Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Blood Angles Rhino WIP


Sometimes cleansing the palette is important. After NOVA I found myself besieged by projects. limited time due to a crazy work schedule, has left me with little time to properly plan for a next army project. I haven't even really felt like tackling a large project, consumed as I am with product launch for work. On the other hand, I paint to relieve stress. Rather than overwhelm myself with a lot of choices, I decided to finally try out the new(non Baal, so new to me!) GW reds on on a salvage rhino  paint stripped years ago and forgotten in a drawer.

Shading consists of:

  • Mephiston Red
  • Evil Suns Scarlet
  • Wild Rider Red
  • Paint Chip highlights with Troll Slayer Orange  
The rhino has a semi-gloss varnish on it right now, which makes it a little worse looking than normal. The varnish allowed me to add oils without ruining the base coats. With paint chips in place, I can now add decals followed by environmental effects. I might even find the tracks that were pulled off years ago.

Maybe it is time for a fresh BA army.


7 comments:

  1. Hurray! I was looking forward to a John post :). The way you do the highlights on your paint chips is really cool. Really makes them stand out in the photos (and in person).

    Everything is so bright and vibrant. Makes the model look like almost hyper excited to be on the table. As if a bunch of angry marines are just going to come charging out, stop, and admire how cool their rhino is.

    Are you using stronger highlight blends on the top to imitate a false light source, or is that just the effect of the photo? (or that the pre-work prior to the colors going down?).

    Going to loot all the John knowledge I can as I prep for the ork army for next year :).

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  2. Greg: I am happy to oblige.

    This is the vibrant stage. Once the matte varnish, weathering powders, and oil streaks are on it will me toned down. You'll see a loss of vibrance but more realism. (as much as that is possible for a bright red tank)

    You did manage to spot one of my bad habits! The doors on the top of the rhino should not be edge highlighted, but should be color modulated. I tend to revert to edge highlighting when tired. Opposing color gradients would look better since they represent light reflecting differently off of the panels.

    It is hard to see on the photo, but the front of the model is lighter. I was hoping to draw focus to the 'face' of the tank. We have Justin McCoy to thank for that. I took his class at last years NOVA and have been stewing about viewer focus ever since.

    I can't wait to see some Orks, though that would mean I'd have to get through all of those awesome NOVA photos you posted first.

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  3. Yup, the front and upper part of the tanks are definitely lighter. That was showing through in the photo. Been reading a lot about creating focus through use of highlights/shading, so noticed it immediately on the tank.

    Your bad habit is making the top tank doors look great? My bad habits are accidentally gluing models to my fingers.

    All this learning is going to definitely come at a price. I'm going to have to rebuild my entire ork army from scratch to get them all consistently even though. You will love my idea for the army though.

    It's an ork walker list...(3 deff dreads, 3 gorkanats (big guys), with three dakkajets as support. But with three weird boyz! (3 units of grots, and 3 units of tank busta's as well)

    Everything is in three's, so I can paint each set a different clan. One will be bad moons, one will be red suns, and one will be deff skullz. (yellow, red, blue). The deff skulls loot, so their walkers will be other converted walkers (like a SM dreadnought, imperial knight, and somebody elses flyer).

    But here is the best part. The weirdboyz are there to try to summon tuska's orks from the warp! I'm going to paint a set of "summoned" daemon orks in opposing colors, based on the section that summoned them. It should present a really colorful army, no matter how you look at it. (and keep me from being bored painting the same colors repeatedly)

    Trying to plan this from the bottom up. We will see how it goes!

    First stages though, stripping some old templar rhinos to rip apart to practice hairspray and salt weathering techniques!

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    Replies
    1. Whoa, that sounds a reasonable model count Ork army. I haven't seen the Ork codex in a while, but I do have some ancient ones. I think you've painted a good picture for what is to come. I think you're going to get a lot of mileage out of weathering powders and oils. That will be fun, since you have a lot of different colors to experiment with. You basically have a palette cleanser every other unit!

      How are you going to unify the army color-wise? When I started my Sons of Horus I set out to have two unifying colors across all of the forces. This was in addition to making power weapons uniformly colored, and having grey to brown rubble and dust for basing. Are you going to rely on green, weathering, and basing? I suppose rust chips could be a secondary color.

      I look forward to the salt tests. Post WIP photos!

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    2. That's a really excellent point John. I hadn't thought of colors to tie the group together. Hrm I'll really have to think on this one.

      I know rust is going to be one of the defining characteristics of the group, so weathering, and bases will all match.

      Time to look through the ork books and pay close attention to these schemes to find unifying colors. Really great suggestion!

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    3. Very cool .. always love to see some Blood Angels 8) The Rhino is looking good! Looking forward to you making it look rough haha..

      Yeah color scheme is major. If you don't see something you like in the books grab a color wheel and play with that to match up some good contrast and allied colors .. 8)

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