Weathering Experiments

Marc Raley kindly shared a method of paint chipping using windex a while back, and I finally had the chance to give it a shot and see what I could do with it. As usual, I picked up some rhino hatches and went to town. Given that I was going to go overboard with the weathering on purpose, I thought it would be fun to paint the doors as if they were Death Guard.

Chipping Process

• Paint base coat rust
• Laquer varnish
• Paint top coat
• Use Windex to eat through the top coat exposing the base coat

On the right door hatch I painted on some of GW's crackle paint to see if it would make realistic paint blisters. I think I need to paint up an entire rhino side section in order to get this right. Chipping control was very difficult for me. It was far easier using a toothpick to pull scratch around. The mud is Tamiya's mud product. It really needs to have a dry section of mud further up the vehicle in order to sell the effect, but I wasn't sure what color the mud would dry in the first place.

Given how weathered the doors are, these have to represent Death Guard who have already fallen to Chaos and begun the long war.

Space Wolf Test Piece

You know how I like test pieces. You may have seen this chunk of rhino before in either Sons of Horus or Emperor's Children guise. I did not bother to strip the paint this time, so mig european soil is still stuck to the lower parts of the hull. I am not a fan of that product, but that is for another day.

 I used traditional Space Wolf colors here, though I think German panzer grey would make a SW army pop more. Since I didn't paint a door, I plugged in one of the doors I painted as a test for the Imperial Knight. I think this scheme would look good with muddy pigment stained snow.

LR Turret Painted Panzer-Style

*EDIT added some powders to see how the turret would look.

I've been playing around with painting GW tanks in the style of german vehicles for a while, so this morning before my spouse enforced jog, I grabbed an old IG tank and spare turret and painted up the two paint tests you see here. One of the problems I am having with cammo, is that it is designed to break up the outline of the tank. With model painting, that is the last thing I want. The goal is to highlight all of the detail. The green and yellow sand colored turret was my experiment trying o minimized the effect of the cammo so the tank stayed interesting. I imagine brown weathering powder would look good around the hatch. I'm not sold on the scheme, but I do like the yellow sand base color which I played with on the chassis and vanquisher turret. I made a conscious choice to not paint chip the second test, just to see what it would look like prior to weathering. I haven't had the opportunity to use sand colored weathering powders yet, so the tracks on this guy will be interesting. Paint chipping will eventually be applied with a black/brown color along with desert yellow streaking grime. It is al title monotone, but I think it looks better than the green and yellow turret.

Wolves

Long before the new running wolves came out for the Space Wolves, I purchased a bunch of what were labeled wolves on the GW site. It turns out they are mounts for goblins I think, and have piggish features. However odd the sculpts were, they are excellent test models for Thunderwolf cavalry which is built and ready to be be painted. Having never painted dogs/wolves before, I did a little research and found a video for painting wolves up on buypainted. I think the link was youtube, but whatever the case, you are pointed in the right direction. These wolves took very little work with the help of the airbrush. The thing to note is that while the colors are a little off due to morning photography, the wolves looked much better prior to adding washes to them. I think 50% is the new 100%, and 25% is the new 50%. The washes glazed the model rather than stay in the recesses, which would be nice if I were worried about pooling, but alas, I am not.

Grey Wolf Recipe

• Base color: Eshin Grey
• Top color: Abbadon Black
• Belly color: Fenrisian Grey
• Nuln Oil 50% strength wash over full model

Tan Wolf Recipe

• Base color: XV88
• Top color: Rhinox
• Belly color: Baneblade 
• Agrax Earthshade 50% strength wash over full model
• Light dusting on the feet and nose of ushabi bone

Brown Wolf Recipe

• Tan Wolf Recipe
• Base color: XV88
• Top color: Rhinox
• Belly color: Baneblade 
• Agrax Earthshade 50% strength wash over full model
• Light dusting on the feet and nose of ushabi boneAgrax Earthshade 100% strength wash over full model

I am out of test models now, so short of dunking these in simple green, I may just start on the big daddies themselves. That is of course unless anyone knows of other tutorials I should watch, or other material I should read before I paint these wolves up.

Updated Glowing Power fist

Ron, graciously shared his suggestions on how to improve the glowing power fist I painted in response to his first article, and though I did not have a lot of painting time, I did have enough time to throw down a layer of bleached bone on areas that should not see the glow. The painting is not complete, as real life intruded, but I am much happier with the results already.

OSL DW Chainfist Using Ron's FTW Technique

I've never tried to paint OSL effects on any of my miniatures. However after reading Ron's tutorial over at FTW today I decided to give it a shot. Like most GW fanatics, I have a load of extra power fists, chain fists, and assorted other bits. In order to make my attempt as close to Ron's as possible I decided to paint a chain fist. The bonus was that if this worked well I could rip an arm off one of my terminators and give him with some glowing action.

1. I started with a thinned down dark angels green wash on all the hand parts, painting from the interior out as the tutorial suggested.
2. Then I took scorpion green and painted the major plates on the hand sections, leaving the darker green in the recesses.
3. Once this was done I added increasing amounts of yellow to the mix in order to lighten the green, painting all the edges of the hand, and som parts of the chain fist casing with this color.
4. At the very end I added white to the mix to increase the brightness.
5. In order to achieve the glow, I used Tamiya thinner to make a wash of the scorpion green/yellow mix, and glazed the portions I thought would be hit by the light.

I am not sure I like my version of OSL, but it was a fun experiment. My recommendation to everyone out there is to paint up old bits! Use them as test pieces. I am going to paint up a helmet now and see if I can make glowing eyes look good.

DKOK Ruined Centaur Objective Marker

I took a break from my tau to paint up an objective marker for my DKOK army. I have all of the miniatures now, and am just working our color schemes. To that end, I present my mint green and bone colored ruined centaur assault vehicle. The right side of the vehicle will be buried in mud. I haven't put the weathering powders on yet, but I am already pleased. I think scab red is going to be a really good accent color on these.

My army has 6 Centaurs, and I am considering making ruined versions of all of them. The centaur itself is just an amazing vehicle. Open topped, a heavy stubber, and a weapon mount for the squads heavy weapons. My company and platoon command squads in addition to 2 engineer squads, commissar general, and quarter master all get them.

Tau Stealth Suits Painted With Washes

Last night while my wife watched the Sex and the City movie, I painted my first stealth suit team. Using the pure wash technique I learned painting the stealthy fire warrior, I was able to get these guys done extremely quickly. One slight alteration from my normal painting method, is to go back over some areas of the paint chipping with dots of sepia wash. This makes some of the paint chips look older than the rest. Overall I am really happy with how the tau are turning out. I plan to finish up the red fire warrior squad today, though my purchase of one of those Kroot gorilla looking horse things is providing a difficult temptation. I would love to paint up some vehicles or battle suites as well.

Tau Fire Warriors Painted With Washes

Since I was happy with the previous tau painting test, I thought, why not try one more painting test. This time I used the all wash method, much like the kroot. I think I may have found a way to paint my stealth suits. What do you think? Should I maybe paint my fire warriors this way anyway?

The recipe is dirt simple.

• Black wash for armor plates
• Purple wash for head
• Blue wash for cloth
• Boltgun metel stippled on afterwards.

Tau Test: 4 Red Tau

I grabbed my camera from the car, and painted up a few more variations of the red battle damaged tau. One of the things I learned this go around was to thin my sepia so it did not produce such dramatic changed in the color of the clothing. I kind of like these guys. I will definitely paint up 2 more of them so there is at lease a full squad.

If I go this route for troops, my vehicles will be chipped red and blue from the top, and a dirty chipped cream color underneath. I think that would look pretty good. I will use the orange for sept markings. Is this the scheme?

Tau Test:Green

I have green paint. I have seemingly unlimited numbers of tau fire warriors, so how about another tau-test! This time I used reaper master series paints, and sepia wash. I am going to have to extract my real camera from the car so I can take real photos again, but I think these probably do the mini justice. After three test minis in one night I am starting to notice a trend. Hard lining does not look good on tau. I think the minis with simple base coats and heavy washes look the best. These test minis all look over worked to me.

Should I battle damage this one as well? Which color scheme do you like the most?

Battle Damaged Tau Fire Warrior

I am still not sure what color to paint my fire warriors, so I thought I would try another test mini. This guy got one of the city bases even though he is not painted terribly well. I am thinking of moving to orange all around, with none of the mottled dark red. I am not sure the the battle damage works on a mini this small. I plan to try the wash technique tomorrow, which might work well with these older plastic models.