I remember someone once saying when painting 'start on the inside and work your way out'. This approach is contrary to that advice, laying the detail work on the top of all the black. Now there's a chance the subsequent black highlights might spoil these details but it's a risk I'm willing to take. As you can see I also painted the rolls on the back of the bikes red. Originally these were supposed to be green but I thought it was adding another colour to the bikes and extending the palette, which I thought was unnecessary [in this instance]. Black was too much, Rhinox Hide potentially - but didn't want to mix materials with the leather goods already used so I went red... OK, so why red? I see these rolls as bike covers. When the Ravenwing are on the hunt although they forgo camouflage they might need to obscure their bikes while in the field and Ferron Proxima is red afterall. It might be a bit odd, but I'll see how it goes and if I do another unit of bikes with them I'll try green so you can differentiate squads.
Some of the Black Knights were also brought up to speed.
Including the Ravenwing Banner with it's basecoats - this is near enough a unique job in itself!
And some more of the Knights. Annoyingly I kept on finding purity seals without red wax or grey paper, skulls on back packs or scrolls on legs in no contrasting colour. I'd go through all the bikes, pick out a detail move onto another one and find I'd missed something, fix it, move on and then find another detail overlooked - it was really annoying. So I'm now at a point where the black is inevitable, where completing that will almost leave them finished. There are plenty of little extra details to do [that Banner not least among them] but once the black is out of the way they'll be so close I'm hoping it'll ensure the black no longer feels like a hurdle. No avoiding now - I need to push on through!
Of course I can always nip back to the Assault Squad should I feel the need ;) As you can see I picked up some of the same details on these, again making best use of the paints on the brush. And much like the Hybrids the whole tone of the squad has changed thanks to this injection of new colour. Also completing steps here and there will make them easier to finish when they get my full attention tlater on.
And that leaves me currently in a better headspace, not all my chickens have hatched, so I won't count them just yet. I'll certainly feel better once the first black highlights are done and then I can focus on the Dark Reaper ones. If I get a timescale I can predict how much effort is involved but I'm sure it's no more than a week to 10 days to get the black all done [which means they may very well be done by the time this post is scheduled ;) ] Fingers crossed!