Testors Dullcote and Vallejo Paints

So a wonderful package arrived today, 4 cans of Dullcote and a whole slew of Vallejo Model Color paints. So far I am thrilled by the dullcote. It is not perfect, but it did take the shine off of my Plague Bearer, so it receives an ONI rating of 3 out of 5 aquillas! I have not experimented much with the paints, but so far I love earth tone colors.

So if playing with new paint were not enough, I built a shadowsword. Yep, that is it. I finally built the damn thing. It is sitting right now in my airbrush box with its black coat of primer. I am really excited to paint it up, though I am deviating from my white primer preference. I am not sure if I should paint it up to match my other tanks posted here, or go with a Voystroyan theme, or go with something totally different like warlock purple.

Servitors

Servitors are 40k to me. They represent the dehumanization of the 40k dystopia perfectly. The horror of people being lobotomized and turned into meat robots is terrifying. I suppose it is just another form of social recycling. I speed painted these guys again.

I am not sure why I am speed painting so much these days, but it might just be a way to practice. I am out of practice using black primer. I really think grey primer or white primer is the way to go. The way paint flows over the black primer is much nicer given the smoother surface, but working with details is much more difficult.

Inquisitor and Daemons

I did a few more washes on the Plague Daemons, and while waiting for them to dry painted up an inquisitor I have had lying around for some time. I added a few colors from my IG army to help him blend in. I am not sure about the green, but he does not look out of place next to one of my platoons. I have a bowl of soapy water soaking one of the Hector Rexx kits from forge world, so maybe this guy will end up an an Inquisitional henchman. I know I have said it before, but I really do not like working with metal after handling the FW resin first hand. At some point I am going to have to paint some of it up, rather than simply hoarding it until my skills are better!

Purity Seal Gone Wrong

I have based my Imperial Guard Vets and am not totally out of good bases. The base production line I setup a year ago probably spurred me on t paint more because I did not have to worry about the last finishing part of the model. There is one step that is not complete for these guys and a bunch of the blood angels I have recently done. Transfers. The thing about transfers is that they add so much visual look, but they require a matte coat of purity seal at the end, both to hold them on, and to remove the gloss finish they impart. My purity seal appears to leave a gloss coat. Last week I tried the new can out on one of my chimera's and I assumed it was the weathering powders that had interfered with the seal. However, having just sealed a batch of Plague Bringers. All this talk of Nurgle led me to order some from GW--the even arrived in two days! As you can see from the photo, the purity seal added a slight gloss to the miniatures, which ruins their appearance. Most of the shading is now lost. Should I just buy another can and try again? What is it that causes the seal to gloss up like this? Am I using too much purity seal? I might have to go on a purity seal hiatus, since everything I spray ends up frosted or shiny!

Speed Painting

All of this weathering must come to an end! I took a break from weathering my vehicles into the hands of nurgle, and instead painted an IG Vet squad. My goal was to paint quickly without any worries. I will probably use the squad as part of my new DH army.

There is something really satisfying painting at light speed.

That Weathering Feeling...

I enjoyed a happy hour with colleagues a mojito, and then came home and weathered a tank. I don't know what it is about this process that is so cool to me. This time I took a lot of tamiya acrylic and mixed it with a very small amount of red dust from forge world. I took the rust wash and then put it around each bolt, crease or area that I thought would rust. It looked pretty rough initially, but I am happy with it now. One of the things I am trying to learn is when to stop weathering a vehicle. This poor artillery piece looks like it hasn't seen the inside of a shop since its production line. The problem with weathering this way is that it is pretty easy to make something look derelict like this, but much more difficult to paint up a tank that is well maintained but weathered. Weathering adds so much texture it is amazing, but I think it lends itself most easily to renegade forces. One more change from my weathering routine, I brushed light earth colored weathering powered all over the vehicle simulating dust.

Heavily Weathered Griffen

So after all of those painting tests, and finding a weathering scheme I liked, I just went ahead and weathered the tank differently. I am pretty happy with the tank, especially given this is a repaint without simple greening. This tank used to be grey, not it looks like some Ad-Mec nightmare. I mean, who takes care of this thing, and why do they let it look like this!

I am point to put up more of my weathering shots one tank at a time!

Weathering Techniques Experiements

I learned a few things about acrylic paint thinner this morning.(yes I know just before going to work is not a good time to model) If I use it on extremely smooth surfaces it has almost no water tension and it just flows everywhere. It is pretty hard to get it to stay where I want it to. I am going to switch back to using water as my thinner for rust areas, and use the acrylic thinner for things like oil stains. I am almost ready to weather all of my IG tanks, using the photos above (except the muddy test--too much FW powder!) I've got to thank Santa Cruz Warhammer for prodding me along! He has an excellent series of weathering examples using the master model book from forge world. I am using slightly different techniques, but mostly because I do not have the patience for salt dips. I am beginning to think that I should paint up a space marine as cleanly as possible, and then apply the paint chipping and dusting techniques I've learned to his legs and shoulder armor.