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?

Ghost Ark Rant

So like many of you, I rushed out an bought a whole neuron army this past weekend. I've got a color scheme I am really looking forward to painting, but the deal is that I cannot start painting until the whole army is built. That way, I can ensure the colors and blending are the same, as well as minimize base color painting time, since I can do it in bulk with my airbrush. I had planned to share photos of my mint green enamel colored nectrons tonight, but that was before I met the ghost ark.

Ok---now the rant.

Seriously..what do I have to do to keep the spine of the thing together. I have glued, scraped, re-glued, and repeated the following process so much at this point that I am slowly dissolving the spine. It looks more organic now that when I bought it. Why on earth did they not just create a support spine running the length of the kit, and then have the spines snap into it. The two sprue symmetry would still work. I love the finished ghost ark kit, and I really want to paint it, but glue has to dry...again.

Cracked Desert Bases Using Crackle Paint

After seeing a great video making dry mud using some unobtainable material from the UK, I decided to give DecoArt Texture Crackle(brown), and Tim Holtze Distress Crackle Paint(Antique Linen). I am pretty pleased with how both materials worked. It did take all night for them to dry, and I have not figured out how to keep the chunks from falling off, but with the power of resin casting I can stand to ruin the master in order to make a better mold. One of the key advantages of this stuff is that in addition to looking realistic, it can be painted around embedded objects such as skeletons, rocks, or any other bit I might want to add to a base.