Trying to improve my painting

[Marshal Vespasian]

Hello Fraters,

 

I got back into the hobby at some point last year when they announced killteam.

Because I didn't want to paint a whole army again.

Some 100 models of Infantry and some tankes and walkers later here I am and want to improve my painting skills.

 

My main project at the moment and maybe/propably for the forseeable future is my black templars crusade, where I have commited to trying new things with my Leviathan Dreadnought.

The aim for the Leviathan is a) to learn weathering techniques and try to improve my black painting to make it more interesting.

The whole underlying aim for this thread is to improve my painting where I can in general and get better at airbrushing as I am just starting on that.

 

Sadly my phones camera is not fantastic, but rather limited.

 

What I have done so far:

Zenithal and then basecoat with 5:5:5 flow improver : vallejo black ink : fw daler rowney paynes grey,I had to do try the basecoat three or four times, because I am doing it for the first time and the inks were annihilating the preashading like nothing.

Then I edgehiglighted with vallejo sombre grey, cold grey and stonewall grey.

The kneepads where airbrushed one or two nights ago and glued I them in after finishing the clean part of the legs.

 

For the armour chipping I tried to go with the chipping fluid, but either I was unlucky, because my airbrush was stuttering a lot when I applied the chipping medium or because of multiple layers of paint, but when I tried to activate it with water and use a large brush to chip, I always ripped huge chunks of paint off, after lightening a large area of black to greyish.

Well so I switched to sponging on my chipping colour, vgc dark flesh. Gunmetal was used to highlight some edges, drybrush/fill some chips with and sponged on.

 

All of this has been focussed on the lower third of the lower leg and I had to go kind of heavy because of the problems I had with the chipping, to cover that up. I will propably weather so upper parts of the legas as well, but only when I have the torso added to the legs, so I can see how it all looks together.

 

Here are some hopefully acceptable pictures:

 

 

C&C would be greatly appreciated.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

I personally feel the Leviathan Siege Dreadnought's components are well-painted and weathered.

[MegaVolt87]

My personal preference is to highlight blacks with anything but whites/greys. On a technical level this looks really good. I would use a blue glaze to get rid of the white highlights, again personal preference. Keep up the good work. 

[Chazzmos]

It's looking really good from the photos, those three highlights look really neatly applied and give some good sharp edges. The red and black is a classic combo also!

Couple of things from me:

• Regarding your goal of making black more interesting, I agree with MegaVolt87, bringing other colours into blacks is really good for the eye. This post is a great write-up about it: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/323694-the-dangers-of-black/?p=4436534 I personally use blue quite a lot, which would be one of the triadic colours from your red. Pop some yellow or gold somewhere else and you'll have some good looking colours.
• Regarding weathering, black can be hard to weather as effectively as lighter colours using sponges. I would recommend reading these three articles:
  • https://www.powerfisted.com/?p=38 - Weathering 201: Steel wool, dental tools, and chipping fluid
  • https://www.powerfisted.com/?p=41 - Weathering 201: Alcohol Paints, Scratch Highlights, Glow Effects, Lenses, and Custom Decals
  • https://www.powerfisted.com/?p=44 - Weathering 201: Oil Filters, Pin Washes, Lead Pencils, and (more) Metallic Alcohol Paints
  • I would personally go with lead pencils and metallic paint (sponged) and some nice dusty pigments.

[Marshal Vespasian]

Good morning.

 

First off thank you guys for the encouragement, as you all propably now you always doubt your own work. Especially if you feel you might have done something right ;)

 

Funny of you to share the powerfisted articles because those are the articles I read about weathering a few days back and that I really loved.

 

On the topic of the Dread himself:

Currently my plan is to a add a Red Banner and a Red templar cross to him. Maybe some white decals. On the Banner I was thinking of doing either a yellow or a white stripe over the Red. Guess I should bring in yellow then, I had not thought about the basecoat being more blue now and thus playing into the whole contrast thing.

 

For the torso I want to nick this idea I found on google and do it white, which means very light grey and white edges: https://spikeybits.com/2016/02/black-templars-leviathan-dreadnought.html

But I want to do a split cross across the torso in the base colour which I will do with airbrush masking medium.

 

The guns will bei metallic, but I could see myself doing hazard striping some where on the casting, as I love that John blanche 3rd ed Cover where He did the yellow Bolters.

Gold or brass has to be added somewhere, I am not sure yet where.

If I go with a blueish Black, would I benefit from shading my gold and brass with purple?

 

As for the highlights: I painted my previous models in pure Black and did those highlights and it worked well.

Now paynes grey is an amazing colour. Its a dark blue grey that seems almost Black.

The Post you linked was very very good. Now the question is how do I improve it in the current case? Should I keep the edges or should I glaze some blue over (light or dark or almost Black?) and should I get some different colours to do the edges in the future?

 

So again thank you all for your input already and hopefullymyrambling thoughts about how to attack this model are coherent.

 

 

Edit:

This is what I have for decoration at the moment: https://imgur.com/a/HrfzHdt

I might try to increase contrast by deepening the shadows with sepia ink, when that comes in the mail

[Chazzmos]

All very coherent to me, sounds like you've got a good plan in place with some great colours!

 

A purple wash on gold is a great way to bring some more colour in, I think I might go for some of that on my knights I'm painting at the moment.

 

If the Paynes Grey is a dark blue grey, there's probably enough blue in it already.  Even if it looks black, under some lighting it might 'throw a blue'.  Like I said before, the photos look good, and the highlights are very nice, so keep goign for it!

 

Regarding that link to the Leviathan with the white torso, that looks very white to me, only just off white... maybe.  Most of it is just weathering and that blue OSL.  If you want to practice your weathering, just airbrush it flat white, black/grey line it, then weather away!

[Marshal Vespasian]

I put a purple wash on the brass chains holding the red banner and I frikkin love it, it looks so good in my opinion. 

Before that I had always done seraphim sepia and maybe some agrax in the deepest recesses for brass. But on the last episode of the independent characters they talked about painting black legion with a blueish black and then using purple wash on the gold for contrast so I thought why not try that out and voila it looks really good I feel.

 

Also I forgot to mention that I kind of "pinwashed" the lines between the panels with vallejo black ink and have ordered two grey Abteilung 502 Pigments to also add onto the feet, as to bind him more to his urban base, but thats in the future.

 

I just put that picture of the leviathan as a comparison as I like the white Chest of the majorly black model very much. Mine will be carrying two stormcannon arrays, so no osl on that front.

Maybe I could try out Abteilung 502 starship filth on the torso which has been suggested to me for weathering white areas in a q&a thread I did on the general PCA questions subforum.

My other weathering idea for the torso would be to sparingly sponge black onto its corners and sponge some of my brown weathering colour onto that, so it shows several layers of paint being stripped. Same for the centered black cross hes going to get and for the white decals I want to put on.

 

Thanks again guys, I'll update as I paint more, but painting progress is going to be sparse this week sadly.

[Marshal Vespasian]

So I did some more stuff, mainly I painted the upper body and sponged on some battle damage on the hips and at the shoulders, where he would tackle random buildings and walls while walking across the battlefield. Doing the battledamage at the upper back of the shoulders might have been a bad idea actually.

Did an oil wash and rehighlighting of all the metal bits.

I also applied hazard stripes to the ammoboxes of the Stormcannon arrays, because that is how I do special weapons for all of this army, sadly some of them have become crooked, even though I did it with masking tape.

Added some decoration to one of his "shoulders" the other side of the "chest" will get a banner.

There are some spots on the Dread, that are very very glossy right now, because there I have oversprayed with metal varnish, when varnishing the metal bits before washing with oils.

Also I did the two purity seals that wont be overpainted when doing the chest.

I played around with the two pigments I bought for my urban basing scheme and am quite pleased. Sadly I am still struggling with binding pigment. As you can see on one leg I tried to fix the pigment by tapping a brush with pigment fixer to it again and again and somehow removed all of it doing that. But the effect on the other leg is quite good I feel. Maybe if I shot the thinner through the airbrush at low PSI from a distance?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To do:

Spray the whole chest bit in very light grey and edge highlight in white. While doing that mask off a big Maltese cross across the whole chest bit. Weather the chest area.

Hopefully the lighter accents on the black bits around the head, as well as the highlights of the metal bit underneath the head together with the cross will center the eye to the middle of the model.

Do an oilwash with Abteilung 502 starship filth.

Add banner, once the chest is done.

Add some coarse black pigment to ventialtion shafts and grids, as well as the chimneys.

 

Mask off metals and matte varnish.

 

C&C quite welcome.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The Leviathan looks great! Keep up the good work!

[Marshal Vespasian]

Alrighty!

I just did the chestpiece in vgc ghost grey and added some light sponge weathering on the white and the Black. afterwards I added an oil wash of Abteilung 502 starship filth over a coat of vallejo gloss varnish.

 

Tomorrow I will highlight the chest area, add the planned Banner, do some pigments and add matte varnish on all non-metallic bits of the dread.

Here is a quick picture I snapped after doing the oilwash:

 

https://imgur.com/a/SPD8cwL

[Marshal Vespasian]

Okay I am finished with everything I wanted to do on the dread, so I give to you the venerable Brother Lohengrien.

 

 

 

I am quite pleased with how he came out.

It was my first experiment with oils and what can I say. I don't think I will ever do white another way again than ghost grey edge highlighted with pure white and washed with abteilung 502 starship filth. Not only does it a great job of making detail pop, it also give the white a great used and grungy look, without going overboard, when taking off enough of the wash again. Maybe next time I'll even drybrush with white or spray some on raised surfaces.

On the topic of masking: I learned to be careful when masking with silly putty, which can work brilliantly, but when spraying on varnish, somtimes a thin layer of varnish can develop between model and the glob of putty masking off the model.

Also: Silly putty can take off pigments applied to metal bits earlier, but will live oil paints, that have set for a few days, intact.

Sponging on battledamage is quick and fun. The challange seems to be, to reign in ones enthusiasm and not go for unlikely areas, if the damage is supposed to be rather light.

I like the two pigments I got for the legs but fixing them in place remains a chore, I have yet to find a really good recipe for that.

Also I had my first time doing a heat effect (on the flamers) completely in inks. I really enjoyed the sepia ink I used. I hope doing the metallic edgehighlight improved upon the effect and did not destroy the model.

 

Well thats it for some random thoughts. I am very interested in comments, ideas for improvement and so on.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The Black Templars Leviathan Dreadnought is well done, but as a Black Templar, shouldn't he have a close combat weapon- maybe chainbayonets fixed to those autocannons?

[Nandor The Relentless]

This is fantastic, the weathering is awesome.

For highlighting by brush my personal recommendation is a good Windsor and newton brush, the bristles are really thin and long and when I started using one my painting improved straight away.

and a good airbrush highlight for black is Vallejo sombre grey, it has a bluish tint to the grey. Works well on bigger black armoured minis like tanks, dreads and knights. Mix it with your black base coat and highlight it up gradually.

[Marshal Vespasian]

Thanks for the nice words guys. Real life has kept me busy, but here is some more newer stuff. Copied from my thread in the BT subforum:

 

 

 

Some more detail:

 

I am like 70% happy. I had to move while painting and my new painting/airbrushing setup is not optimal, especially the lighting is kind of iffy when its dark outside so some Highlights came out less than optimal. Also for some reason I decided to do the Black armour after doing All the Detail work via brush instead of airbrushing it on from the beginning. And I should have done a second layer of matte varnish after doing gloss for the oil wash on the white parts.

Not really sure about the oils on the robes also, but very happy with the helmets.

I could have also been way cleaner with removong the dark angels iconography.

[SickSix]

That Leviathan is excellent.