What Not To Do When Pre Shading A Tank

Rather than show you what to do today, I am going to show you what not to do. If you look back a few blog posts you'll see my first experiment with pre-shading my Blood Angles tanks. I painted a LR and two Baals this way and had a great time doing it. If you look at those posts, and then look at the pre-shading in this post, it is clear that I pre-shaded too much. Basically by not leaving enough black I removed much of the interesting shading. I think I will soldier on with this tank as it is, but I was hoping to go two steps forward rather than two steps back.

Oh, those are my finger prints on the tank as well. I mixed my paint too thin this time as well! I should have listened to the spluttering of the air brush and known to back off and re-asses.

oh, one more thing totally not 40k related. I am running in a 10k tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Why That's a WWI Tank!

I showed my 72 year old father my red blood angles land raider, and the first thing he said was that it was a neat WW1 tank. I identify guard with WW1, but haven't really thought of space marines as futuristic antiques as well.

BA Tanks: Weathering WIP Step 1 Dust

The first stage of weather is now done for these tanks. I think I was able to match the dust on the death company rhino, but I am not quite sure. I used snakebite a very runny leather/bleached bone air brush concoction along the tracks and skirt. I think my next step may be to sponge on a little bit of battle damage. I was thinking of using a single pass of boltgun metal, but maybe chardon granite would be better, since there would be more contrast with the rich red color. After that I am going to put on some some decals and ash colored weathering powder on the tracks. It think the weathering powder is important because it provides another texture, even though it is very close in color to the dust I air brushed on. I am really proud of these tanks so far, and can't wait to plunk them down on the tabletop. They are wildly different in style than my old tanks though.

Flamestorm Baal

So I painted up one God Hammer and two Baals, but have yet to weather any of them. I know it needs to be done, but the idea of factory fresh tanks is kind of nice right now. I magnetized the ammo carrier portion of the turret so this Baal could switch from being a flamestorm to a regular assault cannon version, or even to a rhino or razor back. I have no idea what to expect from the flamestorm variant, but I wrote a poem expressing what I expect will happen.

One baal picked up some buck shot

One baal picked up some flame

One ball tank shocked a unit and never did it again

So how bad is this tank? If I zoom this thing 12 inches forward I only get to fire the flamstorm, so the sposons get wasted. I suppose the tank could survive close combat, but that has not been my experience so far with these things. Perhaps they would work well as objective holders?

Magnetizing my Baals

I painted up two Baal predators to flank the LR and death company Rhino as they all charge into battle. On the off chance I field these guys as rhinos, I had to magnetize the side guns so they can be removed. I used the rare earth magnets that I normally reserve for infantry. You can see the recessed magnets in the old style Baal with the hatches exposed.

Like the LR, these guys will get weathered once the base coats and transfers are done. There is still quit a bit to paint, but the armor is looking pretty good to me. The red tones are a little more muted on these guys since I used a slightly more complex red recipe before I discovered that simply going over the pre-shading with blood red was the way to go.

Notice there are two baals in the photos. I would not want anyone to think that I only paint one Baal at at time.

BA Land Raider God Hammer

Still missing one track, but I think I am going to take the sage advice from Siph_horridus and build a LR Crusader to go along with this. The crusader will be missing a track underneath the frag grenade launchers, so it won't even be noticed.

I have some work to go on this guy, including finishing painting the storm bolters, headlights, and engine, but I could not resist putting some photos up. I plan to weather this guy like the death company rhino, but I am really enjoying the clean look right now.

I even built a list to go along with these new tanks. The 1500 pt list follows:

• Librarian
• Sanguinary Priest
• Sanguinary Guard (infernus/plas)
• Assault Squad (x10, no jump, pw,2 meltas)
• Death Company (x4, pw)
• Death Company Razorback
• Assault Squad Land Raider
• Furioso Dread
• Furioso drop pod
• Scout Squad (heavy bolter)

I wish I could get a vindicator into the list!

Pre-Shading BA Tanks Before Air Brushing

I have a whole slew of tanks being prepped for my new and improved torrent of fire BA army. If you look back at my earlier posts you can see pictures of my old dry brushed beaten up ba tanks. After having so much fun with the airbrush on the Death Company rhino I decided to add two Baal Predators (both magnetized) and a Land Raider God Hammer. The GH is not the most effective tank for my force, but I wanted to paint one so that was that. Behold the power of instant gratification!

I tried two different airbrush techniques on these guys, though they started off the same way. After my earlier attempt using varying base coats I decided to give pre-shading a shot. I base coated all of the tanks black, and then use fortress grey to dust them. At this initial step I had the itch to do a space wolves army. I could see adding some warm brown/yellow panels and battle damage to the tanks after the pre-shading step and being really pleased. However since these were BA, red had to follow.

For the Rhinos

1) Blood Red/ Dark Flesh air brushed on tank

2) Blood red air brushed

3) Blood red/orange air brushed on edges

4) All rivets have baal wash around them followed by orange rivet

For the Land Raider

1) Air brush pure blood red

2) Air brush orange/blood red mix along edges

4) All rivets have baal wash around them followed by orange rivet

It turns out the Land raider recipe was both the easiest and the best looking. That seems to be the pattern for my painting these days. Less work=Nicer produce

In addition to the two preds and the LR, I picked up a vindicator to add to the mix. This should give my regular gaming buddies a pretty hard force to fight. Three Baal preds out flanking, with a convoy of death company in a rhino and assault marines in a LR, supported by a vindicator and drop pod dreds.

Oh on my zeal to get painting I accidentally threw away one of the track segments for the LR, so there is a missing segment on the front!

Blue Power Weapons

For 20+ years I have not liked blue power weapons. I may associate painting swords blue as something from my childhood, and that the more gritty realistic approach to painting is the adult way to paint. (if such a thing is possible when talking about painting toys!) However with the blood angels release, fantasy like poses, and over the top style, I could not resist. So may I present My Sanguinary guard with bright blue patterned weapons!

My honor guard have dry brushed blueish weapons, but for these guys a went with a very bright layered scheme. To get the fine white edge highlighting I just put some tamiya thinner on one of my detail brushes and just erased the painting along the edge. I used the thinner to try and soften the blends a bit by just painting the thinner on the blades and allowing the blue to run together.

It is going to be weird to paint flesh tearers after this, since they have a much different appearance.