Saturday, February 14, 2015

Alladin's "Step-by-Step" #1: Grey Knight Strike Squad (pt.10) - COMPLETED!

Well, after almost 16 months (on and off, clearly) of work, I *finally* have my 5 Grey Knights painted. This brings my count up to a whopping 10 fully painted figures for my GK army.


The final step was the Nemesis Force Weapons. I had squirreled away my ratios somewhere, over a year ago, and managed to find them, which gave me at least some base to work with.

First off, I painted the whole weapon in the medium blue base. This gave both the darker and lighter blues an anchor to display their colours properly, compared to a black basecoat.

NFW Basecoat:
2 :  1  :  3   -   Glacier Blue : Imperial Blue : Magic Wash


 As you can see, it gives a good starting point.
The next was to block in the dark blues. Here I just used Imperial Blue (note: I really need to get a new bottle, mine is complete junk).

NFW Shading:
1  :  1   -   Imperial Blue : Magic Wash


So far, nothing fancy. In fact, I probably added a bit too much dark, but the "blending" stage fixed that. Then I block in the lightest blues.

NFW Highights
1  :  1   -   Glacier Blue : Magic Wash

At this point, you get the gist of where the weapon is going. I went back in and added in the medium blues, since some areas (especially the top section of the blade in the above picture) have almost none.



From here, I just used my brush to "blend" all the colours in. I used a fine detail brush at times, which creates somewhat of a jagged look. I think with more time (and more dilute ratios, like a 1:2 or 1:3 of each) I could have done pretty impressive blending, however I decided to forgo my Golden Daemon skills (HA!) and just go for above average tabletop quality.



This is essentially the completed blade, minus the edge highlights. Those were done with simple Dead White. My ratio is below (note: I actually used 1:1 initially, but I found that the paint would dry too quickly, making it hard to do the line in the middle which delineates the top and the bottom parts of the blade. Next time I will use the 1:2 I wrote below).


NFW Edging:
1  :  2   -   Dead White : Magic Wash
And there you have it! Two more to do, and I can finally say my 5-man "squad" is complete! Part of the reason the time is higher than expected is that I spent some time touching up the bases (black around the sides) and then gluing everyone on.
  
I will take pictures of some more angles with my DSLR in a few days when my DSLR returns to me. :)
Total Painting Time for Part 10: 3 hours, 45 minutes over 2 painting sessions. 

Total Painting Time to date: 54 hours, 10 minutes over 43 painting sessions.

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Overall I am quite happy with them. There are lots I can do better, but in this case time was getting to be a factor and I just needed them to be done. The Purifiers look really striking compared to my regular GK marines, which is good as they are the elite detachment so they should look better.

So I guess that concludes my first (and probably last, at the rate it took me!) tutorial. One day, however, I will compile all the steps into a single post and make a Tutorials Page.

Hope this is of help to somebody other than just myself!

4 comments:

  1. Looks real good man. I really like the force weapons. The blue on the armor is a nice touch.

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    1. Thanks! When I was doing my first 5 GKs over a year ago, I found a tutorial for the NFWs online that I used. When I tried to find it again this time around, however, I had no luck. As for the blue on the armour, I was inspired by GW's box art.

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  2. Great looking squad!!!! Really like how the blue glazing ties in with the blue on the rest o the army, and the bases provide a great contrast!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks! I feel that an enormous weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Looking forward to the next project.

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