MkIV Assault Squad - Part I

 

Sir Jumpsalot

While there are plenty of other models that I have on the go, at the start of the year I did mention about wanting "background models", models that I can just paint between other projects. Originally I thought this would be Primaris Marines, but I had these old MkIV Assault troops with upgrades packs and decided they deserved attention first.

These resin models are a little strange. They're somehow smaller than the plastic equivalents, while being more detailed. I can completely understand Games Workshop moving to plastic as much as possible, returning Forgeworld to specialty items. I'm hoping that once painted up however, this lot will fit right in alongside everything else.

Another reason I selected these models is that they have an open pose, sufficient that I judged it possible to full assemble the entire model (including the head) prior to painting. While I'm sure there will be a few hard to reach places, on the whole it looks as though I can manage - and this is really something for motivation!

I've not yet changed anything on how I paint these models, but at this stage it's just a few coats from the airbrush. I am considering changing a couple of things on these models however, one of which is to add another airbrush step. I'm not happy with the the volumetric highlights - there's just not enough value contrast. It's fine on larger surfaces like the shoulder pads, but I really want some more underneath some parts, particularly around the legs. I could go back with the base coat to darken, but that's quite an opaque step and I would rather a filter of some kind. So I might just thin down and glaze over some of the wash instead with a small airbrush nozzle. My cheap airbrush is having some difficulty right now and I fear might not be up to the task, so I'll likely invest in a smaller nozzle for my better airbrush - but only use it for thinned paints, otherwise it will clog too rapidly.

I'm also going to try paint at least some of the metallic base colours before I varnish. I really like the ability of a gloss varnish to allow me to wipe away mistakes quickly, but the coverage of metallics is terrible, particularly the likes of Leadbelcher. I'll just have to be careful in doing so.

I have a bunch of other ideas in the pipeline, and I'm trying to get these jetbikes moving along, but I'm away again soon, meaning no new post for a week and a half (or thereabouts). Painting should pick up steam again after that too (there hasn't been much time the last few weeks for reasons), and I can prepare the next couple of dreadnoughts.

-- silly painter

Legion Scimitar Jetbikes - Part III

 

V8 turbo charged rocket engine strapped to a seat.

Having decided that the jetbikes have been sitting for far too long and need to be finished, I've managed to get a little more done on them. They're fully assembled now, other than the main weapons, but still need an awful lot details to be done, and a matt varnish to cut back the over abundance of gloss that I'd applied earlier.

I'm actually not a huge fan of the colours right now, but I think that's because there's a complete lack of spot colours to break up all that red. There will be blue headlights on the stabiliser wings, some more extreme highlights on the engine, black trim needs highlighting, brighter red edge highlights later to pick out the shape more, and whatever else I can think of. I'm also still pondering over the Imperial Aquila on the nose of the jetbike, and whether that should be a golden colour, or black. I'm leaning towards black, but highlighted in the style of the Blood Angels symbol. That would then make it a point of interest but harmonious with the rest of the model. So I will stay the course and see how it turns out.

The riders themselves are a bit of a pain. I glued them together, painted them, then sat them in place later. This proved to be a mistake, as they don't sit quite properly. I should have glued them in place at the start to get the torso and arms correct, or painted the pieces individually and only assembled at the very end for the same reason. I'm sorely tempted to get the plastic jetbikes one day just for this reason; the riders on the plastic variant will be seated better and I can customise the shoulder pads and helmet to fit with these  models easily enough.

On to some painting ideas: I wanted the cabling underneath the rider to stand out a little bit, without being overly bright, and settled on an orange:

• Squig Orange as the first colour, with at least two coats to build up a little bit of colour.
• Troll Slayer Orange to brighten the cabling.
• Carroburg Crimson to add some shading for definition.
• Troll Slayer Orange again to bring back the brightness in a few areas.

I definitely like the colour for the cabling, but as with most things on this model it needs a bit more variation around it. I'll see how it goes later on.

Most of the brass colours are so far fairly simple:

• Warplock Bronze.
• Castellax Bronze to highlight.
• Agrax Earthshade to shade.

I'll be playing with the colours more after the matt varnish stage. Whatever I decide on, I want to keep that bronze look as very distinct from the silver/grey metals.

There are decals on these models already, which I chose to bring some artistic flair to the bikes. The blacks of the decals is because of the printer used - I might have preferred a gold initially, but actually the black is starting to grow on me. If nothing else, it will fit with the Imperial Aquila rather than being in competition with it.

-- silly painter

Sons of Horus Contemptor Dreadnought - Part IV (Showcase)

 

Traitor with nothing but contempt.

A little later than I wanted, but I'm calling this model done. I could go a bit further with battle damage and chipping, particularly on the black areas, but if I did that then I'm not sure when I'd get the model done! I'm increasingly doing this to models, and it's not a bad thing so long I reserve that extra effort for the special sculpts. Such as Azrakh, which hasn't seen progress is some time and I really need to get to.

Ultimately a Contemptor is very similar to painting a big Space Marine. There's really not a whole lot different; even Terminators felt like they had more detail and troublesome areas to paint. The vast majority of work on this piece was done with airbrushing - but also I've left a lot of parts as "dirty", which meant they were never intended to get precision paint tip attention. On the whole I think the model came out well enough in the end, and as it was really only an initial experiment with slight conversion and re-posing, then perhaps that's more than could have been hoped for.

I did end up finding some chain on cheap store jewellery and used that to hang a couple of skulls on the left arm. That was not an enjoyable process: gluing chain together and in the right place involved dots of superglue and hanging the chain in the right spot, at the right angle, and making sure it remained undisturbed until the glue dried. It took a whole day just to put those skulls in place! It does add a lot of character, so I think the effort was worth it, but I'm not really wanting to repeat it anytime soon.

The skulls on the base kind of detract away from much of the rest of the model. A glaring bright point surrounded by dark, how could it not. I tried to tone them down with Nuln Oil, just to make them seem dirty as befitting their surroundings, but they still stand out too much. Not a whole lot to do about that now - I could add some marble, bricks, etc, to even out the colours and restore some balance with the base, but basically too much effort. I did some freehand where the right foot is sliding into a new stance. The smoother paving underneath gives a story to just how much rubble has built up over it, hinting at the destruction wrought across the battlefield.

In an attempt to draw attention back to the upper areas of the model I ended up with two red dots surrounding the head. I imagine these to be searchlights, but the contrast against the green helps to frame the head, creating an area to focus the viewers eyes on but without overwhelming everything else. The freehand symbols were actually chosen for similar reasons, and intentionally they are not visible from the front angle. This kind of three dimensional appreciation of the art is not actually something I've seen discussed much (or indeed at all), but I think I want to explore it a little more. Most of the time I guess people only consider one angle because that's how it will be photographed, but if at least the front, left, and right angles are planned out then I believe the overall visual impression would be greatly enhanced.

Tally is 11.5 and unlikely to budge for another month. Interruptions galore, and complex models on the go. I'm hoping to at least prepare a resin Contemptor, which I can use to get the pose right for another plastic dreadnought before I start cutting and converting it.

-- silly painter.

Horus Ascended - Part I

 

Horus Asc...assembly required.

This model sucks.

Kind of a click-baity start to this post, but I do have strong (perhaps even valid) reasons for this opinion. I'll get to them in just a moment, but to start with I'll go over some of the niceties, some of the middle ground, and then finally some of the issues it has.

Assembly

The model itself is very detailed, as everyone has come to expect from the Forgeworld Heresy Character range. There is no doubting that the quality of production is very high, and has improved in leaps and bounds in recent years. I can point out the polygons on rounded surfaces in some cases, if I look _very_ closely. This is an important point for later: the actual manufacture of the model is superb, which means any flaws come from elsewhere in the process.

The dynamic pose of the model is nice to see, and for those who want to play with it then the detachable smaller base is great. The full base itself is so over the top that only a truly insane designer could have dreamed it up, and it is glorious. I keep finding new and interesting details every time that I look at it. It's truly a base of horror that befits Horus having gone evil.

For all of this, everything is pretty much intended for this model to be a showpiece and not for gaming. In particular, some of the details are very flimsy and will certainly break with any moderate usage. I've already broken the ammo belts feeding in the Talon of Horus, in four separate locations no less, and the model wasn't even assembled enough for painting, let alone playing with.

The numbering on each piece is missing, meaning that following the assembly instructions is a case of visual matching alone. Normally that's ok, but when some pieces look very similar (say, the fingers on the Talon) then it's basically a guessing game as to which piece fits where. I'm pretty sure I got that wrong on the fingers. I almost had it wrong on some of the wolf pelt.

Then there's the bad: the model does not fit together properly at all. I mentioned build quality earlier because this cannot be a manufacturing error - it's simply that nobody checked before it was shipped. The wolf pelt in particular is just plain terrible. Even after hacking away at the underneath to get it sitting properly aligned on the armour cowling, the leg hanging over the right pauldron simply doesn't line up with the appropriate connection point. There's a 3mm gap or so - which is unforgivably large for such an expensive kit, and is where the blu-tac is located in the photo above. I'm going to have to break out the putty to fill that gap, which quite frankly won't look as nice, and worse: for nice sub-assemblies it will have to be done after much of the painting has been completed. That leg is actually the last piece to glue on, and so now I get to look forward to finishing the model, only to then putty up and repaint an entire area or two. The base has some places that don't quite line up as well, but thankfully they're mostly hidden and really don't need to be touched.

The only model I've dealt with that has a similar problem is actually the Primaris Mephiston, where cables just didn't align. They could be bent and glued during assembly at least, and the massive mold line running down his cape was easily filled in and smoothed over. Horus Ascended is far more expensive, with a far greater gap, and can't be fixed until the model is just about completed. When the motivation is assembly and painting nice looking models rather than playing the game, then this just makes me question why I bothered with this model at all - and I haven't even primed it yet!

So with some clever planning, painting, and more than a dash of stubborn perseverance, I will continue with this model. Hopefully it won't take four and a half years to complete, but it will certainly take more than a couple of weeks, and I'm not convinced about putting in the effort to get to such a high standard as the previous Horus model.

Planning

Part of the assembly process is planning how to paint it all up. On the photo it can be seen that I've drilled some holes in the feet and pinned paperclips in, and then taped the whole thing to a painting handle. This is because painting handles are great and I won't need to touch the model itself, and because I wanted easier access underneath; gluing to the base would have caused complications in painting some areas. This took longer than it should have for me to come up with, but everything appears sturdy enough and will make painting easier.

The left arm is missing because it needs to be put on after the cape. The cape I intend to airbrush separately, and leaving it off allows me to reach the back of the legs much more easily. Owing to the placement of the mace over the cape, the cape must be put on and then the arm. If the wolf pelt were already glued on then it would get in the way of the mace, and so the wolf pelt must go on only after the mace. This in turn means that the leg draped over the right pauldron can only be attached after the pelt is properly in place, which leads to only being able to fix that gap after everything is just about painted up.

The colours will be heavily influenced by the work on the previous Horus model. I don't feel any particular need to modify them. I will not even think about trying NMM; I had considered it, but the assembly problems have convinced me that this model isn't worth that amount of effort.

To contrast against the burgundy of the cape, then earthen greens on the base will very likely be used. This will likely mean Salamanders armour, although if I keep symbols off they can be interpreted any way the viewer wishes. Most of the lore doesn't have Horus actually fighting on Terra itself (he just sat in his flagship), so who knows what location it's intended to be.

I have a rough idea that a subtle red glow about the feet could help give the impression of Horus giving off an evil aura. Easy enough to do with an airbrush - just glaze one of the clear reds over the areas surrounding his feet - but I'm undecided if I should do the same from within the armour itself. Obviously the glow surrounding his head needs to be done, but I'm wondering how to make the armour itself seem alive. Maybe it will just be some red on the metallics; I'll keep thinking on this topic.

I'll need to prime the model soon and then just begin. Priming with black and then covering with a very thin white through the airbrush will allow me to visually pick out details with ease, so I'll get to that in the next days. I do want to switch focus back to a certain dreadnought, but I've spent the last week airbrushing other models (certain arrangements mean that if I don't do the airbrushing now, it'll be a couple of months before I next have the chance) and then assembling Horus.

-- silly painter.

Ultramarine - Part II (Showcase)

 

When Smurfs go to war.

And another model done. I'll be honest, after the experimenting on the armour, something with this particular model just didn't do it for me. There are a lot of little pieces just not quite right, and I didn't enjoy the rest, so I kind of hurried to get it out. Parts don't fit quite right, the back of the heavy bolter is "empty", other areas a too much filled in, and the mould lines are frustrating in places. It's from the Space Marine Heroes series, but somehow the design and quality is lesser when compared to the Terminators. Still, it was a test piece for blue armour and so served its purpose well enough in the end.

The eye lens I tried to make glow a little bit, but that kind of failed and now the Marine just looks kind of evil. I adjusted the photo slightly, because the OSL surrounding the eye lens doesn't look quite so bad as it was coming out in the photo. I guess I should use different colours for red over blue OSL in future, but equally I'm going to stick to reflective effects for eye lenses - unless I want the slightly evil look.

Jokaero Orange mixed with Mephiston Red was a nice edge highlight on the heavy bolter. I'll have to remember that for when I want armour that is slightly different to the red I normally paint up Blood Angels in. Actually the entirety for the heavy bolter is:

• Khorne Red.
• Mephiston Red, glazed up for highlighting and built up further on edges.
  
• Jokaero Orange / Mephiston Red for edge highlights.

Nice and simple. I could add more depth, add scratches, add more directional lighting, etc, but it's not worth it here.

The metal is incredibly simple:

• Leadbelcher
• Nuln Oil
• Leadbelcher glazed over the top to smooth out some of the wash staining
• Ironbreaker along the edges, with some scratches stippled in.

I like this more basic look as it creates a darker metal that serves as the basis for a greater range of highlights and additional contrast effects. I wouldn't mind a basic colour that's slightly darker than Leadbelcher, and I might actually mix one up for myself.

The base I envisioned to be broken tarmac, so it's mostly just greys with a dark blue shade, and then some browns between broken areas to represent the soil underneath. I didn't really have inspiration for anything more, but it could definitely do with something extra on there.

Otherwise there's not much to speak of on the model. It's my normal army level quality I guess, and that alone is good practice if I'm to have more troops being painted up while I also do larger models (notably the dreadnoughts).

With this model done, and the recent purchase of something else, the count is now at 11.

-- silly painter.

Sons of Horus Contemptor Dreadnought - Part III

 

Eye of Sauron Horus

This next post might be slightly early, but I was having a lot of fun and decided to record a few notes for future reference (being the entire point of this blog).

I've been slowly blocking in base colours around the model, trying to decided which colours should go where. That's mostly sorted out now, however silver metallics are currently missing, and for good reason. I don't want much of it, and what is there I want to be quite dark rather than bright and, well, silver. Also, traditionally many of the skeletal components (for lack of a better term) might be done in metallics, but looking around at vehicles, photos, reference materials, military equipment, construction equipment, bridges, etc, many of those components are also painted in the primary colour of the equipment. Basically anything that doesn't move might get a layer of paint, and everything else gets grease and oil to aid movement and prevent rust. So I was thinking to keep metallics to a minimal, keep as much as possible the sea-green of Sons of Horus, and build up joints with chipping and washes of various kinds. Guess I'll see where that takes me.

I might have gone a little overboard with painting over decals, but that has been fun. Good tip on a brush (I'm using one of my best for it), magnifying lenses, and a lot of patience, but it's been fun. The main problem is that I actually didn't want to fork out a good deal of money for the Legion transfers, just to use a small handful. Perhaps if I were collecting an entire army it would make sense (and I may do that one day), but for now I wanted to print my own - and I could then customise several different transfers onto the one sheet. I fortunately have a laser printer for this purpose, but the printer is only monochrome. Also, the printed transfers can be seen as small "dots" when looked at closely enough - not always noticeable, but in this case it was. None of this really mattered too much because the entire intent was to use them as a guide, painting over them with the desired colours.

Ideally I should have done an colour invert on some of the decals applied to black areas. I could have painted the base colour (gold, in this case) and then placed the decal on top, leaving the base colour to show through where the design is. I didn't think that far ahead at the time and so had to very carefully outline everything in black after tracing over it in gold. I'm also not following the exact original design colours - they have a reflection in them that just doesn't seem to work for me, so I drew on inspiration from how I painted up Horus and did a more light-source-neutral scheme. I'm not finished yet, but I'm pretty happy with the results.

I also ended up buying Gauss Blaster Green, and have used that on a few edges. It works, but most importantly gives me more edge highlighting options when painting up Sons of Horus.

Some good progress all round, but I'd like there to be much more over the next week. I have a lot of other dreadnoughts to get to.

-- silly painter.

Ultramarine - Part I

 

Red guns shoot faster.

With a model bought on holiday as a kind of memento, I had the inspiration to use it for testing some more of my approach to Ultramarines. There is a reason for this: I have a certain Primarch in a box that I would like to start within a year or so, and these attempts at blue are directly for planning how to paint him.

Last time I painted an Ultramarine I had some ideas on what could be changed, and so this time I put those ideas into action. The main thought was to remove a Calgar Blue highlight step, and to pre-edge highlight with white before the filter of Asurmen Blue. This would make the entire armour:

• Night Lords Blue (Air) over the whole model.
• Macragge Blue (Air) as a top-down zenithal of sorts.
• White Scar (Air) to give additional highlights in selected areas.
• White Scar, with a brush, for edge highlights. This just strengthens the white along those parts.
• Asurmen Blue to act as a filter across the white.
• Naggaroth Nightshade in recesses.

After having done all of that, I've decided that the original approach is better. The Calgar Blue needed to be used later where the edge highlights weren't strong enough anyway, and the airbrush step served another purpose of smoothing out the gradients. White is always slightly speckled for me. I can minimise the noise with multiple thin layers, and Asurmen Blue again helps to fade everything together, but it's still noticeable. Using Calgar Blue beforehand, even if it's mostly covered up, helps to blend everything together that little bit more.

Now that the armour has been done, I needed to decide how best to finish the model. I basically only cared about the armour, but looking around I remembered old school Ultramarines and how they had bright red weapons. Naturally, the heavy bolter is now a very eye-catching red. I will try to finish the rest quickly and move back to all the other models on the go. If nothing else, it's more good practice for doing standard troopers, and even if I'm not that invested in the model itself, I can't just leave it half-done.

-- silly painter.