Friday, October 10, 2014

Alladin's "Step-by-Step" #1: Grey Knight Strike Squad (pt.3)

For the third part of my Step-by-Step, I am focusing on completing the basecoat colours for the remaining sections of the models. As we are getting into the finer detail on the miniatures, this starts to make sense as you want to minimize the damage done from errant brushstrokes.

The first colour to go on was VGC Heavy Red. I use this for my purity seals, as well as the main accent colour for my Strike Squad and Terminator troops. At first I was applying a 1 : 1 ratio of Heavy Red and Magic Wash. However, the Heavy Red I own is one of my least viscous paints, and diluting it further made it act more like a wash than a base paint. As such, I applied it "uncut" and it seemed to work quite well. Even so, I still needed to go over a few coats on some areas to get good coverage.

Primary Red Basecoat/Shadow Areas:
Heavy Red (uncut, if your paint is thicker, a 1 : 1 ratio with Magic Wash will do)

Moving on to the blues, I used VGC Imperial Blue as the basecoat. Now, I have a strong suspicion that my bottle of Imperial Blue was defective to begin with. When I opened it up to add in my "paint mixing pebbles" I found a large chunk was gooped together. Using a toothpick and a lot of patience, I broke it up pretty good, and shook the ever living crap out of it, but I still feel that it is not behaving well. The paint that comes out is quite liquid, and seems to act like an ink rather than a paint. Also, it dries quite matte, unlike most Vallejo Game Colour paints, which have a slight sheen to them.

+++Begin Mini-Rant+++  I am not sure about others' experiences, but my experience with the VGC line has been a bit underwhelming. When they work, they work really well, but there is not enough consistency along the line. I feel, however, that this may have more to do with buying bottles that
have been languishing on a shelf for too long rather than a quality control issue with Vallejo. Whenever I buy new bottles, I try and give them a good shake and get a sense of their freshness, but I have still been disappointed as it's not always possible to get a true assessment until you open it up and start poking around. I thought that the dropper bottle design was supposed to preserve the paints better than the paint pot style, but I may have to reconsider my future paint purchases, which is a shame because I really like the selection you get with Vallejo.  +++End Mini-Rant+++

While most of this blue will be covered by another lighter layer, I found a single quick coat of plain Magic Wash gives it a nice sheen and matches it better to the other colours being used.

Primary Blue Basecoat/Shadow Areas:
VGC Imperial Blue (uncut, but likely due to suspected paint defect. Otherwise, up to 1 : 1 ratio with Magic Wash)

The last colour to put down was VGC Sombre Grey, to be used as the basecoat for the white areas. Here, I used a 1:1 ratio of VGC Sombre Grey : Magic Wash, and applied it to the required sections. It goes on quite nicely, but I still needed a few coats to cover the black undercoat adequately.

Primary Basecoat/Shadow Areas:
1 : 1   -   Sombre Grey : Magic Wash

The final part was starting on the shoulder pad heraldic for my Purifiers. These will be painted white/blue to match my colour scheme. Unlike my Strike Squad Knights, I decided to forgo the checker pattern and try my hand at a flame pattern. This will likely end in tears, but if I don't push myself I will never improve.

The right shoulder pads were originally painted Sombre Grey, and I did an outline of the flames in Imperial Blue. It turns out to be much more difficult to paint consistent flame shapes compared to simple checkered squares, but I still have a few coats of each colour to add so hopefully I can adjust it and get some semblance of order by the end result.

You may have noticed that this part of the tutorial is slightly lacking in photographs. I decided not to bother with documenting every minor step, as it is difficult to see transitions. That said, I have the two pictures below which show progress to date:



This leaves only the parchment/bone/leather areas and the Nemesis Force Weapons/glowing tubes/eyes left to base coat. The parchment/bone/leather areas will be started in the next section, but I will leave the NFW/glowing stuff as one of the final parts. I will also start working on the mid-tones for the whites/reds and blues.

It's taken a long time, but I am finally starting to see some cohesiveness coming out of these guys.

Speaking of time, below are my painting totals:

The red base coat took 2 hours, 25 minutes over 2 painting sessions.
The grey and blue base coats took 5 hours, 30 minutes over 3 painting sessions. Yikes.

Total Painting Time for Part 3: 7 hours, 55 minutes over 5 painting sessions. 

Total Painting Time to date: 21 hours, 15 minutes over 16 painting sessions

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If I used all the hours I have invested into this hobby to calculate Pi instead, I wonder what decimal I would be at... 

1 comment:

  1. Great progress! I'm afraid to look at my painting time totals...

    ReplyDelete