Custodes, painting help

[The Wolfguard]

Hi there, I'm a massive fan of custodes, I love them to bits lore wise and model wise. My only issue is I despise painting metallics, I don't know if there's an easy scheme to make the custodes look good? I've looked around a bit and tested a few things and never found something I'm that happy with. Is there any other ways you guys do it? I've been spraying retributor armour then tried with a few drybrush-colour schemes I found, I'm not a great painter and am looking for something quicker/effective? And out of interest has anyone tried any non-metallic schemes for them? I know about the few schemes in the books but haven't seen any of them in the flesh, I assume they're quite hard to paint as you have to pick out the gold on them rather than just drybrush over it etc?

 

Anyway, thanks! Looking forwards to seeing some of your custodes!

[MARK0SIAN]

The fastest way I’ve ever found for Custodes is:

 

1) Chaos Black spray

2) A light Retributor armour spray but sprayed downward at a 45 degree angle (this leaves some areas like recesses a bit darker so it means less washing and highlighting)

3) optional wash with a water & reikland fleshshade mix 50:50

4) very very light drybrush with stormhost silver.

 

You’ve then got to paint in the leather, black, jewels, red and any silver you want but they’re quite minimal. With the above method you can do a squad of five in about half a day.

 

It won’t win any prizes but looks good enough for the tabletop. The one below is a WIP of this method. The silver is just leadbelcher washed with nuln oil.

 

[Arson Fire]

To answer your question about non-metallic schemes, schemes like Solar Watch or Shadowkeepers, with armour that isn't completely gold are fairly popular. However I wouldn't recommend it if you're after a fast method of painting them 
You're right that it takes a fair while to paint them due to having to pick out different coloured sections. Rather than just painting the whole thing gold.

 

I assume you could come up with a custodes scheme with absolutely no gold whatsoever, but I haven't actually seen anyone try it yet (aside from a couple of people who just replaced the gold with silver metallics).

 

Here are a few of mine.

[Imren]

For a quick and efficient paint scheme with metallics, you get the best results with airbrush.

 

With metallics, you get best results airbrushing metallic paints that is made for airbrushing, those paints have a much finer ground metallic pigments and therefore are way less grainer that GW paints and therefore shines and reflects light much better giving a better metallic sheen.

 

Gold is difficult paint as most paints are either flaky with large pigments (GW, P2, Reaper and Vallejo model/game colour). The best silver paint range is without doubt Vallejo metal color range (gunmetal, silver, aluminium and chrome) but the Vallejo metal color gold has a quite dull greenish tone. trying out a few gold paints I suggest the following paint scheme for best results with acrylic paints:

1. Prime black.
2. Airbrush Scale 75 Dwarven gold thinned 1:1 with airbrush thinner all over the model.
3. Airbrush Scale 75 Elven gold thinned 1:1 with airbrush thinner were you want your highlights.
4. Further highlight by airbrushing Scale 75 Elven gold mixed 1:1 with a silver of your choice (use a fine pigmented silver paint such as Vallejo model air chrome, or Scale 75 silver or Vallejo metal color chrome). Dilute the mixture with 1:1 airbrush thinner.
5. Very carefully, airbrush a heavily diluted mixture of Scale 75 inktensity violet ink (diluted 1 part ink to 5 parts airbrush thinner) into the shades, this shading should be very gently done into the recesses and should be more of a thin glaze layer still transparent. be careful not to get on the mid tome and highlight. If you feel you don't have the airbrush control then you might as well skip this step, but it will give you a very nice shade as violet is the complementary colour to yellow/gold on the colour wheel.
6. Gloss varnish the model by airbrushing gloss varnish thinned 1:1 with airbrush thinner.
7. Do you decal work if any (I recommend Micro Sol and Micro Set as decal fixers)
8. Paint your details (wargear, faces, pouches etc.)
9. Using a dark brown oil paint (Van Dyke brown or burnt umber) that is heavily diluted with artist's spirit (white odorless spirit) give the model a pin wash into the panel lines and recesses. The gloss coat in the previous step will make this pin wash flow very nicely into the recesses. Make sure you use a synthetic brush (round size 0-ish) as the oil paint diluted in white spirit will ruin your nice sable hair brush.
10. Wait an hour for the pin wash to dry and using a synthetic brush (same as in the previous step) that is damp with white spirit clean up any excess pooling, you will have to wipe clean your brush a lot so have some paper towel close by.
11. Seal in the model with a 3:1 mixture of gloss varnish and matt varnish, thin the mixture 1:1 with airbrush thinner and do two coats. This varnish mixture is somewhere between a gloss varnish and a satin varnish. Satin varnish dulls down the metallic sheen too much but gloss varnish make the details too glossy, so this mix is a pretty good trade-off for models with a colour scheme that has metallic colours as the prevalent colours.

 

Good luck!

[The Wolfguard]

I wanted to reply to everyone so:

 

Mark0sian I'll have to give that a try, it seems very easy and effective for sure, I was spraying them gold immediately which I'm learning might be a bad idea so definitely will give this a try next. I have a lot of forgeworld custodes I managed to win second hand so this could be fun! Definitely looks good enough for the tabletop.

 

Arson Fire, damn they look absolutely stunning! Though you're right, it's for sure definitely not a colour scheme I'd be able to do. Good job though they do look fantastic.

 

Imren, I've never airbrushed before, I really want to get into it but I honestly have no clue where to even start... I like the idea and have seen some beautiful effects with airbrushes though and would definitely be interested in giving it a try. Thank you for the step by step though if I ever get one I'll definitely give this a try!

[Dallas Drake]

Spray them GW Retributor Armour then wash them in Reikland Fleshshade, dry brush Auric Armour Gold and then if your really want light dry brush Stormhost Silver.

 

For the cloaks, Meph Red then wash Badab black and highlight Meph again, that will do for a quick tabletop model. Of course you can keep highlighting the red up if you wish.

 

You'll not get a quicker method.

 

Where I seem to get bogged down time-wise is with the weapons, black takes ages to do without hitting the gold details and I tend to highligh the red cloaks etc quite a few times too.

 

I suggest take your time with them, you'll prob only paint 20-30 models so just make each one count.