Wash Me!

Just an update from the week, and a sneak peek into the next few things.  

A few days ago I was able to put the finishing touches on my Rhino, which you know if you've been following the facebook page.  However, below I'll go into some detail on how I painted some of the parts.  

For the white and blue parts, I used the same technique as I did on the Tactical squad I painted, just on a larger scale (read those details here).  As some have pointed out, I didn't really mask off any areas and so there is a little bit of overspray (darn).  The vehicles I do in the future will be a little neater - to be honest, I thought I was going to screw it up and have to start over.  Either way, just as I mentioned with the tac squad, I think I want to brighten up the blue a little, so I'm going to try a little change in the next batch.  Hopefully it offers an improvement without changing it drastically.  

Weathering the model was pretty much the same as well.  I used Dryad Bark for the chipping on the white armor and ended up using P3 Rucksack tan for the tiny smidge of chipping on the blue parts.  Some have also suggested that more bare metal is needed to make the model look better... I might try some of that on the next model as well, but really don't think that it needs it.  I was trying to avoid metallics or just have a small bit of it on these models.  

Speaking of the metallics, the exhausts were pretty easy on this, I kept them in subassemblies and painted the metal parts with Vallejo metallic silver.  I had never used the Vallejo liquid metallics before now and found them a little tricky to use for the first go-around.  Apparently they dry very quickly - and to be honest, seem a little bit harsh on the brush.  This paint did produce a very nice shiny silver though; much more vibrant than the acrylic metallics I've used from any other range.  After the base coat, I washed them with two coats of agrax earthshade and then used the airbrush to "burn" the tips, with Vallejo Air Medium Camo Brown and Black. 

The tracks were glued to the tank after most of the painting was complete and then airbrushed in two coats of vallejo air paint.  The first was mud brown and the second was medium camo brown.  I made sure to overspray onto the sides of the tank to make it seem dirtier near the tracks and ground.  

The bolters... very simple.  Basecoated black > drybrush with leadbelcher > heavy wash of nuln oil.  Voila.  

Last touches included spraying some black paint over the side vents and doing the headlights, which was vallejo gold yellow > vallejo yellow > white.  

Not bad to paint and I was surprised at how quick this was.  It probably took less than 10 hours to paint to completion and I think it produced a very high quality for something I plan to use on the tabletop.  Good news also - the transfers actually cooperated.  

And now, with the first two pieces of the World Eaters complete, there is no time to waste!  I have quickly washed the next project, a rinse and repeat of 10 tactical marines and another rhino.  These will vary slightly as the marines do not have magnetized weapons, so I added some chainsaw bayonets to their bolters.  The Rhino will have a crewman sticking out of the top as well.  As you can see from the picture below, assembly is complete and now all to do is mount the marines on cork and start sprayin!

In other news... I'm very excited to see that Coolminiornot has launched the Zombicide Season 3 Kickstarter.  One of my favorite games that I never have time to play (or paint) will be a must for me to go all in.  I missed the early bird, but went ahead and pledged at the full level.  Check it out yourself by going here.

Thats it... Gonna probably be a slow couple of days as I will be working late and writing papers for school, but there stands to be a lot of opportunity for hobby progress going into the holiday weekend!  My goal is to get these models primed so I can paint on my days off.  Until then, please continue to follow small updates on facebook and Happy Painting!

Eaters of Worlds

Very happy with and proud to show off the first completed piece(s) of my World eaters project.  As would make sense, I have chosen to start with a Tactical Squad.  

I have magnetized each of these 10 models to allow them to have versatility in weapons choices, and I will have a small step-by-step sometime in the future to show how this was done (easy!), but for this post, I will focus on the painting steps for this unit.  

Can't say enough how pleased I am with these Forge World models.  I've had some in the past that are difficult to paint or have really rough surfaces, but these pre-heresy marines are fun to paint and come together nicely in the end.  Some of these pics are probably duplicates from previous project updates, so I apologize in advance.  Either way, please feel free to offer comments or feedback or to send me a message asking questions.  Big shout out to Maybug Games for providing inspiration and some color choices for these models, although I did veer slightly from his scheme.  

In order to do this properly, some planning and prep work was required.  In order to avoid a huge headache with the airbrush, it was necessary to paint these models in sub-assemblies.  I mounted the heads, shoulder pads, backpacks, and weapons separately.  

 As you can see from the pictures, I used cork (as I normally do) to mount the bodies and heads for spraying, but had to get a little creative with the other pieces.  In order to achieve the correct lighting on the shoulder pads, I placed them on the model to see their angle and then stuck them to a strip of masking tape at the same angle (I numbered each marine from 1-10 corresponding from top to bottom on the tape).  This will ensure the highlights point up to the sky rather than just sitting at the top of each shoulder pad.  

I then mounted the backpacks and weapons to the tips of popsicle sticks using a small amount of blue tac.  This made sure I wouldn't have too much area on each of these pieces uncovered by paint, but also that I would have full control and ease of movement so that I could pick out highlights and other details.  

I primed the bodies and heads of the models white, since their primary color would be white and the backpacks, bolters, and shoulder pads were primed black since they were going to be blue (I may change this in the future since the blue didn't really turn out as bright as I had hoped).  After priming those pieces black I put some zenithal highlights on them with white primer so that the first layer of paint would have a natural highlight.  The masking tape strip makes this incredibly easy for the shoulder pads, because arranging them based on their final position on the model meant that I could just hold the tape and use the airbrush to hit the top of the shoulder pads with a dab of white.  

Using the airbrush, I used two "recipes" for the white and blue parts.  For the white, I started by shading down, first using a 1:1 mix of Vallejo Air White and Vallejo Model Color (VMC) Flat Earth. I sprayed this mix on the models in the shadows underneath the models and also in areas near joints and around trim.  Then, as a deep shadow, pure VMC flat earth was sprayed into the deepest areas.  When you put this on the model, it doesn't look too impressive, but you have to be patient - it will all come together in the end.  

For the blue, I used Vallejo Air Intermediate Blue first as a basecoat.  Then, I put a spot of white on the areas where the highlight would be and went over with a light coat of Vallejo Air Insignia blue.  In hindsight, an additional highlight was probably needed, maybe even with pure white, but I will try this again in the future - I was happy with the outcome.  

At this point, it was time for a bit of weathering, so very simply I used Dryad Bark and randomly applied this with a piece of blister foam before assembling the models for the last few steps.  

For Brass parts, Sycorax Bronze was used to base coat these areas, which were mostly around the trim of the armored parts, including the shoulder pads, arm/leg, and knee pads.

Final shading was done using an oil wash.  Raw umber oil paint was mixed with mineral spirits in a small cup and then applied very carefully to recesses and cracks in the armor, allowing coverage by capillary action.  It was necessary at times to remix the oil wash so that it flowed better, as it tends to settle at times.  Unlike most washes, I did not touch some of the large flat surfaces and instead decided to stay in the deepest recesses and around rivets, etc.  This allowed the armor to look stained and more realistically weathered.  

The final bits included painting details on the backpack and bolters silver and doing normal washes with nuln oil.  

For the bases, I used Secret Weapon Miniatures mud base kit and the tutorial for the kit found here.  It was easy enough, but I'm going to try to find a video, because it seemed like a little more water was needed than I had interpreted from the tutorial.  I feel like the color of these bases work well with the color scheme, tying in with the dusty white and the blue.  

And the completed models....

Again, happy with the turnout, but it was not without lessons learned.  Fortunately, I have plenty of models left to paint in the force (and unfortuantely many more to purchase).  Next up, I've spent some time tonight priming the first squad's ride, a deimos pattern rhino.  This will provide a nice challenge and learning opportunity to see how I will need to paint my tanks, which will be markedly different from the infantry.  

Additionally, I have the next tactical squad and Rhino taking a bath.  

Thanks for reading.  Hopefully, I'll have more updates soon - I plan on having another painting marathon during the upcoming weekend, which made the updates this week possible.  Until then, Happy Painting!

Showdown at Burnt Tierra Gulch

Hello!  Its been nearly a month since my last blog post, and I'm truly sorry for that.  I've been feverishly working on this project for the last month between a heavy load of work, school, and life, but the work has finally paid off.  Hopefully, you've liked our Facebook page and have kept up with the updates as I've been trudging along, but if not, here are the finished models, as well as a "hasn't been a blog post in a month" worth of information about each model.  

This collection of eight miniatures comes from Wreck Age's "Showdown at Burnt Tierra Gulch" Boxed set, which includes five "Drifters" and three "Stitcher" models, all with unique sculpts.  For the Wreck Age gamer, these new models offer a step up in some of the detail of previous models, with more detail, and expands on the nice variety of models already available to play your games.  For the painter, these models are on the smaller scale of 28mm and some details are very tiny, but there are tons of different parts and pieces to practice lots of different techniques on.  In addition to painting all in Non-metallic metals, I was able to do glass/phylacteries, lightning, gemstones, NMM rust, cloaks, tubes/wires, and much more.  

On with the meat - here are the pictures, starting with a shot of the five drifters and three stitchers.  

With post-apocalyptic models, it can be tough to generate a color palette that ties the models together without drowning them out.  Dark browns and grays are fine and with one model, you can make lots of really cool effects, but on the tabletop, units or groups of models need some color to tie them together or make them stand out.  With the drifters, I wanted to have some sort of uniform color to tie them all together; make them part of a group.  Red wasn't my first choice - it doesn't really fit the post-apoc scheme, but I decided to try anyway and am very happy with the turnout.  I didn't want to overdo it though, so I picked out scarves and bandannas, as well as various other parts so that it brought them together in uniform, but the browns and metals remained the main part of the palate.  

With the stitchers, I was a little more random.  These guys are bad news and I immediately wanted to have some dark parts to the model.   I didn't keep much uniform to them, but the models themselves have some tie-ins, which I'll discuss in more detail with each model below.  I'll show off the individual model first, and then give a brief description of some of the work and thoughts behind it.  

 This was the first model I completely painted in the group.  He is one of the more simple models of the set, but still had a lot of great detail to paint.  The cloak was particularly fun to paint and I used a base of Gorthor Brown and worked almost down to black in the shadows and up to white on the highest highlight (which I did on most parts of all of the models).  He has a ribbed (poor choice of words?) chest armor piece similar to what vampires wear, which helped me choose red as the complimentary uniform color for the drifters.  

Hard to really pick one, but this guy is one of my favorites from the box.  VERY good sculpt.  I especially enjoyed painting his skin because of the way the forehead is sculpted - it really allowed a good blend to be achieved and sets the model off.  Really, the entire model had good pieces.  He also had the ribbed pattern armor and beautifully sculpted cloak, which I painted red - giving him much more color than the other models.  His attitude and age make me think he is probably the leader of the group, so it made sense to me.  I was really worried about painting the metal piece on his base and had done some NMM on that diamond pattern metal before, but didn't like the turnout.  So, I decided to play around a bit and try to pull off some NMM rust, which I was happy with, so I went much further with the effect on the next drifter model.  

Because of this model's style, I originally thought he was one of the stitchers, but when I found out he was part of the drifter team, I immediately was excited because I knew what color to paint his mask!  I painted his cloak similarly to how I painted the Reclaimer set.  One this model, the real standout pieces are his shield and the power pack for his weapon.  Red and Blue aren't a favorite combination of mine, but the style of the pack and the tubes that fed into the spear were so similar to the Reclaimer tech, that I imagined this guy had found it and started using it himself.  A light blue doesn't look all that bad with red anyway, and you never really see the red and blue in the same view of the model from any angle.  The shield was a lot of fun.  Hazard stripes are a love it or hate it pattern in the 40k universe, but I lean more toward the love it and so I thought it matched the style of these models and yellow looks really good with blue.  The NMM rust was really easy to achieve (if you have simple NMM down).  I pretty much painted the shield with a silver NMM technique.  After that was over (highlighted all the way up to white), I heavily watered down some mournfang brown and glaze it in several layers over the shield, and did so more heavily in the shaded areas.  Then I took some watered down Agrax Earthshade and "glazed" it into the recesses as well as dabbing it on in certain areas to give it a more natural rusty look.  Finally, I took some white and hit the edges of the shield and threw some scratches down.  

Another model that initially jumped out as a stitcher to me because of the patchwork cloak.  Wasn't much to this model and he was probably the quickest to paint.  I went back and forth on the cloak on the colors but tried to make it simple (sorry for the poor rear pic).  Again, tried to keep clashing colors away, but thought that in the post apoc world, you might find any kind of fabric to patch your cloak together with.  I used a small bit from a Flames of War T34 tank for the base (lol - it worked perfectly).  Used the rusty NMM described above for his blade, which is probably my favorite part of the model - I like weird looking makeshift weapons like that.  

This final drifter was probably my least favorite of the set, but thats not to say its not a great model.  His armor was sculpted very well and the flat surfaces of the metal on his legs made a great surface for blending. I'm not the happiest with his face and really couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with it, but I thought it worked out.  The green pieces on his chest plate, I painted with salvaged military gear in mind.  

The first stitcher, who I think is supposed to be the leader of the group reminded me A LOT of a haemonculus from 40k.  His cloak provided a lot of opportunity to try new things, being that it appears to be stretched flesh stitched together.  I painted each pieces as though it were flesh, but used different shades of skin for adjacent pieces.  Once those were fully painted, I used dark red and purple washes in successive layers on the area around the stitches to represent bruised and damaged skin.  I also painted a lot of his details with green - its an eerie color and provides some personality to the model.  

Just a great model, this one is.  The sculpt is fantastic.  His skin painted very well and his head looked like it was worn from wearing the mask for such a long time and the subtle thin musculature of his gun arm was easy to make look good.  His big boots just screamed out like they were from a radiation/hazmat suit and why not?  So I painted them yellow, which compliment his jeans well.  The torn shirt was done with subtle color changes (rucksack tan - rakarth flesh - white).  Again, the eerie experimental green tube feeds from the tank on his back, misting who knows what into his airway, maybe stimulating him for combat or helping subdue his mind for easy control.  The liquid-filled glass of the tank wasn't too difficult to pull off.  Keeping an almost-black green tint on the highest and lowest parts of the tank and blending lighter shades of green up to white in a way that made the liquid look level with the ground and putting some white spots to look like reflection in the glass - just practice... the hardest part is the final white spots.  

And last but not least, this very suspicious stitcher.  A favorite.  The sculpt again is fantastic.  Lots of glass bottles, again filled with liquid that does who knows what.  These stitchers are shady characters for sure.  The musculature on his arm, very well defined.  His blunt forehead makes me think this guy was made for taking orders.  I painted the liquid in the large vials different colors - I figured a different substance for each situation.  The blade was hard to get right, but I think this finish that I selected looks the best from previous tries.  Soft tonal differences in his light colored clothes and the mask contrast well with the black armor and stark changes from black to white on the NMM here.  Hard to choose a favorite again, but this guy painted himself.  

Annndd... thats it.  Before I go to bed, I'm going to clean up the mess that is my painting table to get ready for the next project.  I have my malifaux gang and some world eaters coming up next and I cannot WAIT to paint them.  Thanks again to Hyacinth Games for the great models here.  I think I've put enough up here for one night.  Thanks so much for reading and happy painting!