How to paint an Imp Fists Dreadnought nicely Quickshadebased

[Saphos]

Hello everybody.

 

For my store I painted the nice new Space Marine Venerable Dreadnought from the Blackbox. The kit fits together nicely and gives you plenty of options to tinker around. Recently I sold my FW Ultramarines Venerable Dreadnought and I don´t regret it at all. I like the model a lot and it is plastic which is a big plus imho. Additionally, the arms are easily interchangible without magnets or such. The base is from MicroArts Studio.

 

I basecoated white from the can and then did a double layer basecoat of Sunburst Yellow by brush.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4401304349/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4401304409/

 

 

Then I drybrushed the Dread and its weapons with white. That works very nicely on the yellow basecoat. In the pictures it looks harsher then in real life due to the flash. The drybrush is necessary to give better contrast for the Quickshading in the last step. You will be able to see the highlights through the shade. You can leave this step out and save some time, but the result will look not nearly as good.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4401304465/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4401304553/

 

 

Next comes the detailwork. Painting all metalparts cleanly in Mithril Silver and a little red and black here and there. ^^ I gave the metalparts a subtle wash in Badab Black but the step proved to be not necessary and leaving it out could have saved me a couple of minutes without influencing the end result. Well, you paint and learn. Painting the black on took some time as you see every little mistake on the bright yellow. You will be able to see the highlights through the shade so I think that taking a good effort on a clean result is always worth it.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4408233997/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4408234069/

 

 

Now we apply the Quickshade, Strongtone in this case. I took a large brush for covering the large areas and with a small brush I took up all of the excess shade. This way you have a lot of control to where apply the shade and you don´t waste the stuff as you don´t dip and thus have to shake it off. You can correct little mistakes by rethinng the applied shade with a paintthinner. But you need to be very careful with that to not cause more harm then good.

 

The endresult at first appeared darker then expected, but this is the first larger model I paint with this technique. Maybe I will try to thin down the shade a little with the next model. As you can see, a matt varnish is mandatory unless you happen to like the gloss (which I don´t).

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4408234145/

 

 

And the endresult from different angles. Varnish apllied is Vallejo Matt varnish from the can:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4411310110/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4410543057/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4410543241/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4411310416/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4411310318/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4411310266/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4411310532/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4411310596/

 

I am quite satisfied with the result. The varnish makes it look brighter than after applying the shade. So maybe not thinning down the shade. In real life the model looks a little better, more matt, but my camerafu is yet not strong enough.

 

The rest of my army is going to look like this more or less (my prototype for this paintscheme):

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4401339259/sizes/l/

[Montuhotep]

This looks superb! 1 question though; what is this 'Quick shade'? What colour did you use for it? The results are quite stunning.

[Dusktiger]

quickshade is a brand of varnish-like product that is like our citadel washes in a sense. basically, the concept behind quickshade is you'd paint your model a simple solid color, and when you have that done, you dip the entire model into the tin of quickshade and then shake off the excess and let it dry. the finished results looks like you took your time to do highlights and shadings and everything, but all you really did was paint your mini the base color and then dip it in the quickshade. but saphos' decision to drybrush a brighter highlight on the edges of his model makes the quickshade process look even better than just painting it a solid color. i rather like the idea cause it would let you paint a whole company in a much much shorter time than the usual methods would take. too bad my army's metallic colors or i'd be using this stuff too.

[Vredesbyrd]

Awesome tutorial, very tempted to do an Imperial Fists army following this tutorial now.

 

Just a quick question, which tone of Quickshade did you use?

[Montuhotep]

Just a quick question, which tone of Quickshade did you use?

And where would someone in the UK be able to get some, do you think?

[Beldri]

Vredesbyrd - on one of the pictures it says in the title Strong Tone so I assume that is the Quickshade he used.

 

Paladin7221 - You can buy this stuff in the UK http://www.thearmypainter.com/partners.php?country=gb - I got mine from Warlord games who were very good as although I had ordered some basing stuff which they could get hold they set me a free sprue of Roman soldiers as an apology, which I thought was very nice of them ^_^.

 

I am assuming this is from the Army Painter line, I am currently using the Dark Tone to quickly paint up a number of Orks for a friend of mine and we were both impressed with the results. The added drybrushing to the Dreadnought really made it look brilliant, I think I may use that idea for the AoBR dread I have.

 

Very nice tutorial Saphos

[Montuhotep]

Aha! Thanks Beldri!

[Angelfire]

Army Painter's quickshade is repackaged wood stain.

 

A far cheaper a more commonly available alternative is something like Minwax Water Based Wood Stain. Both water based and oil based stains work greatly on miniatures. Of what I know, the most commonly used shade is Minwax's Rosewood.

 

I've personally never dipped anything other than this time I was thirteen and on a tropical island with nothing other than a bare minimum number of paint colors. The learning curve is pretty small: once you figure out through trial and error exactly how much of the stain "dip" you need to shake off most of your miniatures will come out nicely. Mastery, and knowing how much you have to do before and after the tip and actual dipping techniques, is quite difficult however.

 

-Angelfire

[Saphos]

Thank´s all. :tu: Glad you like it.

 

Yup, StrongTone it is.

 

I bought the Armypainter Shade as I was not aware of this technique before (silly me). The price tag was okay for me but if you are of the experimental mindset, you can try out the other stains. They indeed work as well. After my pot has been used up I´ll probably try something else out. Maybe not at this army to get the shade all the same for the army but after that, saving money is always nice.

 

Although I am not thirteen and more like 31, and have the full range of paints available to me (and paint for like 17 years), I simply don´t enjoy painting so much. So I don´t like to put all the work into an army many people expect and rather use the shortcut of a "pimped" Quickshade and live with the sentiments involved. I have painted quite a number of miniatures quite nicely but never finished a complete army in all those years (motivation always slipped). The use of Quickshade is the happy medium I was always looking for. It offers enough visual appeal to keep me happy while being much quicker to paint than using traditional techniques. There are so many people out there that never get around to paint their army. So something like Armypainter´s Quickshade, that offers this low learning curve to a quite nice result and makes people aware of it in the first place (like me), is a very good thing.

[Vredesbyrd]

I simply don´t enjoy painting so much. So I don´t like to put all the work into an army many people expect and rather use the shortcut of a "pimped" Quickshade and live with the sentiments involved.

 

I'm much the same, not a fan of painting at all, but I hate playing with unpainted minis. I'm much happier about the tin of Quickshade I have in the cupboard now I've seen your tutorial. Should hopefully work out on grey armoured Marines too.

[Saphos]

Hmmm, grey is tricky, as are all "cold" colours. I tried it out on Midblue which works kinda nice (wanted to Ultramarines in the first place). It depends on your personal taste. I prefer lighter, warm colours as red and yellow. Thus the reason I started to paint my Marines as ImpFists was because I wanted to do a "yellow" army because I noticed that the Shade would work very well on yellow. ^^ I already think about a Bloodangels army (in the longterm) because the Shade works so nicely on red as well.

[Angelfire]

Saphos, I've got questions for you.

 

With this resurgence of popularity in dipping, I'm thinking about trying dipped models from the Tyranid or Trollblood (Hordes) ranges.

 

For Army Painter's stain, what volume is in each can?

Is it oil based, water based, polyurethane based, or something else?

How viscous is it compared to wood stain? I'm guessing it can't be applied by airbrush, but if it was thin enough to, that would worth tryin too.

The strong tone that you have, what color is the pigment? (They specify the dark tone as having a black pigment. i.e.: if you diluted it down, what color would it appear? I'm guessing some sort of brown.)

 

I don't know if you'll be able to answer everything, but you obviously had a great experience with it (your miniatures are remarkably spectacular), so I'd love your input.

 

Thanks!

-Angelfire

[winterdyne]

Very nice work. Really does look quite neat - what was the total time taken, you reckon?

[Saphos]

It took some time. I started on sunday the 31st. The quite some storm during the day so basecoating was not easy. ^^ This evening the model received the yellow basecoat. Then some time moday, tuesday and wednesday evening. On thursday I started late in the afternoon and painted until 3:30 in the morning. On friday evening the quickshade had hardened enough for the varnish. Quite some hours, I intentionally never count. The details like the blackened windows on the troso took the longest as the had to be cleanly painted in order to look good.

 

@ Angelfire

 

I'll do my best. :)

 

I'll have to look up the volume at home but the tin is not big. But it lasts quite long. If you buy a normal woodstain it will be cheaper as already mentioned.

It has solvents in it, but I can't tell you what it is based on. Stinks like hell and can be thinned down by ordinary paint thinner.

I don't have much experience with woodstains but it seems to be of the same thick consistency. So a no for airbrush unless you thin it down so much that it looses its quality for doing this strong shading effect (I think).

Strongtone has brown pigment. You can see that very well on my model when you look at before and after applying the Shade. The brown tinge is easily visible. I tried out thinning down the Shade strongly. This gave a nice light brown shading.

 

I hope this helps. I am indeed quite a proponent for this stuff now. It is still a little tricky to use if you use on the level I do but it is a great help for me. I hope you will have a good experience, too! On Tyranids with the right paint scheme it should work excellently. The blue of the Trollbloods is a little more tricky a I wrote in my reply before. I will post pictures tomorrow of my two Ultramarines I did as testmodels. Unless you like really dark models, you need to give the models a lighter basecolour than you normally wood to even out the darkening effect of the Shade. You will need to do one or two testmodels to find a good result. A friend of mine used Golden Yellow on his ImpFist prototypemodel and this gave a much darker, more caramel-like tone than mine, although the two colours are not that much apart.

 

Which paintscheme do you have in mind for your Tyranids?

[Angelfire]

Thanks for the answers, Saphos.

 

Yeah I really wished that army painter had a light blue primer spray-- I emailed them and their reply was that they would release a light blue in November of this year, which is unfortunately right around the start of a busy year.

 

For trollbloods, I was hoping to use a light blue spray for the flesh and hand paint all the rest, and shade the models with a black varnish or ArmyPainter's dark tone.

 

For Tyranids I was considering either a purple or blue scheme. I'll edit this post later and say more.

 

-Angelfire

[Saphos]

Hmm, you have chosen tricky colours. But as always that is a matter of taste.

 

Here are the pictures of my prototype Ultramarines:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4422426306/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4422...in/photostream/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cplhicks/4422...in/photostream/

 

White primer. The base colour is magic blue from Vallejo, which is a slightly lighter blue than Enchanted Blue from GW. One mini received an Ice Blue drybrush, the other one with Skull White. I personally like the harsher highlights of the Skull White better. It turned out nice, but not as well as with my ImpFists.

 

Hope that helps.

[Tech Brother Torgo]

Saphos - I really like your test mini for the rest of the fists army. My question is about the chapter symbol on his left shoulderpad. Did you do this freehand or is it the transfer? Also, was it done pre or post dip?

[Ironjens]

Ah, your dread looks wonderful. Very smart idea to drybrush it with white before applying the dip. If you check out my sig you'll se how 6000 points of non-drybrushed dipped fists look like:)

 

Good luck painting your soon to be stunning army. Once you go yellow...

[Angelfire]

Hmm yes I do like the white drybrush better.

 

Do you have any experience with light blue?

 

I was thinking for Tyranids: a light blue flesh color and a dark blue carapace or dark blue flesh and light blue carapace. I'm favoring the first one though. I may also try using a blue wood stain over a white primer to minimize the work I have to do.

 

-Angelfire

[Saphos]

@ Tech Brother

 

It is a transfer. I have cut in the edge (from the outer edge to the fist) so that it better follows the curve of the shoulder pad. And it was done pre-dip. I paint over the transfers with Vallejo mattvarnish so that the better stick to the miniature.

 

@ Ironjens

 

Quite impressive overall. ;) Some nice conversions in there and the Shade really makes a difference.

 

@ Angelfire

 

The coils of the Plasmacannon were done in Lightningbolt Blue and then drybrushed in white. Didn't look too bad, but apart from that I have no experience with the use of the Shade on larger surfaces of light blue. But I think in case you like the muddy look, it should turn out quite nicely.

 

I do prefer the first variant also as this gives you a much larger area of a lighter colour for the Shade to be most effectice on. The blue woodstain might be a very interesting variant. I am very curious about how that would turn out. All in all you have to decide how much work you want to do. I personally would always do the drybrush stage as this gives you a so much better result with not so much extra work. If you just want to be done quickly, avoid all unneccasry steps. A good friend of mine uses the Citadel washes almost exclusively on his undead and this works out quite nicely if you know what you are doing (as always^^)

[Tech Brother Torgo]

I'm planning on testing this out on a couple minis this weekend, and I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how a tank would look using this method. Most of the ones I've seen have a very heavy marbled look that I'm not too keen on, but I love the gradients that are formed on the large dreadnought plates. There are several good topics on dipping such as this thread and Prefect's method,

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...;showarticle=37

 

but nobody (that I can find) has much posted on results for tanks.

[Saphos]

Well, I am gradually moving up the scale. ^^ I have a Rhino nearly finished but this will still take some time to get fully done. I have to put together a lot of miniatures for a tournament in three weeks which takes away from painting time currently.

 

The larger it gets, the more blotchy/marbled it can get indeed. You can already notice that to a certain degree on the Dreadnought. I think the key is to apply the Shade quickly so that it can evenly set before it starts to dry and thus stopps to flow evenly out. Maybe you should try it on a larger flat surfce first. So you prime and paint a piece of thick cardboard, emulating the large surface on a tank. you can then find the best method to get the effect you want. Or you wait until I have finished the Rhino. ^^

 

Hope that helps.

 

The other thread you have posted does a great job as well. The yellow ink is a brilliant idea, maybe I should try that myself. I don't like his last step where he paints over the Shade again but each to their own. He achieves the lighter, more yellow finish I was aiming for originally.

[Tech Brother Torgo]

Thanks for the reply, it sounds like experimentation is in order! When I get some free time on my hands I'll give it a shot, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing your results.

[Saphos]

Me too. ^^

[Zedakiah]

Nice work Saphos!!

Have you done any test BA mini's would really like to see what the dip would look like on a red.