Blood Angels Army Project (pic carpet bombing)

[Meph]

looks great.BA83

loving the dark scheme.

Dude......your work is simply AMAZING! All I have to say......

Cheers guys! I'm glad you're liking it.

For the tail art, keeping with the general ww2 ish fighterjet theme, have you considered 2 crossed boltguns and a skull? Might look sharp if you arent satisfied with wings and blood drop.

That's actually a great idea! I think I'll try that although I feel that a bolter might be a bit too short and stocky to make a nice cross. Worth experimenting with though, cheers!

@Cpt Codpiece: Well, first I mixed up some paint alchemy-style, I don't know the exact ratio's anymore but it's some bronze, some metallics like Boltgun Metal and some silver, some dark red, some Blood Red. I thinned it with red wash and red ink as well as some thinner. I think I also added some Vallejo's metallic medium. It was really just trial and error, slowly mixing little bits together to get the right tone of red metallic and then adjusting again because as soon as you add non-metallic paint you tend to matte it down quickly, which you want to avoid.
I highlighted by taking some of the base mix apart and adding some silver. In this case, you lose the red shade very quickly and it turns pinkish. I balanced that with a wash or two of thinned red ink, highlighting again and re-shading with some very thinned red ink with a little bit of yellow/sepia ink.
At one point, I also applied a glaze which I made by mixing Blood Red with a lot of water. Using thinner to make washes and glazes with add a milky sheen and kill the transparency. Actually, best water to add is demineralized water, as used for ironing (take ye basic unflavoured kind of course). Dead-cheap and the lack of calcium is better for the airbrush as well keeping your home-brewed paint mixes in little pots for later.

I'm sure I'll be able to streamline the mixing and workflow in the future as I intend to expand the DC but it was fun experimenting with it. I found out very early on that if you add too much light gold to lighten the red metallic it tends to go back to a bronze-ish colour very fast, and with just silver you go to the pink side immediately. I really wanted to keep it as red as possible, hence the experimenting.

I used an airbrush to spray on the washes to get a more even coating. And all washes were also heavily thinned with water, easily 1:5.
So this was done after I made the red highlights for the black. I drybrushed black with a little bit of red and maroon brown, then with more red added, the some orange and finally with almost pure 'Ice Yellow', which is a brilliant colour btw for many a colour. Between every consecutive lighter drybrush, I sprayed the model with black ink, mixed with red ink, thinned with water, roughly at 3:1:4.
the reason I did it like that was to blend in the highlights with the black, emphasize the red tint, but try to preserve the 'lightness' of the highlights. Using unthinned inks would darken the colours way too much and obscure the underlying tints. Layering it up like this allows to give tint and depth to a dark colour without negating the added colours too much. the aim was to get a really deep black with a red sheen, and not a dark brownish-red with black shading.

The spray on washes for the metallic red were done over the entire model to this helped to enhance the reddish tint on the black. Although I do think I did sneak in one very light drybrush touch-up on the armours edges between the washes.

[/RANT]

[Cpt Codpiece]

oh yeah thats quite the concoction

ill have a go myself with some gold and matallic medium i just got my air brush today so gonna get the hose and regulator at the weekend (cant afford a tank comp right now so tinned air it is ), so ill have a go with the washes too

i just cant stop looking at the DC the metallics are just great hehe

i may actually use the method for black that you did but with green instead of red for my DA, they have been on the back burner a long time. but i want then black (Pre heresy, but still hold the DA theme.... i hate black though )

[Meph]

Happy experimenting mate. I'll be curious to see what you cook up in your cauldron.

In the mean time... I now consider them to be finished. The bases will follow at a later stage, as I'm not fond of the act of basing. Tedious...




And a high res piccie of the lads together.
[URL="http://postwarvandal.com/Meph/Land_Raiders/BA/IMG_4884L.jpg"]Tadaaa[/URL]

The pictures are not that great sadly, as the weather is freaky... sunshine, cloudy, rain, sunshine, hail... Sadly the lack of space prevents me from setting up a decent indoor light box.

[Meph]

The Sang. guard post-oil paints and ready for final detailing. I wanted to keep them pretty minimalist and statuesque so maybe I'll just paint up some blood drop gems here and there besides the eyes.

[bloodangel 83]

Nice job on the Sang. BA83

[Meph]

Cheers, BA83.

In the mean time.
The lighting conditions were pretty crappy but I decided to take some pics anyhow. The weather has been pretty grey since a few days. Voila, lenzes and gems painted in. A of me senses that some extra colour might be nice for visual impact, but the statue look has really grown in me. As ancient chapter relics, these armours can be easily imagined standing sentry, looking very much like ancient status. Could be a great movie scene, barely lit corridor, harsh shadows, lenzes flaring to life.



Oh, and there are a few details that still need to be painted in, a final sealing coat, and some gloss on the lenzes and gems.

[Meph]

Just to show that I've not been sitting still. The next batch basecoated, three thinned layers. The paint is still wet even and most likely they'll need another coat.
It's the land speeder squadron & magnetized parts, and the all-HB Dev. Squad. The SR is on hold as I still didn't manage to print the decals.

[Meph]

Anywhoo, progress!
First up the marines and speeders received 4 drybrush highlights. Blood Red, orange with some blood red, Ice Yellow with some orange, and Ice Yellow. I never cleaned out my palette so the very few leftover colours from the previous run were mixed in with the fresh, lighter paint.

Then they received three spray on washes, applied liberally with the GW spraygun.
Two washes red ink, the new GW red glaze and demineralized water to a ratio of roughly 2:2:5
One wash with more of the darker red ink to it was more of a 3:1:5 mix.



Now the red is ready on the models although I might accent some edges a bit more with a very light and dry brush with Vallejo's Ice Yellow.



So from now on I'll focus on the speeders and finish the dev. squad after that. It's a smoother workflow if you can focus on one type of unit. And the Land Speeders have extra, magnetized parts so that's quite a bit to paint anyhow.
As an excuse to clearly distinguish the different units in the Land Speeder squadron, what better way than stripes, right? Also, it's the only way to make an already red vehicle go faster, innit? ^_^

[docbungle]

Really like how you did the SG

[Meph]

Really like how you did the SG

Cheers mate.