Emperors Children Aerial Assault Formation Done!

Hey,

This was a slog and now it's done. The recipe is the same as before.

Not much more to say; being done with about 1200 points feels great. On to the pics and thanks for looking.

Heresy Era Tacticals and Praetor Done!

I've painted some Heresy era Ultramarines, aiming for a Zone Mortalis (1500pt) sized force someday.

They're based in the very early heresy, I was thinking even Great Crusade era. So lots of Mark II armor, and Mark III would be reserved to the elites, as it's cutting edge. But I'm not 100% committed to that theme narratively, I just think it'll look good.

I started with 2x10 tacticals to develop the painting recipe on. The recipe is involved, I got it down to ~4 hours per miniature. This is a lot for armypainting, but I'm not painting a large army and they look really good. As in, most of these could be pushed to competition standard with another many hours, but they wouldn't look all that different, just cleaner and with more detail picked out.

Here's the recipe that I settled on, at least with the last 5 tacticals I painted:

• Prime black.
• Paint the blue.
• The paints are all Proacryl: Dark Grey Blue, Sky Blue, Grey Blue, and White Blue.
• I airbrush Dark Grey Blue from the sides and Sky Blue from the top, zenithal-like.
• Stipple Grey Blue on all exposed parts. Or just dump a bunch and wipe with your finger to spread around. Don't focus on smoothness, but focus on placement: this goes on top of the parts that were covered by Sky Blue.
• Parts that are mostly Dark Grey Blue could get a chippy edge highlight either in Grey Blue or a Grey Blue/Dark Grey Blue mix to be more desaturated than Sky Blue.
• More chipping in White Blue, the same recipe, just even higher. Focus only on the top of the head the shoulderpads and the backpack.
• At this point the upwards facing things will look rich and nice, but the darks will look plain. Maybe stipple a bit of Dark Grey Blue or Sky Blue here and there, but don't worry about it too much.
• Finally, if you lost the midtone with all the stippling, which happened to me multiple times, bring it back up by glazing Asurmen Blue contrast just in the midtone areas. This is a beautiful and saturated paint that fits the theme well so include it, but don't overdo it, don't lose the highlight areas.
• Paint the metals
• For gold, a coat of Proacryl Rich Gold, washed in Wyldwood in the deepest shadows and Agrax on more upwards facing parts.
• For silver, wetblend Vallejo Metal Color Jet Exhaust into Steel into Chrome, then wash in Basilicanum Grey wherever it's needed.
• Apply transfers.
• Blackline everything
• Edge highlight the gold in Proacryl Heavy Warm White. I edge highlighted most steels in Chrome, but I used Bold Titanium White here and there too. Both can work, and they look slightly different. A matte edge highlight results in a more readable model from all angles, and for gaming that is important.
• For the eye lenses I just used Nova Orange from Proacryl. It's just that, I was lazy, and mk2 eye slits don't need much more. I edge highlighted the glow by mixing in some Heavy Warm White into the orange.
• For the gun lenses and whatnot, I used the same orange, with Wyldwood to darken it where the lens goes really dark.
• The white parts are just Heavy Warm White mixed with black to produce the darker values.
• The red, only on the captain, I used Bold Pyrrole Red mixed down to black.
• Everything else I improvised, grabbing whatever paints I had near me, and painting them mostly to a slapchop standard.
• Finally, to after basing them, I do one more pass of darkening by airbrush, straight black, and paint in some reflections using the colors I used for the base.

Speaking of:

• These are Gamer's Grass bases, the Deserts of Maahl line.
• I sanded the rims of the base down and reprimed them black.
• On top, I washed a random wetblend of Gore Grunta Fur, Aggaros Dunes, and Agrax. The tufts get a wash in Agrax, esp towards the bottom. Cactuses get a wash of Creed Camo.
• Once that was dry, lightly drybrush Proacryl Golden Brown, then varnish matte, as the washes from the previous step can dry a bit glossy.
• Place the mini on the base at this point.
• Wyldwood goes under the miniature to create a shadow, very heavily around the feet.
• Paint on some Light Umber, Golden Brown, and/or Heavy Warm White on top of the base, esp closer to the rim, just to punch it up.
• Paint the rim black, edge highlight the rim in Golden Brown, leaning a bit into Heavy Warm White on the brighter parts.
• Add some more tufts if some parts of the base still look boring or bad
• Edge highlight the tufts in Golden Brown, and maybe Heavy Warm White too.

I think that's it? It's a lot. But it goes fast as, other than blacklining, very little of this requires precision. Even edge highlights are chipped. Being mindful of the volumes, and blacklining cleanly, produces a clean a readable look in spite of the rough technique.

Now I'm looking forward to painting something else for a bit. Thanks for looking.

Legions Imperialis Iron Warriors Rhinos Done!

Hello! Long time.

So Legions Imperialis is out and I'm all over it. Iron Warriors for now, but I'll follow them up with a loyalist Solar Auxilia army and Legio Ignatum.

For these I went a bit overboard and designed/printed some Siege Tyrant missile racks to put on the terminators. I'll upload the STL at some point. These were printed with 25nm layers, I don't think 50nm would have cut it.

So I painted a few units to start with, and want to share them and write down the recipe. I'm sure to forget it otherwise! So here's the recipe. As always, it does all the rough and high impact things first, and then just goes into more and more detail to focus and neaten up the paint job.

Step 0: Build

• I plastic-cemented the minis to their bases before painting. This is to make sure I'll be able to pull the magnetized bases and not have anything break. Had I superglued after painting, it's possible that the models would rip paint and detach. I found it to work just fine, it's easy to reach models when they're on the base like that, and they're easy to hold as well.
• Wood glue random tiny basing rocks work to create debris
• Prime in black

Step 1: Base colors

• Controlled/light drybrush of Scale75 Thrash Metal
• Paint the base for models that have it. Over black, apply some Scale75 Gray Graphene, and drybrush Artic Blue towards the edges.
• Pick out brasses in Scale75 Pure Copper
• Pick out black areas in Scale75 Petroleum Gray
• Paint chevrons
• Paint a stripe or an area using a mix of ProAcryl Bold Titanium White, ProAcryl Warm Yellow and Kimera Diarylide Yellow. One or two passes should be enough.
• Glaze ProAcryl Warm Yellow into white where it gets brighter, Diarylide Yellow where it gets dark.
• Paint chevrons using ProAcryl Pure Black. Use a good brush with a good tip, and don't go too small, or the paint will be drying on you. You need a steady hand and a good brush, not a small brush. I used a ~newish Raphael 8408 #2. Move fast, make mistakes and fix them up later with the yellows above; it's faster to make a mistake and fix it then go super steady, stress out, and then make mistakes anyway.
• Stipple Citadel Gore-Grunta Fur Contrast in places to add texture and hide rough blends.
• Apply transfers. MicroSet and MicroSol did good work, as usual. I didn't varnish all over before applying them because I don't want to affect the metal finish. I only varnished over the transfer, in satin, and you can kinda tell the difference but only if you look.
• Spot detail!
• The reds were done in ProAcryl Bold Pyrrole Red, mixed with black or some ivory where it needs to go down or up.
• The "leather" on the terminators was ProAcryl Light Umber, and after weathering, roughly accented in ProAcryl Ivory. I felt like a light color worked as an accent color, given how dark the models are. Otherwise a darker brown would have been be more appropriate
• ProAcryl Sky Blue on the power swords, mixed with ivory or black
• The lights on the rhinos I'm not sure anymore, I think it was just ivory.

Step 2: Weathering

• AK Streaking Grime for Panzer Grey all over, applied thin, and then removed by a drybrush that's had some white spirits. Because I didn't varnish, I had to go gentle or risk stripping paint. It did start to give in places but it's ok, call it additional weathering. It's only black underneath anyway.
• AK track wash over tracks
• When those above are dry, AK Light Dust Deposits applied very thin and glazed in places towards the bottom. Stipple on the base for models that have a base.

Step 3: Neatening up

• Identify volumes. Line/glaze Musou Block between them; it's really strong and works to accent these models. For example, on most marines, I have a line of Musou Black between their heads and shoulder pads, the backpack, between the torso and the weapon. Just to separate shapes.
• All black areas really need a highlight using a mix of Petroleum Grey and white. They get lost otherwise. I don't mean an edge highlight, I mean slapping paint on top to define shapes. Look at the tops of bolters for example.
• Edge highlight in Scale75 Thrash Metal where the weathering ended up too strong.
• Stipple Vallejo Metal Color Chrome where I want something to pop. Heads, tops of backpacks, bits on weapons and arms. In the terminator missile racks I used ProAcryl Ivory actually, silvers weren't producing an outline that's readable enough.

 That's it! For now at least. Thanks for looking.

Tacticals Space Marines Done!

They're done!

This was a very fast paintjob. Well, relatively speaking; about 90 minutes per guy. And it shows from up close, but not from afar. They look great as a squad on the tabletop, and that's what I wanted to see with this army: drastically less time per model compared to my Necrons.

I took these pics indoors - sunny outside wasn't working out for these guys. I wanted them to look gloomy. I used a cloth math as the background and did more editing than before. The pics look extremely good. And I took them with my phone!

Now I'll stop blabbering. Thanks for looking!