Blood Angels Army Project (pic carpet bombing)

[Meph]

Ehrmahgerd, rofl!

But have no fear! I'd like to get it across to you all that my technique is not based on skill per se, but more on method. I guess you could boil down the philosophy to persistence, patience, and layering.

Persistence and patience can be applied to the techniques I use, which is mainly just drybrushing and washes & glazes. Also you may have noticed that I use a limited colour palette throughout the army; red, black, bronze/gold, metallic, khaki, two colours for all cabling, and some green used sparingly. This already ensures a unifying looks and keeps everything visually tied together.

And believe me before putting down the 'X' on the predator I was procrastinating for weeks, feeling daunted by the complexity. But then at a certain point I said 'screw it', took a pencil and a ruler and crossed out the center of the hull, stuck on two perpendicular pieces of masking tape with the middle of the tape drawn with a pencil stripe so the lined up nicely and then just went to work. First the large section, taking care to line them up and then put in all the little bits with scissors, a modeling knife, and pincers and a cocktail stick to put 'm into place; Fiddly work, but worth it.

My red is just base coat, 4-5 consecutively lighter drybrush highlights, a dark wash, a light glaze, touch-up the highlights, another wash, another glaze, touch-up highlights again, a final glaze, and a light touch-up on some edges. I make sure I drybrush very, very dry to avoid any streaking and I thin my inks and glazes so I don't risk overdoing it in one go and build up the layers. The amount of layers really add depth to the colours.

Blacking out details can be tedious and stressful, but it must be done. And if you take your time to do it calmly and methodically, the accuracy achieved pays of on the finished model. And cleaning up messed spots is just depressing and annoying, so best to avoid them in the first place. And when I do have a tiny slip-up or lack in concentration (I tend to watch series while painting), I can blend them in with the weathering down the line. One of the benefits of doing a lived-in and weathered look is that it doesn't hàve to be absolutely 100% perfect to the micrometer.

For decals I take the effort of putting down a gloss cote, and using Micro Sol and Micro Set to apply them. And I use like 10 layers of Micro Sol so the decals really melt and blend in. And I use a little bit of paint to further blend in the edges.

Same goes for the dry-sponging when weathering. Do it very, very dry, with almost nothing coming of when you dab the cut-to-shape piece of foam on a piece of newspaper. The whole idea is to avoid any unwanted streaks and blotches as with drybrushing. And I usually use three colours; a dark grey, a dark brown, and boltgun metal. Each layer again adds depth to the look.

The oil wash is a technique that sounds daunting but is actually very simple. Coat your model in gloss to protect underlying layers and help the flow of the wash, and apply with a relatively large and soft brush. When applying you can wash and smear it where you want, ensuring relatively clean surfaces while the wash suck itself into every nook & cranny like nothing you can ever hope to achieve with acrylics. When it's starting to become touch-dry (anywhere after 3 minutes to a few hours) I take a firm cotton stick, moisten it with turpentine and gently clean up wash that has pooled too much, and some panels which have been darkened or obscured to much.

Weathering powders; again apply in layers. Use an absolutely desert-dry brush to apply, or even a little flat make-up brush, dust it on as subtle or liberally as you like, gently dab with turpentine or pigment fixer and let it dry at least a night or full day, add another layer, fixate, add, etc Just until you're satisfied with the effect.

As you can see, they main recurring thing here is layers, and lots of them. Sure, it takes longer, but in each stage you can do as many layers as you like. And be assured, there is nothing really difficult about it, at all. You just have to restrain yourself from rushing. Also be aware that since you are already painting miniatures, no matter the years of experience, you already have skillset.

Never be intimidated or daunted by unfamiliar sounding techniques or materials. I prefer not to do wet blending or layering blended highlights in 50-80 layers (which the réally awesome painters do) because I don't want to invest thàt much hours on a single model for competitions. My weekly painting time is limited with a full time day job, and plenty of other stuff to fill my private life, so when I picked up the hobby again in 2008, and started this army in 2009, I deliberately experimented with techniques that were not overly time consuming and not requiring tóó much accuracy so I could make the army and units grow within the limited time I devote to painting.

The techniques I use can easily be adapted to large batch painting in case you want to get a full army on the table as soon as possible. The basecoats, highlights and washes can be done in one big batch, giving an already nice looking coat of paint, the blacking out can be done whenever you have time and the you can choose to pick out units for finishing off, or to keep continuing the entire army one colour at a time.

So there you have it, if you scrutinize my techniques you'll see that no individual element has a great amount of difficulty involved, just restraint and time. The S.A.S motto 'Slow is smooth, smooth is fast' comes to mind. I mean, from time to time I have to really have to fight the urge to rush things because I want to see more results of what I'm doing. But the thing is that when layering your stages like this, there are always points when something just goes 'click' when applying a certain highlight or wash that just suddenly makes it look good while before that, nothing much seemed to change whilst doing the first few highlights or washes.

Wow, this exploded into a wall-of-text... but as with painting, once you're in the zone...

[Peter Zuidgeest]

Really nice work on that thank!
Love it!

[Meph]

Cheers, mate!

[40kGamer]

But have no fear! I'd like to get it across to you all that my technique is not based on skill per se, but more on method. I guess you could boil down the philosophy to persistence, patience, and layering.

Don't be silly, method is a skill all of it's own!

Beautiful work on the tanks.

[Meph]

lol, alright, alright. I'll try to clarify

*Cracks open a can o' semantics*
The way I see it; A skill has to be learned, a method can be applied.

Although the more skill you have, the easier it will be to apply a certain method. And I feel that my technique has a much more forgiving learning curve than, let's say, very smooth highlight blending, or very accurate airbrush shading.

[40kGamer]

Fair distinction! I have found nailing down the method/process to be crucial to the success of any project. Since I drift in and out of projects over many years I've learned to use notecards for consistency.

Are you going to convert anything over to the new 32mm basing? It's a godsend for me as I can finally fit my Space Wolves on the base! I'm waiting on the base release to start playing around with the next couple squads.

[Meph]

Rebase my minis? Oh hell no! I'll just finish with all the regular bases I have lying around, maybe use the larger ones for future HQ units, or units that need it. And then gradually shift to the larger ones over time.

I bought the Deathstorm boxed set although originally I didn't think it would be worth it. But then it hit me, 75 quid, or 100EUR for the amount of models you get. The captain is worth a conversion, the termies can nicely enlarge my current squad to 10 men, the Death watch marines can be used for bits, and the dread's always nice. Tyranids are 'just' a bonus for me. Good to use with Space Hulk, or who knows, paint up a 40K adversary force over time. The Carnifex... well, he might just go on the chopping block for a Deathwatch diorama I've got in mind and have been slowly buying models for. Muhahaha!

[Lord Ezekial]

Meph every time I look at your gloriously painted blood blood angels, it makes me sad because I will never get to that level with mine but you have made me go back and repaint some of my minis. Keep up the amazing work!

Cheers!

[Meph]

Cheers, mate! Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been rather busy. The Baal Predator is nearing completion. I just need to seal the weathering powders and paint the lenzes. i'm hoping to get that done tomorrow.
And while the pigment fixer was drying today, I felt like drybrushing something. ^_^

For months it's been vexing me but I decided to jump in just camo up that Land Raider.
WW2-style camo didn't seem to suit Space Marine vehicles so I decided to take some inspiration from the French Lecrerc MBT.
I've added some rough banding from left to right in the same khaki I use for the robes, and I'm going to add black banding from right to left.
So if all goes well, black should be the dominant colour, with khaki as secondary and red as the least prominent. Ah well, we'll see how it goes.

[Darren Richardson]

that's an interesting take on a Space Marine Tank, harks back to the crazyness of the old Rogue Trader rulebooks.....