Blood Angels Army Project (pic carpet bombing)

[Meph]

Yeah, I love the robed marines. I'm thinking of using them more in the future for veterans and sergeants and such.

As for the humidity, high humidity. It was sunny but chilly, and apparently a lot of moisture in the air as a few hours after spraying it rained quite hard. I hadn't had any encounters with the spray can phenomenon before but after talking to quite a few painters who live in more humid parts of our planet I became more conscious of it.
Apparently, high humidity can wreak havoc on the consistency of varnish in a spray can, particularly satin- and matte varnish. The moisture in the air reacts with the propellant in the spray, resulting in a milky, frosty sheen. You wouldn't have this with an airbrush.

[Meph]

Just to show I've not been doing nuffin'; here's what I've been doing at the moment. I've fallen a bit sick just before a long weekend So I decided to start masking out the Storm Raven slowly as long as the headache allows it.



Next up is the taping of the wings.

[bloodangel 83]

Hey Meph, looking good and hope you feel better buddy. BA83

[Meph]

Cheers mate! In the meantime managed to keep the headache and fever shivers under control...

[elmir]

Great stuff man! I do have a question for you...

Do you take any precautions to prevent painting chipping off when you remove the masking tape? For some reason, I keep running into that problem when I do patterns with my airbrush.

[Jambo]

youve done a great job with the storm raven its looking fantastic. hope you feel bettoer soon mate

[Meph]

Thanks guys! The headaches are subsiding slowly, light at the end of the tunnel!

As for preparations... I don't do anything in particular, but I guess the key is a good cleanup of the model, and a good, solid base coat to work on. I don't treat plastic bits, but for any resin parts, they have to be cleaned very thoroughly before even thinking about putting paint on it. I've had some chipping on the Land Raider and Razorback because I didn't was the FW resin bits with enough soap. But with any following resin bits on the Storm raven I didn't make that same mistake. Good scrubbing with an old tooth brush is the key here. And when you feel you've scrubbed enough, scrub some more.

And on the other hand it's also the solidity of any underlying paint layers that matter. For the SR, it's layered as follows.
-Grey undercoat. For this I actually used some leftover grey Levis wall paint and thinned it with water. Nothing special here, it was just a mad experiment and it did get me worried a bit because it appeared to be a bit brittle at first.
-2-3 thin base coats of a home mixed red, prepped for air brush. mainly it's GW reds and Vallejo reds, thinned with Vallejo air brush thinner, and a little bit of Johnson's Klear added. In case you don't know it, it's basically a transparent, water-based floor varnish for stone tiles. Cheap household stuff, but it's a great gloss varnish by itself and when added to paint it does add a bit of strength to the mix. It's rather known for its use with airbrushing because of its simple and decent qualities.
-Then I gave it some airbrush shading with a slightly darker- and a slightly lighter mix.
-A layer of very dark red wash, applied with an airbrush. Just inks & water.
-3 layers of drybrushed highlights.
-A red glaze, just Blood Red thinned very heavily with water.
-Another dark red wash, also heavily thinned.
-A light drybrush to redefine the edges.

So as you can see, by the time the masking tape went on there were already quite a few layers of paint on the model. That gives it a solid base. I also make the effort to buy some good quality masking take (Tamiya's for example). Lower quality tape either tends to stick to hard, or not decently enough.

And whenever you're feeling suspicious of the solidity of a layer of paint, you can always give it a light coat of satin or gloss varnish before applying the tape. Anything that will seal the paint with a smooth layer will help.

But again, for any resin parts, or even plastic ones if they feel even the tiniest bit greasy; scrub like a madman and rinse it like an OCD.

[Meph]

I managed to get a design going for the side panels. I think this would suit it. Not 100% convinced myself though, so what to you think?

The top one is for the right panel, the bottom ones are for the left panel.

[Meph]

And in the mean time, I couldn't help myself, I just couldn't...

[URL="http://postwarvandal.com/Meph/Land_Raiders/BA/NoseartTest001.jpg"]High Res Goodness[/URL]







.

[Meph]

Here are some designs for the tail art, just some preliminary designs. I'm a bit unsure what way I want to go with this.