Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Heresy Era World Eaters - First Test Model!

As I'd mentioned in my last post, I have been working on a test model for the World Eaters to try out some various new techniques that I haven't used recently. My Thousand Sons were done up in a "fresh of the showroom floor" style, but I think the World Eaters would benefit from looking a bit more worn and grimy (and blood spattered). In order to give myself some decent areas to work on, I grabbed one of the Contemptor Dreads, stripped the old paint and gave it a shot!


Remember this guy? He was originally intended for the Thousand Sons, but I decided that it didn't really fit my theme. That said, he now looks like this:


Again, leaning heavily on Ron from From The Warp's tutorials on painting white, I started with a zenithal primering method. I started off with a medium grey primer and gave the whole thing a good coat, then grabbed a light grey primer and gave it another coat, though this time I only hit it from a little above horizontal up to vertical. After that dried I hit it one more time with a pure white primer though only from (more or less) directly overhead. This gave the whole model a fairly decent grey-to-white shading for all the armor plates. I touched up some of the edges with skull white, but other than that, relied on the white primer entirely for the armor itself. Easy peasy!


After that step, I went in and painted all of the bits that were going to be metal in chaos black, followed by a boltgun metal layer and a black wash. The blue areas were coated in Regal Blue with an Ultramarines Blue highlight, and the various purity seals and whatnot were picked out in their appropriate colors. Then I took a run at painting on the World Eaters symbol as detailed in my previous post.


To represent the weathering and blood spatter, I went at the lower legs and feet with Chaos Black stippled on with a sponge, and similarly with Dark Flesh on the power claws. Then I went in and drybrushed Boltgun Metal over the black, and Red Gore over the Dark Flesh, leaving some of the darker colors in the recesses. I used some Blood Red sparingly on the extreme edges of the Red Gore, then used an old toothbrush to 'flick' some Blood Red spatters onto the model. In all cases I think I was a little too heavy-handed in my application - definitely a case of "less is more", and in the future I'll be more reserved about adding on the weathering and spatter.


I also gave some thought to what company the World Eaters would be part of - The 8th company was led by Kharn, but I'm not planning on using him, so I settled on the 7th company. After all, I am Mordian 7th! Seemed appropriate. Heh. For the base I wanted something muted so I went with Shadow Grey on the rock and Graveyard Earth on the dirt. Over all of that I gave it a liberal application of Devlan Mud, followed by a drybrush of Stonewall Grey on the rock, and some tufts of static grass on the dirt.

All in all I'm about 85% pleased with how it turned out - learned a lot about the paint scheme and I'm looking forward to working on the rest of the army!

12 comments:

  1. awesome blood and gore effects

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  2. Thanks very much, folks! It's definitely a learning experience. Fun to try new techniques though!

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  3. This has to be one of your best pieces so far. The weathering is awesome and the blood spatter on the chest is perfect. I always feel a little apprehensive before I do something like that.. it's really all or restart. Well done.

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  4. I think he looks good, I've started my model as well and have the white down (I just need to clean it up).
    I too have found that with blood, less is always more.

    Ron, FTW

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  5. Interesting approach to doing white. Depending on the flavor of white, I always work up from gray or Space Wolves Grey (stone or cool) or snakebite if I need a warmer bone/parchment grey.

    I always felt the World Eaters blue pads/white bodies paint scheme was too clean for a Legion with such a bestial approach to war. Good to see you mitigated that by being generous with the blood! :)

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  6. Thanks very much, folks!

    @Matthew Ochs - I'll admit I'm apprehensive as well. Nothing for it but to try my had at the new techniques and see how they go. Lord knows I'll be painting enough of 'em to hone my skills at the weathering and spattering process! :)

    @Ron - I look forward to seeing how you approach them. I absolutely agree, it's so easy to go overboard with the spatter. On the individual 'regular' marines my intention is to paint the blood streaks on their chainswords/axes and just to a tiny bit of spatter on the side of the miniature holding the weapon. On the Berzerkers I'll be a bit more free with the spatter as they are the more, well, berserk members of the army...

    @#2501 - Indeed, I usually do the same approach when painting white. I'm hoping that I can get away with the primer white method to help speed up the process for this army since there's going to be an awful lot of white. It worked okay on the large-ish Contemptor, but it remains to be seen how it goes on the individual marines. I was always a fan of the idea that the World Eaters never really repainted their armor, they're just red now due to 10,000 years of blood spatter! :)

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  7. I really like what you have so far. I am looking forward to seeing your progression as the World Eaters are my favorite chapter/legion.

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  8. Looks Great so far!

    I really dig the blodd splattering and your white looks nice and clean.

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  9. I appreciate the kind words, folks!

    Just pulled the two Mk.1 Land Raiders out of their paint stripper, and hope to have them rebuilt and primered soon - pics to follow!

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