I guess a trip to the art store is in order.

-- silly painter

Commander Dante - Part III

 

Dante's Inferno Pistol

After what seems like an age, I've finally painted enough of Dante to fully assemble the model. There's obviously still a lot left to do, but now that everything is in place I'm hoping motivation will speed up the rest.

I might have reached this point a week sooner, except the base was looking pretty horrid and I decided to try and fix it up. I have a lot of trouble with bases actually, and it's the one thing that I wouldn't mind a 3D printer to help sort out. For this particular model there's a fallen pillar of some kind, but it's lying on top of a pile of rubble that looks almost like dirt. That just doesn't make much sense outside of ancient buildings in Greece or something. It should be something more recent, related to whatever battle and campaign that Dante is prosecuting. Originally I was going rubble strewn about and covered in dirt, but decided to scrape most of that off and instead have tried to adapt it to look more like a pillar or column has fallen from a height and smashed into some flooring (and maybe the halo of some large statue next to it). It won't be quite as effective compared to having thought of it much earlier, but I'm hoping it'll be acceptable. I still need to clean up some rough edges, glue pieces down, add some texture in places, prime and paint it all.

Painting-wise, not much to say really. The "white" iconography is just repeats of before, and most of the rest comes from my standard recipes (I should probably link to that somewhere again). I've tried a few silver metallics in areas, and it's not quite as effective yet as with the gold armour. I'll need to try glazing over a colour other than black - possibly Mechanicus Standard Grey, and see where that takes me.

The glossy nature of the armour is causing some photography problems which I honestly don't have the time to sort out right now, but in good lighting the model really does look a lot better. Actually the black pauldron trim looks far too dull in comparison and I might need to try give that a more satin finish later. I won't be varnishing the model in general because it will simply dull the armour too much, but then I'm not likely to be using it for gaming anyway.

The eyes of the mask are incredibly simple: white, and Talassar Blue over the top. With a very pointy brush and magnifying headset. I wasn't sure if blue would work, but again in proper lighting this really gives an impression of a golden figure with incredible power. It's a really good sculpt. Too bad the Sanguinary Guard models are...not. More about that and how to improve them in the coming weeks I hope.

Otherwise, that's all for Dante right now. Painting is slow going, but not stalled.

-- silly painter.

Assault Intercessor with Jump Pack - Part VI (Showcase)

 

Just took a little off the top.

Finally found the time to actually finish the squad of Intercessors. As usual, things just got in the way - they should've been done a couple of weeks ago - but I also used the time to add smaller details that I might otherwise have ignored, such as the squad marking on the right knee.

There's not a whole lot to say overall, nothing much I haven't already done many times before. The matt varnish makes them show up much more nicely in the final photos, but it does tend to dull down the edge highlights. That the number one lesson to be learned here: push the airbrush highlight contrast even further, about twice what might otherwise seem necessary. I can bring it back at the end if necessary, but it saves a lot of time if I don't have to.

Actually it was edge highlighting that took up the majority of the final steps. I edge highlighted before the varnish, and then again afterwards to bring it back in places. It's a lot of wasted time if I could just get it proper to begin with. I'm considering using Averland Sunset to edge highlight before the red filter, just to see how much of that might show up at the end.

Sheer momentum can be effective.

I can still glaze reds when I want, and this will come in useful for a particular future project, with a good brush and the right medium (acrylic flow improver in this case) helping much more than just water. It also seems to work nicer over the matt varnish, which is something to keep in mind.

I haven't highlighted the metallics as brightly as I have in the past. There just seemed no need. I'm liking the duller appearance these days as it seems more suitable, but with a secondary  benefit of not stealing the show from the main volume highlights of the armour. On the subject of metallics: using Black Legion (Contrast) to base those areas works brilliantly, allowing the metallic paint to give better coverage, and is particularly useful if a gloss varnish was previously applied. That's a definite part of future painting steps.

Not much else to say. I wanted these models because I liked the old jump pack design, even if the new design is still quite tasteful, but also because I don't like the ankle thrusters of the newer models. On the whole, I think this small conversion experiment turned out well.

-- silly painter

Assault Intercessor with Jump Pack - Part V

 

Just don't ask where the extra mag was hidden.

Too long since the last update, mostly because continuous work, but thought it's a struggle I have been progressing ever so slowly with the jump pack guys. Despite some more being done however, this isn't likely to be a long post - there's nothing too interesting that hasn't been covered before.

Painting ten at a time has been both as benefit and a downside: one paint over ten models is easy, and once started it's going to mean all ten progress at the same pace. I don't need to switch out paints, I can just go to the wet palette throughout the day whenever I get a spare minute and continue straight away. The downside is that there are ten, and it's kind of demotivating for every small step being done across them all. I sometimes only get literally one minute to do something, and I might not bother when thinking about all ten that need doing.

Despite everything, I've managed to almost get them ready for the final varnish phase. There are some small details that separate out each model, and a round of edge highlighting yet to be done on the red. The smaller details can be the worst, and to speed things up I'm trying for a three-paint approach: I'll not use several paints to get it just right, but blend, glaze, and mix between three (or even just two, if one is a wash). Details are small, and there's not a whole lot of difference in the end result. For armour scroll patterns I have about 5 paints across 6 steps, but here I just did a base coat, wash, and mixed the base coat with the final highlight colour and glazed as I felt like it - a much, much faster approach with a nearly identical end result for something of this size.

Space Marines can jump.

The jump pack glow took a very long time because I didn't just reduce it to three paints, using instead about seven. It's painstaking work, and took three days to get done across the models (using minutes where I could). I might have the models finished were I not being so pedantic, but in this particular case I wanted the practice. I've also managed to get similar done for Dante while I was at it, so it's actually eleven jump packs that I managed.

I could have left things there, but purity seals were lacking and I added one to almost every model. The Intercessors didn't feel complete without them, so I took some time to paint them up - however as they were still separate from the models I took the opportunity to use a rubber clamp to line them all up and paint them more easily than dancing about the model itself.

The bases are done, with some added skulls painted rather crudely, and now all that's left are some wrist computer buttons (simple silver with a technical paint over the top should be sufficient), spend a week edge highlighting the red, varnish, metallic highlights, and any final armour edge highlights. It is still quite a lot, and I'm guessing two weeks before it's all wrapped up.

-- silly painter.

Commander Dante - Part II

 

I like to think he's just hopped off his flying Land Raider.

The focus of the last week has been to get Lord Dante's armour more or less finished. I might add spot highlights later, but I doubt it - I'm fairly happy with the result. There is a slight catch though: photographing this model is not an easy task, and the "golden angle" is slightly off the photographed axis; the highlights don't quite match up with the lights that I normally use. This is a model painted to be viewed in real life, not as a digital facsimile.

At any rate there wasn't a whole lot changed to the formula from before. I added some black to really darken a few outlines and increase general contrast. It's fairly subtle but really makes the model that much easier to read: despite the reflective conditions and angle of the photo, the sculpt is still easily discerned. In general the process is:

• Rhinox Hide / Balthasar Gold to provide coverage.
• Black mixed into that or just Rhinox Hide for the deepest recesses.
• Balthasar Gold mixed into the original mode, for initial volume highlighting.
• Gehenna's Gold / Balthasar Gold for further highlighting.
• Gehenna's Gold / Auric Armour Gold for edge highlights.
• Canoptek Alloy / Gehenna's Gold / Auric Armour Gold for extreme highlights (only done on the helmet so far, not pictured).

The amount to mix varies, and there's a lot of glazing, back & forth, remixing, adjusting highlights, etc, that's simply done on the fly. Knowing where to place highlights was simply a matter of angling the model against an overhead light and taking notes: the original airbrushing made this a trivial exercise. Bounce lights were likewise quite simply once metallics were glazed sufficiently in areas: the reflection could be seen immediately, and a higher value colour chosen to accentuate the effect. If I had to sum up the approach: make it slightly reflective, paint according to a light source, and exaggerate as much as possible because of scaling reasons. Also don't be afraid to layer, glaze, and mix metallic paints.

The white chest detail is only three paints: Mechanicus Standard Grey, Ulthuan Grey, Corax White. Mixed and glazed in that order. The Mechanicus Standard Grey serves as a recess shadow colour to outline the details, with Ulthuan Grey added to raise the brightness very slightly, and to shift ever so slightly into a blue hue. Corax White just raises the brightness more, but doesn't go quite as bright as something like White Scar. Going too close to a purer white would dull the metallic shine by comparison, and I want the White Scar for the brightest reflection points of gemstones. I've not decided how much better I could do on the white, but I think it will do. I purposefully stayed clear of Contrast paints over concern of using too much an obscuring some of the detail like I nearly did once before. There are of course other white details to be filled in with this scheme, but I need to paint some other models first I think.

Much yet to do on this model, but I'm enjoying this one quite a lot. With still a long time until it will be completed, with the armour done I can at least get an overall feel of how it will turn out. One hopes the Sanguinary Guard will be equally well done, whenever they are given a refresh.

-- silly painter

Assault Intercessor with Jump Pack - Part IV

 

Hard to walk straight when you can't see.

Very quiet on the paint front recently, however I've been trying to have at least a little slow progress even so. This is an opportunity to find ways of continuing to paint up models with the least effort possible at any one given time.

Batch painting is difficult for myself, however with limited time each day there is one approach I can use: keep a single paint on the palette and use that across multiple models whenever I get the chance. This setup means I don't need to do much layering, mixing, or otherwise switching between colours - it's really just put it to one side and pick up the brush when I have a few spare minutes. As such, I've been very slowly getting through all of the jump pack models and finally have all the actual jump packs glued into place.

One of my long standing gripes about painting over gloss varnish has been the difficulty in coverage of metallics. Most metallics cover better over a black undercoat, so I started to block in with my usual blacks when I decided to try out Black Legion. It's a Contrast paint, but actually has very good coverage and seems to apply quite well over the varnish. A massive time saver in the end - just paint it over the black areas and if necessary a thin second coat. I'll still highlight later, but it was much quicker than Abaddon Black (which I still find invaluable as a kind of glaze) at blocking everything in. Ideally I should also have filled in some areas of the backpacks too, but I realised that too late and I've already moved to filling in metallics by now.

I did try mixing Black Legion with Carroburg Crimson to darken some of the panel lining, but I didn't like the result. I find a couple of pin shades of pure Carroburg Crimson is better to my liking.

Not seen in the photo, I've made them another squad for the 3rd Company, and will probably make the right knee pad a red cross on a yellow background. The problem for the 3rd Company symbol is that there are relatively few white decals available, so I used yellow ones and painted over them with Corax White. Despite the name, this is actually a very bright grey, but looks white compared to the rest of the model and still allows somewhere to go for other highlights or reflection points.

There's still quite a lot to go on these models, but once some select areas of the jump packs are filled in then I can glue the helmets in place. Not long after I can probably attach holsters, and then it's "just" highlights and final details (and maybe purity seals). I'm intending to still edge highlight the red with Evil Sunz Scarlet before the matt varnish, and then Wild Rider Red after that as necessary. Is this going overboard for standard troops? Almost certainly, but lends itself well to the method of painting I'm being forced to do right now and lets me fix where the airbrushing wasn't as bright as I'd liked.

-- silly painter.

Commander Dante - Part I

 

Head hunting.

One of the first models that I painted when I got back to painting was Commander Dante. That was a finecast model, and I had painted the metal version long ago (and had also given that army away long ago). The new, Primaris, Command Dante is an excellent update to that old sculpt. The basic design remains the same, but has been updated with modern approaches to miniature design, and of course a slightly larger scale.

I was thinking for quite some time about how to paint the new model. I wasn't going to do NMM, but I also didn't want to go for a simple approach - I wanted to try use metallics to push the envelope and see what I could do with them.

Originally I tried to base coat with the airbrush using Balthasar Gold. I was definitely leaning towards the original paint scheme itself and I like the darker colour that gives a more antique and master crafted feel to the armour. Unfortunately I forgot to first base coat with Rhinox Hide, and didn't know how to properly thin airbrush paints at the time. The result was very poor coverage with an awful lot of speckling, and black does not work as a shadow colour here.

After a very long time trying to think how I might want to fix airbrushing mistakes, I finally decided to simply go in with a brush using the same colours and smooth out the initial highlight volumes. The airbrushing, for all of the mistakes I made, still shows the volumes nicely and gives a great idea of where to place highlights. It's about here where I thought to deviate slightly and take some hints from the idea of painting NMM, but with metallic paints.

Only the left leg has been started because I wasn't sure how it would turn out and figured the legs wouldn't draw as much attention as the face, but do offer a large enough space to get an idea about how the rest would end up. All I did was mix Rhinox Hide and Balthasar Gold in varying ratios, layering and glazing over the volumes. The Rhinox Hide dulls out the Balthasar Gold, giving a very satisfying satin finish - highlights are certainly more reflective than shaded areas, but not excessively so. Flow improver helps to thin the mixture, and I'm starting to experiment with Lahmian Medium to slightly dull the more "pure" metallic glazing. I do want contrast in surface finish (more matt in the shadows, satin or slightly gloss on the brighter points), but I want more control over it and I'm hoping the medium will permit that.

I'm quite pleased with the result so far. I've already started on the "face" (helmet) and have highlighted that up further with Gehenna's Gold and Auric Armour Gold along the same lines. Gehenna's Gold has some Rhinox Hide mixed in mostly for the surface finish, and while it works I'm still considering pushing it a bit further. The details need more highlight contrast to properly make them out, which is something often missed when using magnifying glasses all the time.

-- silly painter.

Assault Intercessor with Jump Pack - Part III

 

I'm about...this tall.

Painting has been extremely slow going still, and that won't be letting up anytime soon unfortunately, but I have managed to finish all ten of the helmets (bar the sergeant insignia) and all the holsters (bar some finishing touches after the matt varnish stage).

The helmets were much easier to airbrush this time around, although I did mess up in a few places with too much pressure too close to the surface - this leads to the paint running in thin liquid veins and pooling in places. This was too unsightly for me and I went back in with Flash Gitz Yellow and Phalanx Yellow to rebuilt the highlights. Rebuilding them too quite a good deal of patience, a good brush, and some flow improver to make a glaze out of each colour, but it smoothed everything out in the end.

The gloss varnish as ever let the washes settle into recesses far easier without staining the rest of the area, with the slight exception of shallow depths. If the recess is too shallow and curves gently into the surrounding surfaces then I find that the gloss varnish impedes a smooth transition and it might need a few touch-ups later on. This is most noticeable up close on the stripe (for lack of a better term) on top of the helmets. Just something to keep in mind.

The eye lenses were relatively simple to do this time around, even with the reflection dot. A combination of a very pointy brush, paint which takes slightly longer to dry (flow improver, or use an ink), and a magnifying headset really helped in this regard. A few minor mistakes, but nothing that wasn't quickly fixable (or as quickly as poor coverage of yellow paint will allow for).

This leads me back around to the colour yellow. As a primary colour, it's actually difficult to get a very pure yellow - paints will naturally tend slightly towards the red or green side of things. Normally I would try to keep base, midtones, and highlights on one side, but here a mix is actually used. Averland Sunset is more of a red shifted base colour, but for example Flash Gitz Yellow (or at least my pot of it) is slightly green shifted. Does this really matter too much? Not entirely, thin enough coats will balance it out enough, but it's made me start to consider what is really going on, and if perhaps I could use something similar to my advantage in the future.

By highlighting with a very slight green shifted yellow over a red shifted yellow base, it pulls the result into a more balanced midpoint, giving a rather vibrant highlight. This won't work if the shift from either is too great - it will probably just end up looking more brown - and the highlight will need to be higher up in value as well (not a problem, that's partially what makes a colour a highlight). It also gives a little more contrast between final edge highlight and shadows. This would really only work with primary colours because of how difficult it is to mix up a "pure" primary colour, but it explains why the red paints I use work so well - there's a subtle blue hint in Carroburg Crimson, and the final highlight of Wild Rider Red is more of an orange (sometimes excessively so, and I need to knock it back with Evil Sunz). I've not tried it too much with blue. There's no reason secondary colours can't follow this as well of course, it's just going to rely much more heavily on glazes to shift colours where wanted - partially why Lamenters Yellow is very good at highlighting greens.

None of the above is really anything new, and seems almost obvious. The key difference for me was not really any hidden colours in a colour wheel, but instead a new way of thinking about my selection of paints for a particular scheme. Normally I might be thinking "that one looks brighter, I'll go with that", but now I'll think much more along the lines of "that one looks brighter and shifted away enough that a glaze will pull it towards the colour I really want".

I guess I'll see what difference it makes with future models, however long it takes me to start on something more experimental again.

-- silly painter