Heresy Era Tacticals and Praetor Done!

I've painted some Heresy era Ultramarines, aiming for a Zone Mortalis (1500pt) sized force someday.

They're based in the very early heresy, I was thinking even Great Crusade era. So lots of Mark II armor, and Mark III would be reserved to the elites, as it's cutting edge. But I'm not 100% committed to that theme narratively, I just think it'll look good.

I started with 2x10 tacticals to develop the painting recipe on. The recipe is involved, I got it down to ~4 hours per miniature. This is a lot for armypainting, but I'm not painting a large army and they look really good. As in, most of these could be pushed to competition standard with another many hours, but they wouldn't look all that different, just cleaner and with more detail picked out.

Here's the recipe that I settled on, at least with the last 5 tacticals I painted:

• Prime black.
• Paint the blue.
• The paints are all Proacryl: Dark Grey Blue, Sky Blue, Grey Blue, and White Blue.
• I airbrush Dark Grey Blue from the sides and Sky Blue from the top, zenithal-like.
• Stipple Grey Blue on all exposed parts. Or just dump a bunch and wipe with your finger to spread around. Don't focus on smoothness, but focus on placement: this goes on top of the parts that were covered by Sky Blue.
• Parts that are mostly Dark Grey Blue could get a chippy edge highlight either in Grey Blue or a Grey Blue/Dark Grey Blue mix to be more desaturated than Sky Blue.
• More chipping in White Blue, the same recipe, just even higher. Focus only on the top of the head the shoulderpads and the backpack.
• At this point the upwards facing things will look rich and nice, but the darks will look plain. Maybe stipple a bit of Dark Grey Blue or Sky Blue here and there, but don't worry about it too much.
• Finally, if you lost the midtone with all the stippling, which happened to me multiple times, bring it back up by glazing Asurmen Blue contrast just in the midtone areas. This is a beautiful and saturated paint that fits the theme well so include it, but don't overdo it, don't lose the highlight areas.
• Paint the metals
• For gold, a coat of Proacryl Rich Gold, washed in Wyldwood in the deepest shadows and Agrax on more upwards facing parts.
• For silver, wetblend Vallejo Metal Color Jet Exhaust into Steel into Chrome, then wash in Basilicanum Grey wherever it's needed.
• Apply transfers.
• Blackline everything
• Edge highlight the gold in Proacryl Heavy Warm White. I edge highlighted most steels in Chrome, but I used Bold Titanium White here and there too. Both can work, and they look slightly different. A matte edge highlight results in a more readable model from all angles, and for gaming that is important.
• For the eye lenses I just used Nova Orange from Proacryl. It's just that, I was lazy, and mk2 eye slits don't need much more. I edge highlighted the glow by mixing in some Heavy Warm White into the orange.
• For the gun lenses and whatnot, I used the same orange, with Wyldwood to darken it where the lens goes really dark.
• The white parts are just Heavy Warm White mixed with black to produce the darker values.
• The red, only on the captain, I used Bold Pyrrole Red mixed down to black.
• Everything else I improvised, grabbing whatever paints I had near me, and painting them mostly to a slapchop standard.
• Finally, to after basing them, I do one more pass of darkening by airbrush, straight black, and paint in some reflections using the colors I used for the base.

Speaking of:

• These are Gamer's Grass bases, the Deserts of Maahl line.
• I sanded the rims of the base down and reprimed them black.
• On top, I washed a random wetblend of Gore Grunta Fur, Aggaros Dunes, and Agrax. The tufts get a wash in Agrax, esp towards the bottom. Cactuses get a wash of Creed Camo.
• Once that was dry, lightly drybrush Proacryl Golden Brown, then varnish matte, as the washes from the previous step can dry a bit glossy.
• Place the mini on the base at this point.
• Wyldwood goes under the miniature to create a shadow, very heavily around the feet.
• Paint on some Light Umber, Golden Brown, and/or Heavy Warm White on top of the base, esp closer to the rim, just to punch it up.
• Paint the rim black, edge highlight the rim in Golden Brown, leaning a bit into Heavy Warm White on the brighter parts.
• Add some more tufts if some parts of the base still look boring or bad
• Edge highlight the tufts in Golden Brown, and maybe Heavy Warm White too.

I think that's it? It's a lot. But it goes fast as, other than blacklining, very little of this requires precision. Even edge highlights are chipped. Being mindful of the volumes, and blacklining cleanly, produces a clean a readable look in spite of the rough technique.

Now I'm looking forward to painting something else for a bit. Thanks for looking.

My first bust - Sad Valkyrie Lady

Hey,

I painted a bust for the '25 Capital Palette.

It got a gold in masterclass, but not a strong one, from talking to the judges. I agree. The strong points are strong, but the weak points are very weak. I think I could get it there in a week with what I know now, but hey.

I'll do a deeper retro on this piece later I hope, but for now, here are some pics. Thanks for looking.

LI Emperors Children Done! For now.

Hey all,

Here's a little Emperors Children force I painted for Legions Imperialis. I'd like to take them up to 2k points at some point, but a self-sufficient detachment will work for now!

The recipe is fairly simple:

• Paint the purple with Proacryl Faded Plum and Citadel Leviathan Purple contrast over it. I airbrushed both, although I'd just brush them on on the infantry or something with a lot of texture. Airbrush to draw out volumes, not just zenithal-like.
• White stripes. They're wetblends of Proacryl Bold Titanium White down to the Proacryl Neutral Grey or so. Don't worry if they're not too smooth, they'll look smoother after the following steps.
• Paint the silvers in Proacryl Silver, golds and coppers both in Proacryl Copper; the golds get a highlight in Scale75 Citrine Alchemy. Wash them both in Citadel Contrast Basilicanum Grey. Any contrast or wash would do, I opted for a neutral one to subdue the color in the low values.
• Time to blackline everything. I used Musou Black, thinned with water. It works ok and it's really dark.
• After that, stipple edge highlights over the purple parts in a mix of Faded Plum and Proacryl Bright Ivory. The highest edges/values build up to almost pure Bright Ivory, the marine heads and tops of winglets and whatnot. The darker areas get almost no edge highlight, or mix in a bit of Leviathan Purple to bring it down.
• If the metals need a boost, drybrushing silver or applying Citrine Alchemy can awaken the metals. Just don't apply too much.
• Pick out some detail. I used Proacryl Bold Pyrrole Red for the red, Proacryl Bright Pale Green for the lenses, Bright Green for plasma, but anything goes. I should try other colors too.
• Vehicles get a light drybrush of Scale75 Mars Orange to build up dust on the side skirts and such. 
• Varnish AK ultramatte
• The tracks are painted in random splotches of Mars Orange and Scale75 Brown Leather, followed by a light and spotty silver drybrush.
• Rebuild the shadows by glazing Musou Black by airbrush. Think anti-zenithal, but follow the volumes.

For the bases, it's the same recipe I used for my Iron Warriors, but I refined it a bit over time:

• Paint the base in random splotches of Mars Orange and Brown Leather. It takes two passes for the color to take hold.
• Drybrush Mars Orange, adding amounts of Proacryl Golden Brown towards the edges
• Pick out the rocks in a mix of whatever grey is nearby and Scale75 Artic Blue. Paint the barrels and other random debris, I used Artic Blue faded into Proacryl Blue Black for parts of buildings.
• Wash the base in Guilliman Flesh
• Add more Artic Blue to the rocks that need a bit of help
• Maybe drybrush some more Mars Orange and/or Golden brown in parts that need to be higher. Glaze a bit of Wyldwood where things need to be lower.
• Varnish in AK ultramatte
• Paint the rim in Musou Black
• Edge highlight the base in Proacryl Golden Brown.

Here are more pics. Thanks for looking!

A second Vulpa Warlord for a second Golden Demon

 I've always been happy with how my previous Vulpa Warlord turned out. And seeing the reaction from other players has always been so encouraging; the pose, the energy, it's just great. But, it wasn't really competition material; not only because it's really rough and unpolished in places, but also, it used 3rd party prints, making it ineligible to enter GD.

So I made another one!

It's basically the same thing, but it incorporates so much that I've learned since making the 1st one 4 years ago. Let's go over what I really wanted to improve.

The Titan

I really liked the original, so I didn't change much. But, I did bring everything up a level.

The armor plates I'm really proud of. They're stippled metallics over black, with inks on top to color them purple or orange/red. This results in a really cool finish in person; as you move the model around, different parts of the plates shimmer differently. It's interesting, and it looks worn and old.

Compared to the last one, I didn't stop there. On top of that, I reapplied some metallics, and reapplied inks, both in subtle amounts, again and again. That created more depth; some dots were more metallic, some were more matte but still bright and saturated etc.

Also compared to the last one. I also embedded transfers in the process. The varnish around the transfers removed some of that shimmer effect, so I camouflaged that by spongind different varnishes on top; a random mix of matte and satin made the effect come back.

My weathering-fu has improved a lot over the last few years. Instead of just messing with enamels and calling it done, I painted on rust and verdigris in controlled locations to focus the eye.

Finally, the face I painted for this one is just so much more interesting. The eyes look like they glow, and that's hard to do on this model since the eyes are set so deeply in the face. I was just braver with my color application, darkened the areas around, and added a hint of flourescent lime to the color near the center - as green doesn't appear anywhere else on the model, it makes the eyes pop significantly. Mind, they're not green, just a coldish yellow. It works.

Fixing the fireball

The Skaven ball is a perfect fit for this concept. But, it's only built out of two parts; the injection mould made it so that one side of the flame is sculpted much better than the other one. On the first Warlord, I got this wrong, and the bad side was facing up. So, I flipped the orientation to allow the good side of the fireball to face up.

Then there's the chains, oh the chains. On the first model, the chain holding the fireball is built of out of plastic; I cut up the Skaven ball chain and rebuilt it to wrap around the first and hold the weight of the fireball in motion. It looked good, but the problem was that it was very fragile. It broke on me a dozen times, I'm not exaggerating; after a while I started coating it in superglue and varnishing the gloss down.

The chains under the pauldron were jewelry chains that I superglued stiff, link by link. They're super brittle; you look at them wrong and some of the chain links would get unstuck. Again, something I had to fix time and time again on the old model over the last 4 years.

So for this new version I had other options; I got a 3D printer a few years ago and I can do my own 3D modelling. While resin prints tend to be brittle, they don't have to be; there are flexible resins out there. These resins have downsides (smell, cost, they print very slowly, and flexible prints have flexing supports so you see printing issues unique to these resin) but if it works, it works. I designed my chains in CAD, bent them in Blender, and printed them in this resin mixed with my usual 8k resin 1:3. So far, all the chains have been steady, and I've handled the model a lot while painting; the flex worked! I found myself accidentally pushing on them several times and nothing broke.

The base

I wanted this to be a strictly competition piece and tell a story with the base.

The shape of the base is there to force a perspective; the front is wide so that the little guy looks smaller, and the back that the Titan is standing on is narrower to make him look bigger. I don't know if the pictures show this, but I think it works.

The floor of the base is a Khorne logo, I really wanted that secret to be in there. At the convention, some noticed it but not everybody did, so I think it's not on the nose enough. I should have pushed the colors out a bit more as the light really focuses the eye in on the center portion and not on the arms and teeth so much.

In the crate, which you can see from the outside, there's a little ritual site. It's all runes on the inside, some miniature piles of skulls and a pool of blood. I wanted this to refer to how, when Terra was being invaded, infiltrated rituals and cultists were there in advance to weaken the fabric of reality and allow Daemons to come. I don't know if it worked, it's a complicated story with too simple an element, but oh well.

The pictures

Here are the pictures of the finished model and some WIP pics. Thanks for looking.