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Totem Pole

By Totem Pole
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Totem Pole Battle-Brother

Totem Pole

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When I did my Imperial Fists squad a few months back, the idea was to create a quick unit as an example for clients, of a mid-level painting quality I could provide. But I got lost in that project and it grew to be something else entirely, with a lot more work made on each model. That squad got me some attention, but I was still left without any examples of quicker painting levels.

So I decided to paint another squad, but a simpler one this time. Without any airbrushed area highlights, with simpler weathering and focusing on edge highlighting for a more crisp 'Eavy Metal inpired look. The goal would be to spend no more than 2-3 days on each model.

I decided to go with Blood Angels Devastators. There's something in that red and blue combination, that I find eyeplesing, plus the simple nature of the unit, will go well with the idea behind this project.

So here's the wip. This what I managed to do in 2 days. As I said, I don't want to go beyond 3 days on each squad member. That's why I am posting the wip here now. To get some motivation, to finish the guy tommorow, or get some public shaming. If I don't post pics of the finished model by this time tommorow, You all have my permission to flood this thread with pictures of penises or Nicholas Cage.

The armour is more or less finished on this guy. What's left to do are metallic areas, the gems, some minor weathering touch ups, and a bit more blacklining.

Oh, and the varnishing, which I will do now, before the metallics (I don't want the protective coat to dull their shine, and the alcohol based metallics I use are supposed to be more resiliant to wear and tear than normal acrylics anyway). And that's something I dread. I've been having problems with varnishing lately. Up until recently, I didn't really had any need for protective coats, as with display models You don't really need to worry about wear and tear. But as I started painting gaming units for clinets and Ebay, I was forced to seal my minis and the effects were mixed. Frosting is a constant worry for my. Especially since aerosol cans varnishes is what I've been using so far. With the Blood Angels Devastators I'll be trying something new. First I'll cover them with GW ardcoat closs with brush, for protection. Then I'll try to dull the shine with Army Painter anti-shine I just bought, but I'll be applying it using my airbrush, instead of a spray can, so we'll see how it goes. Will try it on a test model first.

http://i.imgur.com/o8URlga.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/iQsSfRX.jpg

LutherMax Venerable Brother

LutherMax

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Love your style dude, I shall be watching with keen interest!

 

What you need to watch out for with varnish is the effect it has on the colour - especially with red. The gloss coat will make it look super vibrant, but satin or matte varnishes can dull red quite a lot, especially if they're not clear varnishes. You might find you need to mix a bit of gloss in with your dull coat to get the right sheen.

Totem Pole Battle-Brother

Totem Pole

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That red is glorious, as is the blue. Would it be possible to get a tutorial on both/either?

 

I'll write the recipie tommorow, as I have to go now. Unfortunately I won't be able to give You specific colours, only approximates of mixes. Couse I am a cheap bastard, who doesn't own much paints, and instead mixes most of his highlights and shadows by eye.

 

 

Love your style dude, I shall be watching with keen interest!

 

What you need to watch out for with varnish is the effect it has on the colour - especially with red. The gloss coat will make it look super vibrant, but satin or matte varnishes can dull red quite a lot, especially if they're not clear varnishes. You might find you need to mix a bit of gloss in with your dull coat to get the right sheen.

 

I've allready airbrushed 3 light coats of AP anti-shine over GW ardcoat. The effects were suprisingly good, though I will wait with the verdict, till morning. I've heard some horror stories, about AP varnishing yellowing overnight.

 

  • 3 weeks later...
Totem Pole Battle-Brother

Totem Pole

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The Blood Angel is finished. I know it's way overdue, but I had to leave town for a couple of weeks. In terms of actual painting time, I've finished him over three days, which is within the previously established deadline.

 

I am really happy with the paintjob itself, but I almost ruined him at the end, while varnishing. I've been trying new varnishing method with this one. Thrown away the old Army Painter spray can (frosting :/), in favour of GW ardcoat gloss, followed with AP matt varnish sprayed through an airbrush. After the initial coat, I was really happy with the results. The matt/satin finish had a very nice silky feel to it, and it brought the mini together. Even the metallics weren't as dulled as I expected (though I did a quick retouch of highlights on the metallic areas). However, as LutherMax warned me - the red did lost some of it's intensivity and richness. Which was a bummer couse I was really happy with the initial hue of red I got with the paintjob. For me it was the perfect mix of orange and more scarlet tones and represented well, what I thought a Blood Angel should look like. But after the matt coat, the red went just slightly into more pinkish/fleshy tones.

 

So I tried another coat of varnish. This time a more satin mix of matt and gloss. And it brought some of the richness back to the red. However, the more varnish coats You buildup on the model, the smoother the surface gets (especially with the initial protective ardcoat gloss underneath it all), so the figure looked much more gloss and reflective than I wanted. Although the colours were richer, the mini lost a lot of definition becouse of light reflections overtaking painted highlights. It was especially bad in the crevices and all the shadow areas, couse thats were the varnishes pooled and collected, resulting in a very smooth surface and light reflections in areas that were supposed to be dark.

 

So I said, "screw it" and went back to the matt varnish. The red lost its original hue becouse of it, but the mini overally looks much more presentabe now, with the edge highlighting better defined. It's not completely matt, couse as I said - multiple varnish coats smoothed out the surface, so there's no way to go 100% matte now. There will always be a bit of shine here. But it's no longer as strong.

 

Lesson learned. The next BA will be better. I think when applying the ardcoat gloss, I will avaoid crevices and areas of shadow, to prevent varnish pooling (also, such areas are usualy shielded and don't need much protection). In fact I am thinking about only applying the initial gloss, to places on the mini, that look like they would be handled a lot.

 

Brother Bellerophon

 

http://i.imgur.com/ixwF1EM.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/dffkHPr.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/2UIb65F.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/EDYTLDU.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/TRK5jpo.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/dcN0rsk.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/eRtZo49.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/dLcftFk.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/RM0Bwpu.jpg

GastosRhor Battle-Brother

GastosRhor

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The very best of your work is that you got style. I was inspired to start Imperial Fists army just because of the way you`ve painted yours, Hope one day I will master this level of battle damage ;) I`ve never considered paying for painting my minis but I think I will change my mind and ask you to paint my Lysander ;)

Totem Pole Battle-Brother

Totem Pole

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Any chance of a tutorial?

I've written a bit about weathering on page 4 (post 92). Not really much to add to that, as far as full tutorials go, since there isn't really any special technique or idea behind it. The scratches themselves are pretty standard - technique wise - and there are many tutorials for this kind of damage. For me it's all about knowing - more or less - how paint damage looks in real life, and trying to replicate it with good brush control.

Any vehicles on the horizon?

Probably nothing anytime soon. I am not particularly drawn to many 40k vechicles, and those that I like, are quite big and complex, and would require too much time to finish.

hey, would it be possible to get the red recipie you used please?

The base was Mefiston Red, that was then given three stages of edge highlighting. I don't have the exact names for the highlight paints, as I used my own mixes. I just added more and more Yriel Yellow and White to Mefiston Red, with each highlight stage, for a sort of pinkish/orange'ish fleshy colour. The highlights were quite brighter than the basecoat, becouse then it was all given a glaze of Mefiston Red dilluted with plenty of water and Lahmian Medium, to tone the highlights down and blend them in a little bit

New guy - Black Templar Crusader. This one turned out to be a bit of a suprise project for me. It originaly started as a super quick test mini, that I wasn't even going to post here. I wanted to try a quicker, simpler paint scheme, that would look more or less like the Eavy Metal painted troopers, we see on box pictures. So simple but crisp and clean looking figure, with less highlight stages, little or no weathering and no special effects. And I did that, finishing it in a single day. But then, as I was prepering to varnish it, I couldn't help but add a few details here, a bit of weathering there, some little freehand, some clean up and corrections, some other stuff. And well, here we are smile.png

Quite happy with this one, especially since it was unexpected. My only regret is that if I knew, I was going to spend more work on him, then I would have waited a few days to score some BT-specific bits, such as the torso with tabard and arms with weapons chained to the wrists. I tried some new things with him too. First I changed the way I painted eye lenses. This time I did them Eavy Metal style, meaning painting them like gems, with fake reflections (it's more noticable in hand than on the photos though). I also spend more work on the base. Adding a series of stone steps/slate rock that I carved from plaster, as well as a skull. Unfortunately I botched it a bit, by giving it one wash stage too many, which kind of ruined the paintjob on the stones, and gave the base a little less defined "chestnut ink drowned" look. And by that time the marine was allready glued to it, so repainting it was too risiky. But it's not bad, and a decent start I think. Working on replicating realistic, or Eavy Metal'ish, eye catching terrain is something I wish to explore firther, on my future minis.

I have no use for him now and wanted to sell him, but I got so pumped for Black Templars paintjobs, that I think I will do a 5-man squad of Crusaders, and this one will be the first member.

http://i.imgur.com/9IkqsFr.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/AlubKog.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/I8DI9p5.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/xTBAbZy.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/6rWlgXH.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/JqxbQZC.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/k6qriAe.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/4fPAbwa.jpg

LutherMax Venerable Brother

LutherMax

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Another phenomenal looking marine there mate! As for vehicles, what about some of those lovely Forge World Horus Heresy tanks? I'd love to see you do a Sicaran ;)

At this price range, I'd rather buy me a sweet Primarch. Horus is tempting...

Painted to your standard you could probably triple the price on eBay once painted :D

 

A Primarch would be a great project too. Horus is cool but Ferrus Manus is my favourite so far.

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