July 11, 2009

Armour Painting: Stormblade Pt. III

Good morning!

I had some kind of paint flash last night and began with the detail painting. The Imperial Armour: Model Masterclass was my guide yesterday and I tried out several tips and tricks there. I began with adding some rust effects, therefore I created a mix of burnt umber oil paint, a rust coloured weathering powder and thinner for washes and flicked that on the model with an old brush. But I took a lot of care that I didn't flick too much on it, as armour steel usually doesn't rust. I thought a lot about this, if I really wanted to do this, but as I think it looks cool I tried it. After I flicked the mixture on, I airbrushed thinner of the rust spots to blend them into the surrounding. That reads very easy in the IA book but turnt out to be not that easy. It diffused the spots very much.
You can see some of the spots here:


I am not that happy with the outcome at the moment and I will try to do that again or blend the spots a bit more with a brush.
Next thing I wanted to try out was how to paint the exhausts. And I generally did what I was told in the Model Masterclass. First I drybrushed the exhaust shrouds with boltgun metal and mithril silver and the exhausts with a mix of scorched brown and rust weathering powder. That looks very odd at the beginning but after a wash with burnt umber oil paint and further addition of weathering powders it turnt out to be very nice:


I painted the shrine some weeks ago. Nothing special here, just a simple paint job with metallics.
After everything was dry I aibrushed thinned chaos black on top of the exhausts to represent smoke and soot. The photo below doesn't really show this and it looks way cooler in reality but it gives an idea:


To represent leaking fuel I aibrushed thinned brown ink around the hose and the surrounding parts like the fuel drums and the hatches on the engine deck. Following that I painted a mix of brown and black ink with gloss varnish around the hose and into the recesses. The glossy finish of the inks really gives the impression of leaking oil and fuel. That really works out well.
And after I had done that I realised I made a silly mistake. As you might see the tank is glossy due to the airbrushed on clear which you need for the washing and addition of oil colours and weathering powders. In the end I will have to apply purity seal or some other kind of matt varnish. And exactly that matt varnish will destroy the glossy look of the inks around the hose and fuel drums... I really should have done that later! But I was too eager to try this. My bad.
I think I will have to repaint that at least with gloss varnish to make it glossy again.

Today I am going to paint the lenses and more of the details and maybe I have time to begin with the weathering for dust and dirt effects.
I try to keep you up to date with some pics.

July 8, 2009

Armour Painting: Stormblade Pt. II

Hi,

just recently I continued with the Big One, the Stormblade. I just finished the first washing steps with oil paints (at first only black oil paint thinned with white spirit and after that with a mixture of thinned burnt umber and black). After the washing I drybrushed the whole tank with codex grey.


It is really astonishing how many rivets are on this tank! The washing takes a lot of time but I hope it pays off in the end.
Next step is a lot of detail work and the sponsons.

July 5, 2009

New painted stuff: Sternguard and Tau Broadside

Hey everybody,

just a quick one this evening. I just want to show the new minis I have painted over the last weeks.
First off, I started to paint my self-made sternguard. I plundered my bitsbox and found a lot of useful stuff and I tried to make combi-meltas from bolters and meltas and that worked out so well that I assembled 4, so that I can equip all 5 sternguards with them.
Here are the first 3 including the sergeant with lightning claw:


And for the greater good I finished the first broadside to pack more punsh against the mighty tanks of the imperial guard (and land raiders of course). For the lack of shield drones I just took the upper side of gundrones. That has to suffice for the moment:


It's pretty obvious what's coming up next: the last 2 sternguards and a second broadside. But I am a little bit short of time at the moment. The usual excuses, I know...