WIP Update: Week 2 of April 2015 and Announcement

by | Apr 8, 2015

I’m certainly going slower than I’d like in the hobby department these days but I’m at least making steady progress in the outstanding projects. This week I have some work done on the Lychguard and batch painting all five models in the unit goes quite well. Check out what I’ve been up to after the jump.

Lychguard

So last time I left off these guys with the basecoat – wash combo. This weekend I had plenty of time to work on them however I underestimated the transparency of the highlight colors, in this case Chainmail for my first highlight. So the first attempts at coverage seemed OK during photography right after application but the dried out color was a real mess.

Looks so good at first sight but to really judge the model you have to give it a couple of hours to fully dry I'd say. I could see brush strokes everywhere on the larger plates, which annoyed me to no end! Lychguard Lychguard Lychguard Lychguard After some time I had to do something about fixing it.

So I rewashed the mini (which worked to my favor as I intended to leave some dark metals in the recesses anyways) and applied Chainmail to the top portions of each piece to simulate zenithal highlights. It’s so difficult to shade with metallic acrylics! Now I see why lots of accomplished painters prefer the NMM method for metals and gold. Anyways, after 2 thin coats of Chainmail on the bodies, I was content with the result. Inevitably I spilled some highlight color to some recesses – a quick dab of Nuln Oil made sure that all lining on armor panels would look black as needed. Very good color to work with.

THERE we go. Now that the Chainmail is nice and bright it really shines on the model. The second wash really helped build contrast between upper, cleaner and brighter plates and the deeper recesses.

For golds I shied away from the Vallejo Liquid Gold series as the results wouldn’t make a huge difference to justify the preparation with isopropyl alcohol. So the usual suspects here – Balthasar Gold for base, washed with Agrax Earthshade and applied Shining Gold. Not in love with the end result I have to say (and for some reason the photos are garishly bright) so I think I’ll tone down the shiny bits with a little bit of red wash.

Not bad, but not the result I wanted to have. I think I'll leave the backs of gold plates as shaded Balthasar Gold. Some areas lost definition when thin Shining Gold spilled in the recesses, so the red wash should help with that. This is all the gold needed for the kit. Lots of silver and black as well as green glows.

Now I need to edge highlight everything with Runefang Steel and the models should be set. Then I can move to the arm details as well as weapons and shields.

The month of April is a perilous one on the day job front so I’m finding very little time if at all for the hobby. Got some exhibitions and business that will make me work weekends as well. This sadly means that there’s no way I can finish the required amount of projects for Bananalicious – I’m hoping for the best for the second scale model competition I took part in last year. This will probably reflect upon the content of the posts in this corner as well, hoping for more and better content for next month.


Filed under: Lychguard, Necrons, WIP Tagged: batch painting, miniature hobby, painting, warhammer40k, WIP