BCK's Thread of Stuff: Super Heavy

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

My brother is having trouble choosing a paint scheme for his new army of Sisters - welcome to the club - and keeps hammering that he wants something "easy to paint that looks good" and I keep recommending a metallic paint scheme with an oil wash on top of it as the pinnacle of that directive. He started doing searches for metallic paint schemes on YouTube and found the Vince Venturella video from a couple years ago where he tries out some metallic pigment powder from Greenstuff World and since I'm subscribed to VV's channel and have been for a while, I saw that video when it was new promptly ordered 3 of the pigment colors from. And promptly forgot about them as soon as they showed up.

 

When my brother showed the video to me and was like "Holy crap, have you seen this?", I felt like I was in one of those "You're not going to believe this" memes, lol. So, I mixed up some and brush painted it on an old metal Sisters model I had testing some colors on to show my brother, and it looked pretty good. I happened to have some of the Vallejo Metal Varnish that VV used to mix up the stuff in the video and it took a little finagling to get the consistency and coverage just right, but it looked good. Not amazing, but good. Easy as pie, as in the video, it covered straight over the variously colored paint that was already on the figure. I didn't get any pics of it though.

Today, I wanted to see how it might work through my airbrush, and good God-Emperor, it's amazing!

 

 

My brother was outside on the patio when I went to show it to him and the reflections of the sunlight off of this thing was making us flinch, lol! And this is the Bronze color, the darkest of the three I got from GSW (Gold and Antique Gold the other two). Look at that! It's TMM without any effort! You can see reflections not just on the smooth large base I set these minis on to photograph, but reflections on the pebble-textured slotta base!

[jaxom]

That’s so over the top in a good way. If I ever had to do Custodes….

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

 

I did some more experimenting with the pigment powders.
1) The same Sisters model sprayed with the Bronze pigment.

2) Bronze pigment mixed with 4 drops of Chestnut Ink (the old GW stuff) which was about the same volume of paint I had mixed up with the pigment and I expected it to be much darker than this with that much ink it. Pigment are stronk.

3) Vallejo Model Color Bronze thinned down to go through my airbrush and a tiny dash of the Bronze pigment to smooth out the very noticeable metallic flecks in it. I love it.

4) The Gold pigment powder.

5) The Gold pigment powder with two layers of Blood Angels Red Contrast sprayed over it per my brother's request for possible armor color for his sisters. You can see a little of the metallic pigment showing through in the pic, but it's stronger in person.

[ZeroWolf]

That middle one is a fantastic looking colour 

[Nexus17]

These are superb!

 

The sister in particular looks just so smooth.

 

Did you have any trouble putting on the normal paints afterwards as I've had particularly shiny metallics deliver a finish other paints just slip off and it's a pain to get anything to go over the top. It doesn't look like that's the case here.

 

 

[Firedrake Cordova]

I really like the middle one (Model Colour Bronze).

 

With the armour on the sister, are you going to leave it as-is, or are you going to "black-line" the panels to give definition to the armour segments?

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

7 hours ago, ZeroWolf said:

That middle one is a fantastic looking colour 

 

Vallejo Model Color Bronze has been my favorite non-sliver metallic paint for years now and this little trick just made it better. :D

 

6 hours ago, Nexus17 said:

These are superb!

 

The sister in particular looks just so smooth.

 

Did you have any trouble putting on the normal paints afterwards as I've had particularly shiny metallics deliver a finish other paints just slip off and it's a pain to get anything to go over the top. It doesn't look like that's the case here.

 

 

 

I think the sister looks smoother than the eldar because that model is broken up into much smaller areas where the eldar are almost like marines in their wide areas of open space... and those pewter models don't have the smoothest surface either.

 

The red paint I put over it is AK Interactive Burnt Red and their paints all have extremely good coverage, and that's two thin coats on the model with no problems adhering. I might try a couple other brands on top of it to see how they do.

 

5 hours ago, Firedrake Cordova said:

I really like the middle one (Model Colour Bronze).

 

With the armour on the sister, are you going to leave it as-is, or are you going to "black-line" the panels to give definition to the armour segments?

 

If my brother decides to go with one of these metallic options for his sisters there will be blacklining, most likely an oil paint wash.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Some test paint jobs on some SoB models, finally.

 

 

My brother requested one of the VMC Bronze with a dash of bronze pigment, and one in silver that I painted with a base of Vallejo Metal Color Gunmetal Grey (which is still quite a bright silver despite how it looks in the paint pot so I darkened with it a couple drops of black ink) and then a zenithal splash of Metal Color Duraluminum. Which were then followed by a heavy wash of 50/50 black and sepia oil paints. My brother liked the bronze one best out of the first test models but I think he prefers the silver one with this second round on proper Sisters, though a final decision hasn't been made yet.

 

Also, I couldn't help but hear the Silver Bride song from Amorphis in my head while I was painting these up and ended up listening to the entire Skyforger album again. Any fans?

[Firedrake Cordova]

They're both nice tones.  

 

Looking at the images, the shading provided by the oil wash appears to be quite subtle - is that the case in person, or is it just the images?

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

It looks subtle but both of these were extremely shiny. Not as much as the first test with the pure pigment powder but it's quite a difference from when they were freshly painted which I didn't get a pic of. 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

And back to my attempts at the paint job I envisioned for my custom chapter, and it's wearing me down. I might be wearing it down as well.

 

First was this test where I mixed Iron Hands Steel with a slightly warm light grey paint in different ratios trying to get a cared for but worn and burnished look to metallic armor.

 

 

1:1 is equal parts, the 2:1 is two parts grey paint to one part metallic. And I loved the 2:1 look, though it never looks quite the same in photos as it does in person.

 

Now that I'm looking toward building an army to play 10th with, I want to make sure that it looks decent on the tabletop where it's not in ideal lighting a few inches from your face. Thinking that a higher quality metallic paint with finer metallic flakes in it might make it pop more, I tried the same 2:1 ratio with Vallejo Metal Color Gunmetal and Duraluminum for a darker basecoat and the normal mid-tone.

 

It looked like white paint with a satin varnish coat. There was still a hint of the metallic sheen, but if I hadn't been the one to just paint it I wouldn't have thought it was a mix of metallic and regular paint. I even tried a 1:1 and repainted the mini to see if a higher ratio of metal would make a difference... Nope. Back to the drawing board, with metallics that fit somewhere between the huge metallic flakes in GWs paint, and the extremely fine ones in the Metal Color ones.

 

Turns out, Vallejo Game Color Gunmetal and Silver are the sweet spot for me. I did a new test with 2:1 paint/metal and it looked a lot better from a distance as well as having the right amount of metal sheen I was wanting, but I had to get away from that light grey color because even with the new test it still looked more white paint than metallic. One final test, with an AK Interactive color called Anthracite Grey which is a lovely dark turquoise-grey color that's slightly de-saturated and I think I'm happy with the result.

 

Not the best pic because I was in a hurry and I forgot to adjust the brightness of my insanely bright LED lamp and it bleached out the colors on both models somewhat, but there will be more as a I keep working towards finalizing this scheme.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Evil Eye]

On 5/2/2023 at 6:26 AM, Brother-Chaplain Kage said:

 

I did some more experimenting with the pigment powders.
1) The same Sisters model sprayed with the Bronze pigment.

2) Bronze pigment mixed with 4 drops of Chestnut Ink (the old GW stuff) which was about the same volume of paint I had mixed up with the pigment and I expected it to be much darker than this with that much ink it. Pigment are stronk.

3) Vallejo Model Color Bronze thinned down to go through my airbrush and a tiny dash of the Bronze pigment to smooth out the very noticeable metallic flecks in it. I love it.

4) The Gold pigment powder.

5) The Gold pigment powder with two layers of Blood Angels Red Contrast sprayed over it per my brother's request for possible armor color for his sisters. You can see a little of the metallic pigment showing through in the pic, but it's stronger in person.

Man that's fantastic! I've used mica powders with medium through an airbrush and they've been nice but this makes those models look like bronze castings! A shame I'm a bit leery about buying from GSW (TLDR: some questionable business practices), might have to see if anyone else makes fine metallic pigment.

 

As a side note, I really love those Fire Dragon sculpts; after you're done using them as test subjects you should strip them and paint them up!

[Firedrake Cordova]

That's interesting what happened when you mixed white paint with the Metal Colour - like you, I'd have expected a different result!  

 

Do you have any of the Vallejo Model Air metallics? I think they sit part-way between the Game Colour/Air and Metal Colour paints in terms of pigment size.

[Forté]

The Vallejo Model Air metallics are lovely to use. I use them with a hairy stick. Metal Color are good too, but really thin so need a few coats.

 

@Evil Eye yeah... erm... GSW... yeah; nah. With you on that one for a few reasons over the years.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

What's up with GSW? I haven't heard anything great or awful about them.

 

I bought those metal pigments several years ago and that's all the business I've done with them.

[Forté]

23 minutes ago, Brother-Chaplain Kage said:

What's up with GSW? I haven't heard anything great or awful about them.

 

I bought those metal pigments several years ago and that's all the business I've done with them.

It's better in private

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Welp, looks like my brother has decided he can't paint the sisters to a standard he's happy with right now, and returned the boarding patrol and the whatever box set he also got. Around the time we were doing that, a friend who got out of the hobby gave my brother all of his 40k stuff which is mostly orks. There's a lot of stuff - and a good bit of it is pewter - but the last time the guy played a game his orks still had a Mob Up rule and there's almost 100 assembled boyz in various states of paintin, and around 70 more in loose parts and stuff still on sprues. My brother is really liking the greenskins and I came up with a way to quickly paint some Bad Moons for the friend a while back but never got around to trying it. Which is paint the skin and tunic/armor yellow (airbrushing in my case) and putting green Contrast over it to try to get the lighter, more olive/lime skin shade I like.

 

Left is the yellow airbrushed on, middle is 2 layers of the Vallejo Xpress Color Orc Skin, and right is one layer of Contrast Orc Flesh

 

 

I like the Xpress Color in the middle best, but my brother likes the Contrast better. Good news is that he seems have a much easier time with less than amazing results on the orks compared to the sisters he was painting and there will definitely be more ork stuff to show off in the future. Like a Gargantuan Squiggoth I currently have soaking in paint stripper, or this alternate Ghaz model I found and printed. I'm painting those last two. :)

 

 

On my end, I think I'm going to try going into 10th with Eldar instead of marines. On the super-heavy side of that, I've been wanting to get a better distortion cannon for my Cobra grav tank for a long time, and I tried digital kitbashing something from mostly d-cannons used on the heavy weapons platform or the like 'cause the one Cobra scale gun I found looked all kinds of wrong. So I modeled it myself, taking measurements from the real thing with calipers, and with some pointers by a friend when I got stuck in the modeling program.

 

The render:

 

The print next to the real thing.

 

 

And on the tank itself. IT'S SO PRETTY!

 

Edited May 31, 2023 by Brother-Chaplain Kage

[Firedrake Cordova]

I think I'm with you on the Vallejo Xpress colour one looking better, especially around the face. I'm wondering if the Ork Flesh one might look better if it were applied thinned down with Contrast Medium? To me, it looks a bit blotchy/harsh.

 

Obligatory Juan Hidalgo 'Eavy Contrast video (he uses a mix with Plaguebearer Flesh):

 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

That's a nice looking combo for ork skin and I'll pass that along to my brother, thanks!

 

In other news, you ever vastly underestimate the size of a model that you want to strip the paint from and the container it will go in? Probably not very often. How many times do you need to paint strip a gargantuan squiggoth though?

 

New 5 gallon bucket from Home Depot? NOPE! Not wide enough and if I placed the big hunk of resin in there vertically, it would take probably 5 gallons of Super Clean to cover it and I would want to cover it completely and not have to worry about flipping it over and resting it on its face and pointed tongue. That thing is a solid lump of resin and is quite hefty.

 

Big square container that a huge amount of cat litter came in? Also nope. I didn't want to spend $30-40 on a container just for this, or that much in Super Clean to use one of those two options, and set about trying to find something in the house that would work. Ended up using a plastic drawer from a cheap little storage container in the garage but it would only accommodate one half of the monstrous resin hunk when laying on its side and took nearly two days to get the old paint properly loose.

 

Turned out well in the end, though.

 

 

I'm definitely using a rattle can to prime this thing and not my airbrush!

[Firedrake Cordova]

That's definitely a good result for paint removal!  

 

In one review of BioStrip 20, I did see someone put the model in a bag, rather than a tub, to try to reduce the amount of cleaner needed.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

My brother wanted to try out some Bad Moons contrast so I airbrushed some of the monopose nobz from Assault on Black Reach as well as the Fungus Chungus, with a basecoat of a medium brown, white zenithal, and then Bad Moons on top of it... and neither one of us really care for the greenish tinge to the color and prefer the golden yellow I originally sprayed on the figures years ago for the first owner. The yellow is a lot brighter in this pic due to my desk lamp, and I was finally able to get the arms to stick long enough for a pic.

 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

A fresh coat of paint in a different yellow and I'm on my way with a lot of slow glazing work to start adding some shading and one of the worst experiences ever trying to paint a part of a model - Gaz's face - because it's behind all the huge protrusions from the gob and his own tusk. I knew it was going to be a pain even before I printed it, but damn.

 

[Nexus17]

Loving the appearance of greenskins in this thread!

 

That yellow is absolutely sumptuous.

 

I've really struggled to find a quick ork skin recipe as I like a 'naturalistic' (or as close as, given we're talking about violent space mushrooms!) tone - plaguebearer contrast is closest of the GW offerings but not quite there for me. I've not tried any of the alternative ranges but the vallejo above looks great.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I've always liked greenskins but stayed away as much as possible because I could easily get sucked into converting every single model in a horde army and I have enough trouble finishing models as it is that I don't want to do conversions on every one of them.

 

The yellow on the orks that I painted for the original owner, probably 8 years ago now, was a Reaper color that is no longer made (I was using it for small Imperial Fists force at the time), but I had this idea of thinning down some normal thinned green paint to go over it. Even that approach was still too much work for the friend and we gave it another go in 2019 when Contrast came out, but some folks just can't do the mini painting side of the hobby.

 

The newer yellow I'm using for Ghaz was initially Vallejo Model Color Flat Yellow, but it was... well... too flat and boring.   A 50/50 mix with AK Interactive Volcanic Yellow got me that hint of golden yellow I was looking for without going full Imperial Fists. I still want the Bad Moons yellow to reflect the sort of caution yellow that construction vehicles have. The shading is with Vallejo Xpress Color Martian Orange - their Contrast-like paint line - which I airbrush from below and then in a few specific spots from above. Where needed, I filled in areas that the airbrush didn't get to or pulled it back with the yellow mix if it got where I didn't want it.

Edited May 31, 2023 by Brother-Chaplain Kage

[Grotsmasha]

On 6/1/2023 at 7:12 AM, Nexus17 said:

Loving the appearance of greenskins in this thread!

 

That yellow is absolutely sumptuous.

 

I've really struggled to find a quick ork skin recipe as I like a 'naturalistic' (or as close as, given we're talking about violent space mushrooms!) tone - plaguebearer contrast is closest of the GW offerings but not quite there for me. I've not tried any of the alternative ranges but the vallejo above looks great.

I've been slap/chop'n and using 3 parts Plaguebearer to 1 part Scorpion Green, it's damn near perfect for a single coat. The Runtherds at the back had 1 part Ork Flesh added to the mix.

 

Spoiler

 

Edited June 3, 2023 by Grotsmasha