The Lichborne - Homebrew Warband - Anointed Done

[Pearson73]

Aye that's definitely something that tempts me towards it, but I just know that I'll need more than one box to sate my urge to convert and build a cool enough team and then it'll go from a mini project to taking over time from the main army...

[Volgon]

No painting recently but have decided I'm going to go with a zenithal prime using glaze consistency paints to see if I can get some color volumes. Did this with a rattlecan as I don't have an airbrush:

 

Looks decent to me? I would have like a better gradient on the shins but you just don't have the precision without an airbrush. Curious how the speckled look of the white paint will be underneath a few layers of blue. Never have been a fan of that look but it's what you get with a rattlecan.

[Volgon]

Hey all, was able to finish the new tester but unfortunately could not get any sort of glazing/blending to work. I ran into issues pretty much immediately where it seems the white spray paint I used was either gloss or semi-gloss so I was having problems with the paint adhering to the light areas. I pivoted to trying the "normal" approach, so painting two sections and attempting to glaze the transition into a smooth-ish blend, but also could not get that to work. I feel like the two colors I was using (Andrea Blue which is the regular blue armor color I have been using and then a bit darker one called Magic Blue from Vallejo Game Color as the shadow) are close enough that I should have had some success getting a decent blend but it just wouldn't work for me. I also tried the Pylar Glacier contrast paint as an attempt at a "ready made" glaze-esque paint but it's so thin it just wasn't giving me any coverage on the stronger blue tones. Here's what I ended up with:

 

As you can see, all was certainly not lost! I still had other stuff to work on. For one, this was the first time I worked on a base. It's simple, just Vallejo Diorama FX Brown Mud. It's pretty much perfect for the look I'm going for and a good color match for the browns I use for weathering the mini. I also picked up some modelling barbed wire by Army Painter for some decoration. For other minis I'd like to use things like broken armor panels, shoulder pads, bones etc as battlefield detritus in addition to the barbed wire to keep things varied. I also got some AK Fluorescent Orange to use as plasma glow and tried it out on the pistol. I'm pretty happy with it! Also I finally found a good color mix for highlighting the brown leathers I'm pretty happy with, so that was a good discovery.

 

So, where do I stand on blending? Well since I started this guy I've done a lot of reading and watching about glazing so I think I'll have a better idea next time. I was practicing on bases and shoulder pads throughout the process of painting this marine as well to try out stuff. I got a decent result from wet blending on my first try which was good to see, that's a possible route though does seem harder to work with thanks to the drying time. I think I should also try glazing the darker color into the shadows rather than the lighter color into the highlights. I would think the darker color would provide better coverage over the lighter one? I'm not 100% on that though, so if anyone has any advice I'll take it. I was struggling to get good consistency with the glazes as well. Even thinning a lot (from a dropper bottle I was doing anywhere from 1 drop of paint to 5 drops of water up to 10) and wicking moisture off I felt like I was still leaving too much paint on the brush which resulted in the gradient just getting colored over by the glaze color rather than just a filter. At the end of my last paint session I felt like I had a better grasp on consistency and how to properly use a glaze so I'm excited to try again soon.

[Volgon]

Another day, another guy (mostly, waiting on some bits to spruce up the base) done!

 

For this guy, I wanted to try some new things again and I think I succeeded on most of them. A primary goal was to try and give the blue armor more pizazz. Firstly, I wanted to attempt glazing once again, and it actually worked this time! On my previous attempt I was trying to glaze two distinct colors together (similarly to what you see in power sword videos where there are two distinct colors painted on and the transition is glazed). This time, I painted my base tone and then glazed the shadows with a darker color. This made it a lot easier to get coverage and I didn't have a nasty gradient line to work with. That being said, IMO the effect is too subtle for the amount of effort it took. You can't see it in the photos (though I am no professional photographer), and while I could see it while holding it, it was harder to notice at arms' length and once it was in my display case just ~3 feet away from my face I couldn't see it at all. That being said, I believe the color I picked for the shadow was too similar to my base tone. If I had gone with something quite a bit darker like a Kantor Blue I think the effect would be much more noticeable. I am going to try it again at some point once I acquire a darker blue.

 

The second technique I attempted was also to spice up the blue. I did a scratch mark weathering technique which many have probably seen before. It just involved painting a scratch on an armor piece with a dark color (I chose a dark grey for mine) and then highlighting that scratch with the highlight color for the armor. Very simple, cool effect, and I was happy how it came out. Unfortunately I made the mistake of doing it before the sponge chipping which, once applied, makes it difficult to make out those scratches. Next time I think I will do the sponge chipping first and then paint over the chipping or in non-sponged areas with the scratch marks to make them more visible.

 

I tried hazard stripes for the first time. I've never thought they looked particularly difficult to do but I was wrong, at least for this guy, as the space to work with was so small. I also made the mistake of trying to paint yellow stripes over black. I had reverse my order and totally redo both pipes by basecoating white then painting yellow and then painting black stripes.

 

Lastly I took the good @Dr_Ruminahui's previous suggestions and worked on my bolt belt. I kept the casing a darker color and then also tipped the bolts red which I think is a cool effect. Perhaps I should have painted the entire tip red rather than just the front flat part but I think it's ok as is.

 

The heavy bolter gunner marks the last of the generic operatives in the kill team. I have the 5 bespoke operatives plus a handful of leaders both kill team related and not remaining. I already have my Anointed conversion primed so he will be the next project.

[Firedrake Cordova]

Looks good.

 

Hazard stripes are a pain ...

[Volgon]

Thanks @Firedrake Cordova! I think the hazard stripes would be easier on a larger piece of armor. Small area + pretty curved pipes meant it was difficult for me to get clean and straight-ish lines. Looking back, I might have been able to mask off the areas and just hope the paint brush didn't go underneath the tape but too late for that. Maybe next time.

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, next project will be my Anointed. I want to continue working on the blue to give it more complexity. I'm definitely going to give glazing another shot. I will try to make a return to "less is more" when it comes to the sponge weathering, similar to the latest Chainsword wielder or the Chaincannon gunner. I feel like I overdid it on the Heavy Bolter and it made the paint job more muddled than I really want.

 

My current plan for the blue is:

1. Recess glazing with a dark blue (Kantor Blue in this case). A dark blue should offer much more contrast than what I used before and will hopefully be more noticeable. Visually, I'll have to see if the armor retains its overall shade with the inclusion of the dark blue.
2. Brown chipping in the lower areas of armor panels. Go lighter on this than on the heavy bolter gunner to allow other techniques like glazing to show through. Retain some larger splotches where I can paint in silver areas to mimic paint chipping all the way to the metal.
3. Blue chipping with a highlight color for some chipping contrast. I haven't done this before but I may attempt it next time.
4. Do scratch weathering last to ensure the effect shows. I don't want to repeat the mistake of sponging over the scratches to dull the effect.

Edited July 2 by Volgon

[Firedrake Cordova]

Sounds like a plan

[Volgon]

The Anointed is DONE! What an absolute beast of a mini. So much detail, lots of little cracks on the armor, and the backpack with the tiny vertebrae. Very happy with the result though! I think he may be my favorite so far. A little backstory: the Anointed in kill team is basically a pre-fully Possessed marine. Personally, I am not a fan of the generic Chaos mutation stuff like tentacles, claws, pustules, etc, and for my warband specifically I don't see them as drinking the Chaos kool-aid (hence no mutations on any of my minis) but you can never fully escape the warp's degeneration (hence this guy). The warband's sorcerers ply their trade as necromancers, using Chaos as a tool to replenish their ranks. This Anointed has been brought back from the abyss one too many times, however, and the mutations have manifested.

 

Because of the nature of the warband, I see many of them as being nothing but bones and withered skin, souls fractured by reanimation, and sustained by unholy energies. It makes sense then that a collection of, essentially, skeletons and zombies would exhibit mutations of the bone variety, so that's the direction I went with this conversion. I haven't been that happy by my normal bone recipe that I've been using on the skull helmets so far, so I wanted to try experimenting on that a bit and this guy was perfect for that. Out of the 5 bone recipes I was pretty happy with 4 of them, and of those 4 I was super enthused about 2. I used a lot of stippling on the bone growths, the backpack, the claw and the shoulder pad to get some transitions/textures and I love the color and look (these were Stormvermin Fur base > stipple/drybrush Rakarth Flesh > stipple/drybrush Wraithbone). For the skull helmet I did a Vallejo Sky Grey base (for coverage, this is basically Grey Seer) > white > Nuln Oil order and then tapped some Stormvermin Fur on the brow to make it look more worn and I really like that recipe as well.

 

[Firedrake Cordova]

He came out well.

 

I like the back-story you've given them  

[Volgon]

On 7/15/2024 at 1:37 AM, Firedrake Cordova said:

He came out well.

 

I like the back-story you've given them  

 

Thanks! Days later I am really pleased whenever I look at him.

 

Haven't posted a WIP in a while but thanks to a post in the CSM subforum I wanted to try my hand at some stitched flesh/sutures. I can't sculpt very well but I thought it would still come out better than attempting to paint them on. I also like the physical nature that the sculpted sutures add, rather than being 2D pieces when painted. I'm pretty happy with how they came out. I think the chest staples might be a little large but on the other hand their size may help them stand out further away. They aren't perfect but I think once paint is down they'll look pretty ok.