Vanguard Vets (WIP) Update 9 - Face Painting

Really close to complete now.  Almost all colors have been shaded and highlighted.  What is left is lettering on the various scrolls, and the face on one of the two alternate sergeants.  Saving the hardest parts for last.

While I have painted a few faces before, looking back they were fine for my skill level at the time, but in the past few years I feel I've really improved a lot.  For this attempt, I was going to follow Darren Latham's technique.  I've used his contrast paint technique for a face before, but this would be the first time with conventional paint.

Starting Point: 4 or so coats of Bugman's Glow

With these zoomed in images, I can tell that I'm still not quite on the high level that I see from other hobbyists/professionals online, but I do see improvement from my own work in the past.  One thing that stands out though is the bumpiness - I think this is the spray primer which continues to disappoint, but when I look at the models in person they look much better.

Basic highlights added

I found Darren's instructions really detailed and easy to follow and I'm really pleased with the results.  Below I have the basic steps and paints for my own reference.  I don't typically work with paints thinned down to washes so much, especially since it tends to pond/pool, but after watching his work and trying this out, I think I've actually made a breakthrough in how to control the watery paint and draw it off if its ponding.

Basic shading added

The model itself has really extremely exaggerated cheekbones, more so than the primaris space marine head that Darren used, so I used deeper shading, but otherwise I mostly followed his instructions (from his youtube video) directly.  Also, this miniature has barred teeth, so I used some Zandri Dust and Screaming Skull and it worked great (I felt white would be too much).  I used white ink for the first time and it is a lot better than white paint.  

Color glazes and final highlights added

The model seems to have one eye open and one eye closed (or the primer obscured the detail), and the open eye seems to have a deep scowl so you can only see the side of the eyeball.  Thus, I decided that, after the step to black out the eye, I just needed to put a dot of white on the side of the eyeball, and use the existing black to create the iris.  Since the narrowed eye and the direction he would be looking would mean you wouldn't see the white on the other side of the iris, it massively simplified the hardest steps of painting the eyes.  I think it turned out great, especially when viewed in person.  With my magnifying glasses, I can tell it still isn't quite perfect, but overall I'm really happy my first time trying this technique out, it worked much, much better than the methods I had pieced together before.

Final details: eyes, teeth, etc added

This time I skipped adding stubble/ 5o'clock shadow.  Either the sculpt has scaring on the left side of the face (in shadow here) or the primer/finish kinda messed up the details, but either way I decided trying to go for the stubble wouldn't turn out.  Maybe next time.  Looking forward to trying this again and using darker shades to vary the skin tone.

Finally, here's the whole troop (just before painting the face):

Vanguard Veterans (WIP) Update 8

Starting to look close to done now.  Completed some major milestones:  Got the first of two layers of edge highlights - the Calgar Blue is done and just have to do the Fenrisian Grey - on all of the power armor.  And two, finished all of the non-metalic metal (NMM) gold on pretty much everything.

I don't think I can give a guide for NMM, and there's tons out there that are really good, but I do want to offer words of encouragement.  Dont feel like you have to do the perfect mirror finish, I've opted for a "brushed" or "sandblased" gold that is more reflective than the matte power armor areas, but isn't mirrored either.  The basic idea is that on non reflective surfaces the gradient from shade to highlight might be somewhat linear, while something semi reflective makes this more exponential - slower to stay shaded and then suddenly pops to a bright highlight.  Then when you get to mirror finish you have to worry about reflections and such which adds a lot more complexity, so by skipping those reflections with a brushed look, or simplified NMM seems like a good starting point.

Kinda hard to tell with the lighting but first everything is flat Mornfang Brown

Next we've glazed in mixes of brown and orange all the way to full on orange in the areas towards the light source

And then it all comes together with Vallejo Golden Yellow on the edges and in very small amounts on surfaces, and Vallejo Flat yellow dot highlights and vertices.

Vanguard Veterans (WIP) Update 7

First set of blue highlights are complete across all areas!  It took 13 hours.  I'm convinced that my technique is the slowest.

I'm now starting in on a basic NMM technique that I've used before on the gold areas.  I think that they have a brushed metal, so I'm not going for full on mirror NMM reflections yet.  The shield on the right is the base brown (such as above as well), and the shield on the left has the first few layers of brown-orange and orange.  There will be a shade (to fix anything that fell into a recess) and then a few more layers of golden yellow and yellow in very limited amounts to complete the effect.  I'm adding glaze medium to help smooth the transitions.

Bonus: Grey Knight WIP

Before I can finish up the Techmarine and Apothecary, I need drive out to visit my dad to use the Foredom to drill out the holes to pin them together (not going to repeat drilling into pewter again if I don't have to!)

So, in the meantime, I've had this sitting on the desk and I figured I'd try out a few new techniques!

First was to use a stippling technique with a blunt Artis Opus dry brush that I saw in a video about 'grim dark' Ultramarine paint styles by Richard Gray.  I applied it here to give a texture to the bronze base coat.  In general I was following a scheme from a "Vertisee Models" video for a weathered Grey Knight.

I found I had to use a wash of Snake Bite Leather Contrast over the bronze to get the real dark effect I was looking for, then a dry brush of Leadbelcher and then silver highlights for the edges and scratches.  Overall it achieved the effect I wanted - armor that looked ancient - like a very weathered coin.

I will say that I can see why people go for NMM (non-metal metallics) because working with metallic paint isn't great.  Namely, its hard to get it to look really crisp with sharp lines.  I feel like in the pictures exaggerate the problem though because in person it does look a bit better.

For the Nemesis Force Sword, I found a lot of videos to work magic with air brushes - but not really useful for me.  I found Juan Hidalgo's video and it was what I was going for.  This is the second time I had used one of his videos, I followed his technique for the plasma pistol OSL as well.  It was very approachable and turned out pretty well!

I didn't have any of the colors he used, so I substituted in Vallejo Deep Sky Blue for the base, then a mix of Deep Sky Blue + Skarsnik Green + White glazes in various concentrations for the shine, and blue ink for the shade in the other direction.  Then the black and white per his video.  It really worked out - this was the first try, so imagine after some practice!

Anyway, the whole thing so far came together in just 9 hours of paint time which is about 3/4ths as much time as I spent recently on the other models (per model).

Really all that is left is the base and then some varnish.  This prototype scheme will probably be what I use for the rest of my Rogue Trader era Grey Knight 5 man squad, though I might get the remaining colors for the sword so that I don't have to mix them (hopefully it is close enough).

Appy 'n Teckie (WIP) Update 3

 Making more progress, and I've also been learning some new things!

First, I found a glazing tutorial by Dana Howl (aka @dana_howl) were I learned something useful that I hadn't heard before.  The main new thing was to wet a towel and unload 'most' of the glaze/paint from the brush before going in to paint.  'Most' still takes practice and experience, but the goal is to prevent flooding the area on the miniature.  This small bit of information which I had never heard before was huge!  It was the missing piece that I didn't know I didn't know.  I had always struggled with paint pooling/ponding and then creating marks at the edges of the pool if it dried even a little as I was trying to move it around.  I always thought it was a consistency problem or something and this finally gave me the answer!

She recommended using glaze medium rather than water which I had heard before, but I tried it again, and with the above information it was helpful in differentiating more for me in my mind the difference between a wash and a glaze.

Anyway, with that, I have made progress on several areas which directly benefitted from this new information and gave really good results.  For example, the Techmarine's helm lens/visor looks really good after applying some blended glazes from green to a slight lemon lime blend with yellow.

And of course, I started in on the green liquid in the Apothecary's backpack.  I'm following Louise Sugden's (aka @Savage_ork_guy) Citadel Colour Master Class Glass Bottles technique which was a huge help and so far it's turning out great.

Appy 'n Teckie (WIP) Update 2

 More progress with Appy 'n Teckie:

I've finished all of the base coats and most of the shading.  I think the white is turning out well.  I'm using the same formula I worked out on the Assault Terminator helms but have been applying even thinner coats and it's going well.  This is Vallejo Sky Gray (it comes through pretty white due to the photo).  Most of the shading is just the Vallejo Basalt Grey underneath rather than a shade.  I brought the Sky Grey down to a glaze for the last few layers over the shoulder studs, still needs some work I think.  For the Apothecary badge on the other shoulder I got as close as I dare could with the white, but I did want to leave a bit of darker gray to outline the badge.  There were a few spots that were just too small so I used some Apothecary White Contrast paint and it worked pretty well in those areas.

I figured out that with a ton more blue tac I could get the heavy metal Techmarine backpack to sit upright on the pin.  Now its a bit easier to paint.  Its going pretty well, I opted to use Basilicanum Grey Contrast (mixed with contrast medium) to shade rather than Blood Angels Red Contrast because it gives a bit more of a grimy/oily look that a Techmarine would probably have.  I did use some Blood Angels Red to shade larger patches of armor on the under side of arms and legs though.  I also used some Ork Flesh Contrast to tint the toolbox after first highlighting it with Vallejo Silver.  It turned out pretty well actually, was exactly the look I was going for.

I'm having fun with the glass vials on the Apothecary backpack.  I'm following a masterclass guide from GW.  I didn't have many of the colors they indicated in GW paint, but luckily it seems I had most of the equivalents in Vallejo.  For the glass its a 70/30 mx of Vallejo Deep Sky Blue and Vallejo Prussian Blue.  For the green liquid its 50/50 Caliban and Vallejo Intermediate Green, and the red liquid is Khorne Red.  I've also shaded the red with Blood Angels Red and the blue and green with Gryph-Charger Grey.

Appy 'n Teckie (WIP)

Continuing with the nicknames we have a new project in the works: a pair of early edition support marines.  A Techmarine with a toolbox (070133/74) and an Apothecary with a bolter (070133/63).  It's interesting that for a long time the Apothecary with bolter loadout was supported, but it seems recently they stopped with that.  Because WYSIWYG is important to me, I'm going to attach a chainsword to his backpack, and the sculpt already has a bolt pistol on his hip, so it should be fine.

Both of these are from the 1991 catalogue so I think they are safely considered Rogue Trader era.  Traditionally these models came with standard Space Marine backpacks, but I wanted to make sure that they had silhouettes and loadouts that are close to the modern datasheets, so I'm going to use 2nd edition backpacks for both.  These slightly newer but still very old backpacks give a better approximation of what modern models look like, but still have a very classic look.  Really the main thing was the servo-arm, making sure that was on the Techmarine was important since its an iconic thing that has been there since 2nd edition and is a special weapon unique to the datasheet.  I can probably get away saying the toolbox has some other weapon/thingy.

I'm excited to work on these, I've found some great examples online of these models and gives a good guide to shoot for.

OSL Fun times

The final stage for my Captain was the OSL step for the plasma pistol.  My army seems to have hydrogen or nitrogen plasma (there was a reddit post about it awhile back and there's cool info and images here) so I make sure they all glow with a pink color (Screamer Pink).  In hindsight I wish I had picked something that didn't look like Pepto, but I was trying to differentiate the effect from everything else, and purple/pink was basically the only available tone.

My older models didn't really achieve any OSL effect, but looking back at them you can imagine them as either warming or as not in 'plasma overcharge' mode.  Recently I decided to go for it on my Mk 5 Sergeant and it turned out pretty good.  This time I wanted to also add the effect to the front vents and nozzle/barrel as well.

Also, last time I pretty much winged it, so this time I wanted to follow someone's process.  I went with Juan Hidalgo's plasma tutorial which was pretty good and basically followed what I had seen before.

I converted his colors to mine (which was Volupus Pink Contrast instead of Blood Angels Red Contrast, and then various mixes of Screamer Pink and Vallejo White going from pure Screamer, then 50/50, up to 80 White + 20 Screamer) and then set at it.

The first step was to undercoat the coils white.

Then paint on contrast.

Next was the coils, vents, and nozzle 

Then the OSL glow effect as a glaze on raised areas around the coils and vents, and by the adjacent surface.  Its really important to be subtle.

It wasn't quite right when I went to bed and I realized that I didn't have a proper wash consistency on the 3rd step to flood the coils and get the capillary action into the recesses of the coils so I had to go back this morning and really bring it up a notch.  I also gave a bit more of the metallic 'concentrated' reflection to the side of the helmet which really improved the effect.  The lighting for the final shot was a bit brighter than the in process pictures (sorry), but I'm pretty happy that it does look like it is glowing now.

So moral of the story is, be sure to have a wash/glaze consistency to flood into the recesses, and you can always go back and fix things.

Painting Power Swords!

I'm pretty excited to show this one off, it was quite successful. This is the first power sword that I've done. Originally I was thinking I would make the blade look like it was very hot like an oven element. Then I was thinking I wanted something that looked like extreme heat on just the edges. Ultimately I went a different direction though because a) the hot blade just looks hot not like power and b) didn't see any good how-to examples.

I did a google image search to see what other folks were doing. Looks like a lot of people like a lightning style with either blues, purple, or sometimes green. I also found one in red that looked a little like lava or magma and I immediately liked it. Also, red is one of the secondary colors in my army so off I went trying to reproduce it.

First step I tried a new technique I found online called "glazing.". For this I took one part of the bright red color and about 3 or 4 parts of the blending medium plus some water and made a very thin glaze. Next I applied coat after coat to the blade first doing 100% of the blade, waiting for it to dry, then painting 95% etc. the goal was to make it look like an energy glow coming from the contact on the blade surface so each layer of paint would do the % for that layer around that point. It worked pretty well, had to put the model up to the lamp to get the paint to dry faster. Usually the slow dry from the blending medium is good, but here it was slowing me down a bit.

Next I freehand painted on the "lightning" starting first with dark red up to bright red, then orange, then then yellows, and finally a little white. The trick is to get thinner lines by orange and then start only doing spots in the most concentrated areas for the brightest colors. By the time you get to white which is really high energy it should just be a few dots.

I like how it turned out and am looking forward to doing a power axe the same way.

Found via Google Images and it appears to be from chestofcolors.com, used without permission.

Results after numerous layers of Blood Red glaze.  Each layer would extend from the little contact in the center of the blade by lesser and lesser amounts.

I'd hold the blade up to my lamp to speed up the drying process since I use a blending medium.

This is the first layer of the 'lightning' with Scab Red.  Used a thicker line which is important.

Next layer on the lightning with Blood Red.  I may have used Red Gore. Again the lines are thicker.

This layer is Blazing Orange, I started using a thinner line.  I could have graduated the lines better, but on my first try I ended up with just 2 thicknesses with the step here at orange.

It's starting to really come together, this was golden yellow.  The color is now applied only in the 'hot spots.'

Sunburst Yellow in even lesser quantities.

I did a layer that was a mix of Sunburst Yellow and Skull White in the very hottest spots.

I of course did the other side of the blade.  You can't quite see all of it due to the shadow but actually I think the lightning pattern was better on this side.

Finally I did some spots of pure Skull White since the mix was still too yellow.  It was literally only 3 or 4 spots.