Minty Necron Overlord WIP

The Necron train continues! I think I did a better job painting the purple bowling ball this time around. If I keep up at this rate I am going to have to figure out how to finished all of the warriors and immortals.

I think some battle damage/rust tests are in my near future!

Lychguards Painted!

I am making good progress with my Necrons again. If you ignore the guys whose head is falling off, these guys are ready to deflect shots with their shields and protect my lord. I continued with the purple gem theme on them as a highlight, as well as blue shaded power weapons. I keep hearing that these guys are terrible in this configuration, but I have them now, and so they will be fielded. Just in case however, I decided to bulk paint the rest of my forces power weapons. this saved me a lot of time, however in keeping with Ron's recent post about only painting the front of a model, I totally forgot to turn the power weapons on the plate over for the two lighter highlights, so these are only partially completed.


Where would I be without my airbrushes? Am I even capable of painting an entire miniature by hand? Does the airbrush make me less of a painter?

Necron Lord With War Scythe WIP

My minty green Necron's finally have an HQ choice! This model is still WIP, with some areas are still pure un shaded base coat, but I really liked the way it was tuning out and wanted to share. I used the same power weapon technique I used on my Blood angels with this guy. A quick recap.

1. Prime area black
2. diluted enchanted blue base coat
3. enchanted blue mixed with white as the first pass
3. Space Wolf grey on the high energy portions.

I will go back with washes for shading, paint the rest of the power weapon, and then the rest of the details. I think the key thing here is that I was able to knock this out in a few minutes rather than hours. I can spend as much time as I like cleaning him up now. I've said this before but.....

please go out and buy and air brush. It is like magic. Imagine adding an airbrush as a tool to an already talented painter!

So do I finish this guy or just keep scatter painting the force, adding colors as I go?

Easy Necron Flying Base Tutorial

I am a big fan of easy basing, so a while ago I started experimenting with creating washes out of heavily diluted GW foundation paints. Eventually I settled on a dusty desert world look. Originally this style of basing was created for my Blood Angels, but after painting up my first Necrons, and reading that they had a penchant for destroying imperial worlds, I decided to use the same style for their bases.

Step 1: Glue a bunch of imperial debris on the top of the flying bases. Cut the debris up as much as possible so there there are plenty of grooves for the wash to settle into.

 Step 2: Prime white.

 Step 3: Using a 50/50 water Khemri brown foundation mix, paint the entire base, leaving puddles of the paint. The paint will separate into the darker blackish color, and into all kinds of the shades of brown as the paint dries. It is important to keep the paint very watery so this can happen.

 Step 4: In order to tie all the bases together, unifying all of the variants of brown, a dry brush of Dehenb stone is done over the entire base.  A 50/50 mix of white glue and water is then dabbed on the base in patches where dry static grass will be added.

 The end result is a simple base, with enough color variation to really help models stand out.

Necron Flayed Ones

Three out of five flayed ones are now complete-ish. (not really finishing any model per-se!)
I plan to add the wet blood after they are varnished. I probably won't get much more done due to thanksgiving.  I think my next major push needs to be finishing these and the guard. That will give me some interesting units to use.

So now that I am painting the bulk of my troops, what I really want to paint are tomb spiders and wraiths. Where are those models. Weren't they plastic before? I never saw one in person, but the wraiths look pretty cool to me on email. I really want to paint some, but maybe I should wait.

C'tan

Unclear on my weathering techniques, I decided to just ignore the problem for a while. I did rub off more of the powder and ended up with a slightly better result, but I think I can defer the decision for a while, which will give me more time to practice on old rhinos.

I am already painting this army in unfinished chunks so I decided to just add two purple C'tan to see how well the colors meshed with the overall look. I don't remember who suggested it, but adding purple was a great idea, and I owe a commenter thanks for the idea. The internet rocks! Ctan really don't look like they belong in a Necron force, so I tried to paint them up like purple apparitions rather than regular objects of the material universe. Also, I made sure that some of the minty green color was on each of the models in order to tie them into my royal dynasty. I am fairly pleased with the bases as well. Ruined imperial vehicles make a wonderful base for just about any army, especially imperial ones!

Necron Weathering Test

Rather than risk one of the more interesting vehicles, I decided to test my weathering technique out on my monolith. Do I need to rub off more powder before it starts looking right? It just looks off to me. Basically all I did to get the powder on was take a GW tank brush and start scrubbing the surface downward. Is this a case of too much powder, bad technique, or something else? I was hoping it wouldn't hide all of my shading, but the powder kind of blows that away as well. Am I being too critical and it is more of me not seeing the finished product in the in-progress phase. Do I need to do more?

Any help is appreciated!

Necron Vehicle Progress

I've made progress on two ghost arks, one annihilation barge, and a doomsday ark. Whereas I can paint a rhino in no time at all, I am finding the necron vehicles really tedious. They are great kits, but having to paint 20 necron warriors just to dress the models is a lot of work. I plan to spray a diluted black wash over all of the models at the end of painting and have practiced on a few of wounded models missing from the two arks. I think weathering powders are going to look really good over the black vehicles. I was thinking of weathering the whole vehicle to make it look like these vehicles were coming out of a sand storm. I am really tempted to add rust to the vehicles because it would be a nice way to get orange into the color scheme.

So is this the start of a playable force?

Scarab Swarms And Army Shot Update

I love these little scarab models, so this morning I painted ~30 of them! I wanted them to really stand out on the battlefield, so I painted the to the shame standard as my troops. This means for the green carapace I used Moss, Pale lichen, and then a white/lichen mix to shade them. I then used bolt gun metal on the metal parts, badab wash, followed by silver highlight. The little tail sections I hit with dev mud to bring out the details.

I had planned to use a very dark brown basing, much like what I see over on the Vanus Temple , since I have long admired his work, but I think I am going to stick with the basing I created for my Blood Angels. The bases are already littered with ruined imperial bits, and given the BA and Necrons have fought together before, it would bring a little cohesion to my armies. I'll also be able to reuse my display board should I decide to game with these Necrons.

Now, I have to eat a little crow today. While putting together two more Ghost Arks, I noticed that the rib sections go together in a specific order. I have no idea how I missed this with the first Ark, but I did. The arks went together really easily, and the plastic glue worked just fine. Lesson learned.

Necron Painting Update

I had planned to paint 24 warriors and 10 immortals today, and while I did not complete the task I did make very good progress. I stuck with the blue tinted white heads, but added purple as a secondary color for the immortals. I think I will use a lot of purple and gold on my lords. I may paint them entirely purple. I really like the backstory that the aristocracy ended up with better personality preservation due to better quality bodies, so using purple to signify royalty is kind of cool.

My Great Necron Batch Painting Challenge

So I've set myself the unrealistic goal is to complete two squads of Necron warriors and 1 10 man squad of Necron immortals today.  I really want to jump in and paint all of the new vehicles and units, but I think if I can power my way through these troops I will at least have the start of a playable army. I am pretty speedy when it comes to vehicles anyway, so I think my army will grow pretty quickly one these guys are covered. I do not plan to base these guys today or paint over the green rods.

I've been working since 8:30 AM this morning using my new IWATA airbrush to get the base color on all of the models. The recipe so far is:

Armor:

1. Base coat of chaos black
2. Reaper Master Series Highland Moss (darkish green)
3. Reaper Master Series Pale Lichen (the mid tone)
4. 1/1 Skull White and Pale Lichen for highlights

I got a lot of good feedback from my test model, and I have not decided what to do with the Necron heads yet. I like the ida of using purple as a secondary color throughout the army. Gold on purple looks pretty good, and has a nice regal feel. I was thinking of keeping the heads space wolf grey, but using purple stripes on the Immortals. The main characters would then have the following colors:

Mint Green
Dark Coal Grey
Space Wolf Grey
Purple
Gold

I think that would look pretty good, but the heads will be done last so I have time today if there are any other suggestions.

Wish me luck. If there is any interest I can update this post with photos as I progress. The next 3 hours will be spent painting joints Boltgun metal and applying dev mud and badab black washes, so I doubt there will be much interest seeing photos of that.

*EDIT 2:16 PM*
I have finally finished painting all the joints metallic.  I have also painted all of the guns black, and painted dwarf bronze on the torso details. The bronze is still drying, and I plan to take a break for a few hours.  Painting can be exausting.

Mint Green Necron Paint Test

I wanted to do something different with my Necrons, so my first paint scheme test is mint green ceramic plates with boltgun metal joints, and a Space Wolf grey head. The idea was to paint this as quickly as possible and then weather the armor with sponged damage, powders, or streaks of dev mud wash. The gun and barrel are not completed either, I just wanted to see how bad the lime green barrel looked. I plan to test my weathering before I dip this guy in simple green. At the moment I am on the fence. I like seeing painted Necrons, but I really can't imagine how this guy will look finished yet. I suppose when the gun barrel is painted to look like blue plasma, and the gun is shaded grey it will help. Any opinions on the color scheme so far?