The Lichborne - Homebrew Warband - Practice Marine 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.