Monday 5 August 2019

Dark Angels - Ravenwing Dark Shroud part 6 - Highlights

I've documented how difficult the Dark Shroud has become and in part this is lack of time to focus and overcome elements in one sitting. Ideally I want to do all highlights in one go, it takes a mental effort to stop partway through. With only an hour an evening I just couldn't come to terms with that. However my eldest is away at Oxford University for four nights and having pushed to get Y'lthari's Guardians complete I had planned in advance to capitalise on the extra time in the evening to break its back. Incubi Darkness edge highlighting is the task at hand, but keeping that hand steady is the real challenge


However, I was quick to tidy up any overzealous highlights with an application of black. Foolishly I used Army Painter black instead of Abaddon Black. When applied it's not a problem but you can see clearly when its dry [around the filler caps] it is completely different to Abaddon. Fixable, but annoying. Also annoying is the bane of long-term projects that have been put on hold - dust! I tried dusting it with a big paint brush but clearly to no avail. Maybe a damp brush or a quick blast of air from my airbush would solve it.


 I've also highlighted the plasma battery weapons and the driver but altogether it only took two sessions, about 4 hours. It's nothing really and clearly illustrates that the perception of a task can be more overwhelming than the actual task itself. But it is not all imagined, black is notoriously difficult to paint, although I've never really had problems highlighting it. Whether it was my nid claws or the black on my Imperial Knights that hasn't been a problem. Incubi Darkness and Grim Reaper are a perfect recipe. What spoils the finish is the black itself and so far this is quite clean, without brush marks or strange reflections but I still have the task of applying a varnish...


I am thinking I may airbush the varnish on though. It was never really a problem on my Knights, they're rounded panels, textured and weathered so variations in the matt properties of Anti-shine don't show up so much. But flat panels with limited distortion [there may be some litany scripts written on the fairings] means any brush stroke or discrepancy in mixing the varnish will stick out like a sore thumb. That happened with my Dark Talon and I resorted to the airbrush. It worked but the finish was a little grainy. Regardless, Dark Reaper 2nd gen highlights will be next.

3 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks Mike, I'll take just 'coming along' at this stage. It's been such a challenging project and I've had plenty of those in the past [drop pods...], but this has been so hard to do with very little reasons to justify why.


      Nevermind, get it done and then I'm going to treat myself to painting some bases!!!

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