Ssssssssssnipers

Filthy sub-humans with incredible aim and stealth abilities, the Ratlings are welcomed with open arms and aiming guns in to my Cadian 501st battle group. The commissars are not too happy and the ammo depot have new improved locks... Hey, how did you get that? That's an officer only item!

Now the models I got is second hand and by initial inspection it was clear the first layer of paint were just covered up with another layer of spray. I lack the chemicals to strip them down entirely so there is some loss of detail due to the thick layers, especially some of the faces. The first owner obviously did not know about the secret of watering down the paint.

The 2 models with most facial details, got to love them expressions!

I've never really graded skin tones before to any degree beyond washing so this was a first attempt at the 3-step method of the Citadel painting system for skin tones. Looks a lot better than just a basing layer and wash.

I also tried experimenting with a glass illusion for the sniper scopes.

Ready for battle... just keep the commissars close by. Petty crime rate is already way up in the 501st since they joined.

Painting the knight

Been a lazy summer so far with not much 40K so here comes a post about my knight!

Scroll down for pics of the result :) 

I've been working on it for 5 days now and put at least a good 20 hours in to it. The project started out somewhat problematic as I was out of priming and with strike in France GW was not re-stocking any time soon. The solution, though somewhat experimental turned out good. I had about half a box of GW purity seal at hand as I don't like the result it provide. The stuff matte down the colour and remove all shine from metallic/gold/bronze paints so I have not used much of it.

So here we go, purity seal as primer!

 

 

Notice how the plastic drastic change character when it is matted down.

For the basing I use coarse putty with sand in it called Sandplast. Along with it I "bake" in pieces from the Citadel basing kit to get a smooth seam from the putty to the resin pieces. The gravel is also from the kit.

To get a smooth base to work on I air brushed the entire model with abaddon black. With the purity seal in place the matte surface picks up the paint pretty quick.

For the metal parts I loosly used the Citadel Painting System as illustrated in White Dwarf issue 5 2014.


All the metal parts were based with leadbleacher, then layered with Ironbreaker. This was followed up by washing with Reikland Flesh to get a more worn look. I then tried to get the highlights right by dry brushing Ironbreaker but the result ended up too bright. The solution: A thin layer of abaddon black air brushed on the metal parts.

First layer of metallic paint

After the darkening layer.

With the metal in place I moved on to the carapace. Wazdakka red was first air brushed 2 layers and then brushed one additional time to get a smooth red colour.

The white parts were tricky and I got to say I have not quite mastered working with pure white surfaces yet. I know most don't paint up to pure white instead leaving it on off-white or egg shell but with the paint at hand this was not an option. What feels like 40 layers later (ok, just 9) the colour was in place. The black on the other hand was in place with 2 layers.

The next step was getting the carapace edges in order. As they are more ornamental than the super structure I wanted them to have a brighter shine to them. To achieve this, the edges were based with leadblecher, layered with ironbreaker and finnished up with a thin layer of badab black wash.

With the carapace in place and all the mess touched up, the detail painting resumed. After the detailing, the base was painted and at last the transfers were added.

The knight in all its glory. The Mars aligned house of Taranis will fit great with the Mars themed battle group. My warhound titan of house Legio Ignatum is based on Mars as well and so will my Skitarii when I get to paint them.

Personal honour banner.

Reaper chain sword, destroyer CC attacks and a lot of stomping here we come!

Love how the purity seals turned out.

The black/white cog skulls caused a lot of pain wile painting but I think they turned out pretty good.

Gritty battle field basing just the way I like it!

Gears and bits from the Citadel basing kit.

New super heavy walker in the house! :D