Queen Bee Knight -- Thank you! Please read the new post

[JeffTibbetts]

Your attention to painting details is simply amazing... I would like to try similar techniques one day, but when I really concentrate on painting I become so slow that it would take me a week for just to weather a regular marine-sized figure <_< Luckily I can just enjoy admiring someonelse's models, like your Knight! ^_^ 

 

But... well... maybe on day...

Dude. Look at the date stamp when I started this thread. I'd say that's pretty slow.

 

@everyone, thanks for all the kind words. You all really keep me going. I've started on some weathering pigments now. I'll new posting more pics when I get enough for a post. If you follow me on Twiitter (@linguartisan), you can see some quick WIPS that I don't post here.

 

It's nice to skip a day on the forums and see some comments on my thread. Y'all are the best.

[Midnightmare]

Simply excellent log Jeff, building and now the painting; you are really doing this labour of love justice. Keep it up :)

[JeffTibbetts]

Simply excellent log Jeff, building and now the painting; you are really doing this labour of love justice. Keep it up :)

Means a lot coming from you. I've been admiring your RT inspired Flesh Eaters for a long time. Way to make that goofy logo look good!

[Midnightmare]

Thanks man, compliments get you everywhere with me! Seriously though, keep it up, this is great.

[JeffTibbetts]

Thanks man, compliments get you everywhere with me! Seriously though, keep it up, this is great.

Another update coming soon. Pretty jazzed about weathering powders and floor polish. :P

[NightHunters]

Can not wait chap.

 

Really very well done, I rally have to start experimenting more, and get me some of that floor polish, but this is inspiring stuff!

[JeffTibbetts]

Big update coming your way. I finally got my weathering pigments and have been playing with them. This process ended up like 6 steps, but probably could have been reduced. Personally, I figure the more steps there are the better the depth of the effect, so I don't really care. I would never spend all this time on a model if it weren't such a centerpiece, though.

I actually wrote up a ton more on my blog and have more angles for those who're interested. I'll stick with one leg here so you can see the progression. Here goes with 'short version' text (I actually wrote "short version copy" first... I guess I've been working too much. Anyone else in advertising around here?)

Mix of reddish and medium-brown weathering powders applied straight with a brush. I was surprised at how thoroughly it covered. So...

I reduced the effect a bit first with water, and then I put down some Mineral Spirits (White Spirits) to further reduce and also fix the powders in place.

Made a paste with the pigments in Mineral Spirits, and applied that around areas where I wanted it to look caked on.

It was a bit harsh as well, so I dampened a brush with MS and blended/feathered/pulled back the affect.

I wanted to get more color variation in there so I mixed some Blazing Orange with pigment and stippled it on lightly in spots.

I sponged and brushed some Runefang Steel to get the brighter chips back in. I sprayed it with Testor's Dullcote somewhere around here as well.

And then the step I was most excited about:

I made a wash with the old brown ink mixed with Future floor polish to represent the grease and oil around the joints and on the pistons. I love this effect so much. The contrast with the ultra-matte rust, the metal, and then the wet-looking oil really pops. Doesn't come across as well in pics but it's really cool.

Whaddya think? I think the lighting makes it look pretty heavy-handed but it's not that bad. In natural light I think it looks pretty much perfect. On the tabletop, I think a more subtle effect would be wasted. To me, this just looks ancient and that's exactly what I was going for.

[Montuhotep]

Mere words are insufficient to describe the power of the awesome......

[Ovidius Incertus]

The weathering! Oh ma glob!

[JeffTibbetts]

Wow. Thanks for the likes (and comments), peeps.

[exetus]

You disgust me... but in the best way.  LOL

[Forté]

You had to go there didn't you :tu: :tu:

[Darth Mustard]

Sexy legs :D

[Morningshadow]

I've been following this project from the start and I'm so glad that your painting skills are a match for the scope of this project! The wait for the finished project is well worth it when you see quality of this level in updates. That being said can't wait to see the finished project!

[Ace Debonair]

By the Emperor, this is going to be glorious.

Called it!

Seriously though, that's some incredible detailing.

[JeffTibbetts]

Haha! Thanks for all the comments, peeps. It's really nice to wake up and read the positive encouragement. I stayed up way later than I should have last night working on the brass bits for the torso. I couldn't help myself from trying out some heat discoloration (heat staining, annealing, whatever you want to call it). I looked up as much research info as I could since brass looks different, and found a bunch of people who refill their own bullet cartridges. Some pretty good videos showing how a blowtorch changes the colors on brass, and then I just had to try it. Let's have a look, shall we?

S

Started with this. Same crusty, aged brass finish as the leg bits, but before I added the patina step.

I wish I could remember the names of the paints used, but I can't remember a couple because I literally never use them. I'll do my best and if people want to know I can look it up later.

First step was a simple Seraphim Sepia wash thinned with Lahmian Medium. Just on the bottom half-ish. It's quite subtle.

Then a tiny drop of Agrax Earthshade, thinned way down with medium. This time a little lower and now you can see it darkening a bit.

Here's where it gets fun. I added a tiny, tiny drop of reddish purple to Lahmian Medium to make my own wash and laid it down in a line about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way down. It blended really well into the darkened bits.

Now for a thinner line of purple thinned way down with medium. It was so thin it looked like barely tinted water. As you can see it was still maybe a bit much but the added drama paid off later.

I actually forgot to take a pic of a step where I added a bit of blue ink to the previous purple wash and added a very thin line. Then I made a very thin wash of Runefang steel because brass turns silver with enough heat. The bottom would be the hottest bit so I built a bit of a line and then blended it down the rest of the heat shroud. This step looked really goofy until I got to the next bit.

I thinned an old Citadel Blue Wash way, way down and blended that across the gap to tie the silvery bit to the colored gradations above. This is the step that sold it for me. I think it looks an awful lot like the bullets in the videos I was watching. These closeups make it look a bit muddy but IRL it looks pretty smooth but still has some variation just like it would.

Here's a snap of the other side as well.

I'm sure I'll be doing something similar with the melta gun, so this was sort of a test run. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

[Skrundle87]

Niiiiiiiice

[JeffTibbetts]

Some quick progress shots coming. I've been working on the torso, which is quite different from the legs. The legs are all metal, and large chunks of it at that. I mean the pieces look like solid castings with just the pistons and whatnot added on. The torso, however, is covered with intersecting cages of metal bars and loops. Behind that is a bunch of nested wires, tubing, and cables connected to a box. It's all very layered, and there's a ton of stuff going on back there. I've been having a lot of fun with it. I'll drop the pics and explain what's up.

We've got a spot color! I've mentioned it, I think, but this is the first time I've painted any of it. I've chosen blue as the primary spot color to complement the brass and, later, the yellow armor. Lenses and soft wire and tubing will be picked out in blue across the model. Basically if it looks flexible, like it would be rubber, it will be blue. It will be darker than this base color, but Regal Blue is the starting foundation. I'm pretty excited to finally get to paint some life into her face. I'll be using the split mask, so her face will be largely exposed. I didn't notice it was hard to see in this pic, but I made sure to paint the smaller inner eyes on the face. Not everyone does that, but it seems pretty clear to me they're secondary lenses.

Here you can see some of the copper color I've added as well to some of the larger hard piping. Look around the exhaust stack in particular. I started with Warplock Bronze. Shaded with thinned Agrax Earthshade all over. I picked out the contrasting metal tubing in Leadbelcher again to maintain the definition, and then shaded all of that with Badab Black. By now the copper was dulling nicely. I mixed a tiny bit of the old Shining Gold into Warplock Bronze and brush highlighted just a bit on the edges and a few lines running vertically. This gave it a slight light glint and color interest. From there, I thinned down some Runelord Brass and brushed on a few scratches. I popped a tiny bit on a sponge and lightly added some dings with that as well. Done. All in all, a very rich color that doesn't overpower the other bits, and ties in some elements across the kit. I wanted to give different materials their own treatments where I could to help process the fine detail.

From the back you can see something else that I haven't mentioned. I've used Seraphim Sepia and Agrax Earthshade to pick out a few bits of caging in different tonal variations. In this shot you can see a square just to the right of the engine, the lower left looping brace, the rib second up from the bottom of the right heat sink, and one of the curved ribs on the far left shoulder cage all have a bit of color. It's quite subtle in these pics, but it alters it just enough to sell the idea that the pieces are older or of a different alloy makeup than the others due to repairs. Again going for age, and the concept that Aurelia has tried pretty hard to break the Sacristan stranglehold over her machine by working with the natives. In the Knight's Companion and codex, there were some really evocative passages that talked about how the pieces could be sand-casted (the technique used by the Russians in WWII, I believe) with very simple technology. I loved the idea, and imagined the noble lady teaching her hand-picked group of native Tonatzin men and women the practical techniques needed to maintain her mount. Over the many years, bits have been cracked, recast and rebuilt so they don't all match perfectly anymore.

You can see some more of the blue wiring poking through in this lighting. It was really tough to get in there for some of it. On my next Knight (it's inevitable) I'll try really hard to prepaint some of these areas. Would have been a freaking breeze on the sprue, but it would have been hard to not cover it up with the rather messy metal stages. Even so, if I could have gotten the right colors into the recesses and then just ran a light across the tops of the wires, it would have been much easier. On this side you can see a couple more areas of washed metal in the bracing. Note especially the curved piece that shows in the lower right of this picture. Compare it to the metal around it and you can see it's got a brassier tone.

I can't wait to start weathering and rusting this stuff. It looks too clean. One thing I really like is the overall crustiness in the metal. Throughout the whole thing, there's very little that's smooth. The metal is pitted and corroded, nicked and scratched. This is a beast of war that has stalked battlefields for thousands of years. Thousands. It's fallen and been rebuilt hundreds of times. I think the age is really coming through with these filthy metal techniques. The copper is by far the cleanest, but even that has seen some abuse.

Fun stuff. I'll finish shading and highlighting the blue wiring before moving on to weathering. I tried to get several different metal shades and finishes in the face, again to help define and process the details more easily. I don't want it all to look like a jumble of scrap. I want you to see it and think, oh that piece is hard tubing while that is banded metal, and that there is a rubber wire. Those caps are some kind of alloy, while the brow is plate iron, etc...

[Battybattybats]

Coming along nicely, the weathering has a great feel to it.

I was at a friends parents place on saturday playing the Rogue Trader rpg and kept looking at their woodstove chimney flu and thinking about just how spot-on you'd got that heat discolouration.

[JeffTibbetts]

Coming along nicely, the weathering has a great feel to it.

 

I was at a friends parents place on saturday playing the Rogue Trader rpg and kept looking at their woodstove chimney flu and thinking about just how spot-on you'd got that heat discolouration.

 

Haha! Thanks, man. I've run a couple Rogue Trader games myself, as well as Dark Heresy. Good stuff. 

 

Yeah, I'm pumped to move on to the rust stage here but I want to get these little details right first before I move on. I still like the heat staining when I look at it. 

[Excessus]

This is just getting more and more awesome all the time!

[sockwithaticket]

I spend so much time lurking on this thread and not writing anything because I can't think of much to say beyond how impressive this is. Those heat stains are indicative of the obvious care you're taking to weather this Knight realistically and it's really paying off.

[JeffTibbetts]

Thanks, man! Your Crimson Tears are always an inspiration. Means a lot coming from you.

[Battybattybats]

Did i read correctly in another thread that this awesome work took damage from a traitorous chaos-feline? If so i hope you are getting onto repairs, a piece of work this good and inspiring shouldn't be left to languish too long.

[JeffTibbetts]

*sigh* You're not wrong, Batty.

I suppose it's time I tell the woeful tale of the calamities the Queen Bee has suffered at the hands of the elements and fauna within Tibbs Forge... The wounds are still very near, but they're healing. Strap in. This ride's a rough one.

You've seen the torso that I was working on, while the legs sort of chilled out. I was really feeling it with the blue spot color, so I set up a quick shot before I headed out for work one morning (or so the story goes). I snapped this just so I could stare at it intermittently throughout the day.

Dope, right?

So, my fiancé was giving me crap throughout the night, because she goes to bed pretty early and she knew I wanted to spend a little quality time with my other queen after she want to sleep. I chuckled and eventually she went up to bed. I headed over to the forge, and when I walked in I noticed that my model wasn't sitting on the table. Thinking about what Sam had said, I figured she must have snuck her upstairs to 'trick' me into going up there, thereupon preying on my rather sedentary nature by beguiling me into just staying there and cuddling with her. Trickster that she is, this seemed entirely plausible. Upon turning around with a playful smirk on my face, I noticed something in the lower periphery of my vision. Casting my gaze downwards, I was horrified, literally horrified, to see the legs, torso and other bits scattered about the rather generous pile of carpet. I gasped, as you might now imagine and hear with your mind's ear, and set about collecting the bits and bobs. Placing them upon my desk, I snapped this picture:

I then sent some cheeky tweet about my evil cat, in a state of shock and denial to be sure. You see, my cat's known for causing mischief (as all cats are) and she's also very clumsy (which few cats are known for). She also likes to drink my paint water for some unfathomable reason. She must have gotten up there and knocked off my bamf-posing favorite model. Luckily, she didn't eat any of the pieces. She did succeed in knocking the legs all apart, but the part that really upset my later as I assessed the damage was the chain ladder on the rear waist. That was easily one of my favorite bits of detail, and the plastic handle was completely busted. This event took the wind clean out of my sails. Messed with my mojo, as it were. My flow was obstructed. I couldn't bear to do anything with her until just a short while ago. I did eventually glue her back together, but I still can't figure out what to do with the rope ladder. Surely I could just use some plastic tubing to recreate it, but part of me wonders if it's some kind of sign. You'll see why in a moment.

A few days after the Catcident® happened, my daughter pointed out (perhaps too calmly) that she could see a fire. She was staring into the forge. I was like, 'uh huh sweety. That's cool' because she was pretty deadpan about it, but she replied that she was serious. I rushed over and found that she was, in fact, completely correct. You see, I have a shandalone magnifying lens on my desk. I had it sitting in such a way that the sunlight was shining through it, and instead of roasting ants I was nearly starting a house-fire. If you've got one of these, consider this your warning. Do not leave it sitting around.

I don't even use the damn thing that much. I was again irritated to see that not only had I caused a little scorch on my desk, I had actually melted the Queen's freakin shin armor. I mean, seriously?!

I was all: okay, you know it kinda looks like some battle damage, right? I can work with this... I moved on with my hobbying life, still not messing with the Queen in any way, and guess what? I DID IT AGAIN! I somehow left the stupid lens in the same dang place. And this time...

You can see the much smaller scorch on top, and the larger one on bottom. Nobody was home the second time, and I'm damn lucky I didn't burn my house down. That sucker's really burned in there. Not only that, I melted MORE of the same exact shin armor. This is what it looks like now:

Yes, it may still pass off as battle damage, but it's just flabbergastingly ridiculous that I let this happen not once, but twice. But wait, there's more!

Now this is where it gets really eerie. Is it just me, or does it not look like it's melted in exactly the right place to look on purpose. I've never really done anything even remotely like that with a base before, but I'm sorely tempted to leave it there and make it look like the melting necrodermis is eating into the ground. It's also right out of the barrel, so it's almost like the gun was firing and fully charged when it was destroyed, and the overload of energy caused this damage (hence why the other bits around the base aren't like that). If course I'd clean up the edges a bit and all that, but it's even right by where I had already placed the dripping stuff. You can still see some of the glue on the base. Crazy stuff. Maybe this is as The Emperor willed it, and who am I to deny His divine vision?

So now I'm thinking that twisted shin should go on the leg standing on the wreckage to really sell the devastation. Speaking of legs, here are some pics of where she's at now so you know she's back on her feet.

And that's about all I've gotten done on her, folks. It's been wild, but I think I'm ready to bring her back out. Of course, I think I'll have to do my Space Hulk set before I really get back to her, but that's your update.

I told you it was going to be rough. It's okay to laugh at it now. I think I'm over it. :D