Blood Angels Army Project (pic carpet bombing)

[Firebird]

How long is it compared to FW's Thunderhawk? It looks almost the same length.

[Meph]

Cheers guys! I'm glad it's being well received.

Hehehe, Airwolf! Hmmmm a black hull with a white belly... :P
In the flash of nostalgia i also thought of this one. ^^
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0zzz3f9VpI&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0zzz3f9VpI&feature=related[/URL]

The length.... Well, mine is about 33cm from tip to tail. I'm not sure of the size of the FW Thunderhawk but a rough guess would be about 2/3rds maximum.

I also realized that I'll need to paint the cockpit first, colour the canopy, glue it on, and then mask it up so the canopy can withstand the staggering amount of paints and washes that thing is going to receive...

For cockpit, I was thinking about something like this.

[marcus]

Hmmm are you sure thats complicated enough ?

[Meph]

Lol, yeah, I'm not going to replicate an old Su-27 cockpit (top) or a Mig-21's (bottom). Although they probablyu would suite an Imperial Navy craft quite nicely. I'm just going to go for that neat, ugly and cancer-producing blue zinc paint colour. ^^

Luckily for the Russians, they did introduce better ergonomics in the Su-35

[Meph]

Yesterday's work. I'm quite chuffed I managed to paint the pilot in one afternoon. It's been a while since I painted just one infantry mini at a time

Whaddayathaink?

[Meph]

For the cockpit, I wanted to incorporate some black around the canopy, like the anti-glare section most military planes have. But then I thought of to apply a larger scheme to the craft. It will be mostly red of course, but maybe some black section like these would look nice. including a 40k'ified version of the tail art.





And since I'm waiting for an order of painting materials to arrive by post, I though it was about time to push the Land Raider further to completion. I did the lenzes of the lamps, sensors and Tech Marine's eyes. And I did some work on the large engine grills. All that's left now is some odd and ends like the impact marks, engine detailing etc.

[Meph]

Suitable appalling colour, no? In real life the tint is slightly more green, but not much. I think this is a good base for some drybrushing and inking.

And i also did a dipping test on the canopy of the turret, which I'm not going to use. At first I thought the effect was quite good, but up close you can see these little imperfections everywhere.
I'm unsure about the exact cause, it could be some bit of dust that got on during drying, even though i covered it up with a glass.
Or it could be the mix. I mixed some Tamiya clear into Johnson's Klear and dipped it in a small clean metal cup. Maybe the mix curdled ever so slightly or the Tamiya clear simply doesn't mix that well. My gut feeling might be to add a tiny bit of dishwashing detergent to try and break the surface tension of the two fluids. I'd like to hear any other suggestions or tips...

[Meph]

Cockpit almost done!

Just some quick drybrushing and some very quick detaling. Since almost nothing will be visible in that cockpit I didn't want to spend too much time fiddling with details.

After that I sealed both the pilot and cockpit using a spray can of GW satin varnish. And then I made was with black oil paint and turpentine. I just madly applied it over the lot of it and as you can see the oil paint neatly sucks itself into every bit of texture it can find without tinting the underlying colours too much. I took some before and right-after pics to show what it does. I'll let that dry out for now and see if it needs any correcting after but it looks like it's not going to need much.

[Meph]

Voila, cockpit sealed, taped up and seams closed with masking fluid. Fingers crossed, because that's not coming off until it's done...

And I also applied a first of many layers of weathering powders on and around the tracks. It's not bad but it needs a lot refining. Even though it was a mix of 5 different colours (some more than others), it came out predominantly reddish like clay. I feel I need some lighter, more sandy tones to contrast better with the red of the hull I feel.
What do you guys think?

Arch, and I keep overlooking those bullet impacts each and every time, like I'm selectively blind to them... :S

[Meph]

On another note, some over at another forum asked me what brands of oil paint I use so I though I'd share it here as well.
I just bought the colours I needed off of Ebay from random webshops. My experience with oil paints is that most of them are quite to very good. A general rule of thumb to buy them would be is to buy a true arts brand or high quality modeling. It doesn't hurt to go for the medium-high priced stuff as it's not that expensive anyhow and it will last forever. And you want a paint that has a decent medium and high quality pigment, quality does show. mine cost somewhere between 3 - 6€ a piece.
In general, oil paints are just basically an oil based medium and pigment so there's not much that can go wrong with them. Also handy to know is that the colours names are universal as the paint has been around since hundreds and hundreds of years. The oil paint Burnt Umber for example was first used in 1650...

-Top one is from Bob Ross, the afro'd painting pixie. Actually this black is one of the easiest to thin oil paints I've had so far. Dissolves very smoothly with turpentine.
-Middle one is from a 'true' artsy brand. The colour shade is universal, Burnt Umber, absolutely perfect for grease stains and for rust when mixed with weathering powder.
-The bottom one is from MIG and is 'Shadow Brown', I used that over the whole of my vehicles for shading. Made a wash with it and brushed over the whole lot except the silver metallic detailing.
-The lighter is fine produce bought from a nocturnal Pakistani entrepreneur.