Monday 18 August 2014

Dark Angels - Land's Speeder Typhoon Pattern

I mentioned how I was struggling to paint my Ravenwingand thought I'd shared the pics of why but can't seem to find them so forgive me if this is a repost. As you can see the highlights are by no means neat, or subtle. As I've maintained 'nids by their very organic nature offer so many advantages for those who struggle to be neat in their painting.


As you can see man-made items need a lot more finesse than my hand/eye co-ordination can provide. However, I hoped some Badab Black would solve this but that's where it had issues with strange effects appearing in it's 'tide marks'.
[incidentally that's the sort of size a Heavy Bolter barrel should be drilled to, none of this 1mm nonsense, make those Bolter rounds proportional, rant over]


I've since tried thinning black paint down and painting over the mottled Badab Black wash, this has improve the effect so much more.


As you can see here, with it's newly acquired wing-man. I've still to add some litanies and maybe some decorative markings. The Codex includes the old tropes of checks, red and gold piping, I want these to be dark and menacing but maybe I need to bite the bullet and do them just to break things up. Alternatively I could try some battle damage and I will maybe add some of my Secret Weapon Miniatures red weathering powders to represent the dust picked up on Ferron Proxima




So there's plenty to do, there's mini progress at least and having a second one completes the squadron. I do fancy a Darkshroud to provide cover and be their big brother but it'll be a while yet before I get one of them.

12 comments:

  1. Black can be a pain in the butt too... Airbrushing them really helped for me to keep them clean and faded! .. you could always drybrush a little black on the edges to blend it some as well.. 8) Looking good so far.. I love Land Speeders .. they are some of my favorite 40K vehicles!

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    1. I may one day get an airbrush but for now it wouldn't fit my schedule. Interesting about dry brushing on black because I always think of it as a highlight, not a shading technique, but of course that could help, thanks.

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  2. Have you tried a very light drybrush of grey. Just to highlight the edges. And then use battle damage and chiping to add further highlights when finished. Worked for my ravenwing

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    1. I may well try some of this, I did see some extremely fine edge drybrushing on some Ravenwing recently. It looks much tidier than my line highlighting so may give it a go, and some chipping too.

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  3. Agree with above. Airbrushing is your friend. Failing that, a flat coat with edge highlighting and washes is fine. Try out different size drybrushes or use the side of a detail brush. If you can drill that hole dead centre of the barrel, which I always somehow manage to fail, you should be fine.

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    1. I'll try the fine drybrushing amd I was very lucky with the Heavy Bolter Barrel!

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  4. The Black Templar players in my circle gave up on drybrushing highlights a while ago, in favour of hard lining. They just couldn't eliminate the chalky appearance you sometimes get and washes weren't effectively blurring the interface between shades. A technique I use is drybrushing followed by an immediate wet blend right up to the highlighted edge. You would need to do one edge at a time and paint rapidly (wet blending into a pigment you just dry brushed is a bit hectic). It works though, and doesn't require as much brush control ;-)

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    1. Thanks Mark, I think some of this will come in handy second time around some fine edge drybrushing will give me the definition I need and maybe bled in some black as I go. Cheers for the advice, I really thought I'd find this easier given my black claws on the nids... just shows you never can tell.

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    2. I started giving my templars an overhead spray of vallejo grey primer (over chaos black) followed by their chalky wash. It adds a bit of shading to the black, and the wash adds a subtle texture so it's not so flat.

      Combine with hardline highlighting, and it gives a pretty nice effect.

      Though sometimes I think it would have been easier to just paint imperial fists. Everyone thinks black is easy...

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    3. From my experience everyone seems to think blue is easy [hence the main reason for the universal condemnation of Ultramarines]. Usually followed by green with reds, and yellows being considered difficult and white and black being considered both easy and difficult.

      Other colours don't really count ;)

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    4. I guess we should translate it as...

      "Whatever color I'm not painting is easy."
      :)

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  5. The tide effect is cased by the wash's surface tension. Washes are designed to 'pool' in cracks and around detail. what you want is a glaze, it's simple enough to turn a wash into a glaze on your pallet, just need to add 'organic' material the effect is most commonly seen when you add washing up liquid to water.

    I found that just the tiniest touch of washing up liquid on the tip of my smallest brush is enough to do the job. Other options (if your worried about bubbles forming) include a dab of alcohol such as medical spirt or even a tiny dab of scotch.

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