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.

Sons of Horus MkVI Assault Squad - Part II

 

This is exhausting.

The next set of models are well into the initial base colour stages and I'm almost at the "paint by numbers" stage with them, but the jump pack remained somewhat of an unknown. Fortunately there are some good references available for Sons of Horus, so I've mostly tried to follow that.

Before anything else was done, I coated all the metal areas and weapons with Black Legion. This covers very well over the gloss and returns to a solid, satin, black layer to build upon. This is very important for metalllic paints to look their best. There's no need to be subtle with Contrast paints in this style: just give it a good single coat and about thirty minutes to dry (if not more).

The jump packs themselves I knew I wanted to paint some burn marks, soot, or general metal discolouration. I explicitly didn't do this for the Sanguinary Guard (or Blood Angels in general) as I figured of all the Legions, it would be the IXth that produced and maintained the best and most efficient jump packs, and kept them clean.

For the Sons of Horus though, step one is to give the exhaust areas a shiny metallic gleam. This is one occasion where I wanted polished steel and so base coated with Iron Hands Steel. This needed two thin coats for the best coverage, but gives a very smooth finish if done properly. It's well worth the time to do this, so it bears repeating: give it one thin coat, let it fully dry, then do another. Possibly a third in places if the paint is thinned a little more. I then applied Ironbreaker as a highlight, but I'm not sure this is really visible. It was thinned with flow improver, more glazed than layered, and I might just save this for a post-varnish step in future.

Next step is actually using a lighter gold tone for initial discolouration. I had Imperial Gold (TMM range, the layer/highlight paint) on the palette and glazed that around the central exhaust area. I didn't do it on the sides, but should have - something to correct for the next model. This was followed with Seraphim Sepia further down, but I did use it too heavily and needed to correct that. In general there is substantial correction with the base coat when necessary. Snakebite Leather mixed with Ratling Grime is next, further to the nozzle, and then just plain Ratling Grime on the very edges. There's no particular ratios here - mix and glaze, mix and glaze, adjust and push around the pigment until you're happy with the result. I will probably drop Nuln Oil into the side vents later, or could go with Black Legion if I really wanted it dark.

Aside from the jump pack, the other major addition is the decal on the right pauldron. 'Ardcoat is a thicker gloss varnish compared to what I use through the airbrush, but it seems to smooth itself out nicer as a result and so I much prefer to use that to prepare a surface for decals. The decal itself I should have cut some slices into just under the "eye" to allow the transparent film to slide over itself instead of crinkling up; it took two heavy coats of decal softener to really make that decal conform to the surface. Stormshield provides protection and satin finish afterwards. There will of course be a matt varnish later anyway, but this protects everything and lets me see how it will look until then.

The rest of the squad are in various stages of the above steps (the past week has been busy, I've not had time to do much painting) but in general the squad will proceed slowly because it's an entire squad. There's also travel coming up soon which means even if I manage to get into the zone for painting, there will be an enforced break.

-- silly painter.

Crimson Paladin - Part V (Showcase)

 

That's not dakka. This, is dakka.

The first of the Crimson Paladins is now finished. It doesn't look as though a whole lot more was done since the last time, and in truth it's not much - but it's enough to make all the difference.

The usual matt varnish layer and then final metallic highlights, armour highlights, that kind of thing. The most interesting of the metallics is the trim, which was a 1:1 mix of Castellax Bronze and Runelord Brass. This leaves some room to add more spot highlights if necessary, however I was worried that this would overpower the red too much so I left things as they were. If I were to do more then it might be Canoptek Alloy as very thin edge and spot highlights, and nothing more. I think this bronze or brass metallic colour was definitely the wiser choice over gold for this particular model, and I will of course need to carry it on through the rest of the squad.

The sword has Omega Blue (TTC) in the middle, along with Talassar Blue, Doom Metal, Iron Warriors, Iron Hands Steel, and even some edge highlights with Ironbreaker. The photo doesn't show the angle of course, but it's certainly worth continuing down this road to see where it leads.

The black higlights worked well here and I still have a Death Company marine hanging around somewhere that could use airbrushing to get that effect across larger armour panels without quite so much effort. If only I had that little bit of extra time each day to get the models to that level.

The pauldrons turned out far better than I had hoped, and they really draw attention to the upper area. This compensates for some of the interesting proportions of the legs. The armour in general I spent some extra effort on at the end: it was at a stage where I thought "I could do more, but effort...." and then just decided this time I would put that effort in. The higher upper surfaces are intentionally much brighter, but the highlights on the lower half weren't as obvious before and so they were slowly glazed up to define the shapes better. I can always, always, do more, but it would run a high risk of ruining the look if I did so now.

The base I'm unhappy with. I should have sanded everything back to be more smooth, the melted rock sludge look of the casted base isn't very inspiring, and the colours are just kind of wrong. I will need to think about the next one in how I'm going to sculpt it. I'm still thinking about a filament 3d printer and seeing if that will be up to the task, but for now it's green-stuff and milliput.

Guess I need to assemble more, and also start to think how to convert the newer Cataphractii models.

-- silly painter.

Sanguinary Guard (Heresy Era) - Part V (Showcase)

 

"I can't hear you!"

There wasn't too much left from the last post on these models, but they're finished finally. It only took a couple of months, which for me is actually quite fast considering I get all of fifteen minutes most days.

The bulk of what was done was just the silver highlights, which used a combination of Doom Metal (Two Thin Coats), Iron Warriors, and Iron Hands Steel. I could go substantially brighter yet, but I rarely find the need to go to the level of extreme polished metal, particularly because the swords here need that darker tone to work with the blue energy effect.

It took a while to figure out what to do with the shield on the Sergeant. I toyed with various intricate design ideas but ultimately went with a simple white insignia on black background. There are colour theory reasons why this works, but suffice to say that it's the safer option (difficult to mess up) and therefore looks much nicer than any other plan I had.

Wonder if he uses that to put a pizza in the oven.

Most of the grenades have a very subtle shade to them. After the metallics I used Space Wolves Grey on what I think are intended to be krak grenades, and Athonian Camoshade on frag grenades. It's too subtle really so in future I might use two coats of each.

Charging headbutt.

The studs on the left pauldrons is exactly the same as the rest of the armour, but the red is more glossy than I would like. Normally I varnish over everything but in this case I didn't want to do that lest it dull the armour too much. I just need to deal with the shiny look of the red.

He's got a (m)ace up his sleeve.

While experimenting with Talassar Blue for the jump pack glow I had the idea to recess shade that paint around some of the power weapon energy effects. I was using Drakenhof Nightshade for this, but the more vibrant blue of Talassar Blue works better. It does need thinning slightly, and in future I should paint over the raised areas again, but I think it's worth exploring this path for power weapons further.

And my axe. Mine.

The jump pack glow was picked up from the 'net somewhere and is essentially a light blue, Talassar Blue with Contrast Medium, then Gauss Blaster Green followed by more thinned Talassar Blue. It's quick and easy, but I don't particularly like the look quite as much as my older formula. The one advantage though is that Talassar Blue is quite vibrant so perhaps I can incorporate it somewhere as a filter of some kind.

And that's it really. Moving onto the next models.

-- silly painter

Crimson Paladin - Part IV

 

This ground sure feels weird.

Having recently decided on the general base theme for 30k models, I tried to see if I could make the base for the Crimson Paladin fit.

The base for this model was originally created out of a green-stuff / Milliput mix pressed into a mould of an original resin base topper created by GW (long since out of production). It works well to add height to the model, but there are a good number of details that look, for lack of a better description, melted. I figured I could work with that, however there's also an awful lot of stones, rocks, smaller pieces of debris covering everything. It looks more like a generic dirt wasteland than an Imperial hab block, and therein lies the real problem: it doesn't fit with the other bases.

I attempted to paint it more or less the same as the simple dirt areas on the other models: Thondia Brown, highlight with Dawnstone, shade it back with Basilicanum Grey, and re-highlight with Dawnstone. Now it kind of looks like blasted slurry that's since hardened.

I've tried to paint in some of the details with whatever random colours I could, and that does help - but it's not enough. I will add a skull soon more as visual interest and to distract from everything else because it's obvious that this base is Not Working (tm).

I could try to re-base the model, but it's fairly well glued down. I would try to sand back areas to create flattened street surfaces, add some more scattered rubble, piping, that sort of thing, but that's an awful lot of effort. Instead I'll probably just leave it as a reminder. I guess I could explain it as somewhere that a particularly powerful plasma weapon recently interacted with and was later covered in ash or something. Part of a larger impact creator - which is actually an idea to add to other bases: impact craters. I could (and should) sculpt explosion damage into future bases, bullet holes, etc. So long as I learn something from it, then being dissatisfied with this particular base is well worth it.

-- silly painter.

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

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.