Sunday, April 17, 2016

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Pressing onwards with the batch painting

Things progressed nicely over the weekend hobby-wise! It more or less dumped snow on us the whole time which meant my usual outdoor activities were cancelled and I got a fair bit more brush time in than I expected.


Two hours on Saturday evening saw the gold step completed, took as much time to pick out all the little filigree and detail as it had to do all the reds. This is the stage in the batch painting process that really gets tedious - so I fired up a Heresy audiobook (listening to Pharos at the moment, Night Lords vs. Ultramarines) to keep half my brain otherwise occupied and not thinking "27 to go... 26 to go..."


Once the gold was done, the various areas that were intended to be either white (cloth and trim) or blue (power cables/weapons) were all given an Ice Blue basecoat. I find the blue undercoat gives the white a cold tone which sets off nicely against the reds of the armor, and prevents it from being pinkish as it may become when laid directly on top of the red areas. This took another hour - not nearly as fiddly as all the gold detail work, but I still have to be rather careful from this point forward not to splodge any paint around as I could in earlier stages.


White areas get a pass of Ghost Grey and an extreme edge highlight of skull white. That detail is pretty blown out in these quick progress pics however.


Next up all the various weapons, armor joints and miscellaneous vents and whatnot got a pass with Boltgun Metal and a black wash. At this point I had to stop for the day as I was beginning to go a little mental from all the painting!


Most of the army will be helmeted, but I did want to give a couple models here and there actual faces. Or half a face in this terminator sergeant's case! I love this head, and was pretty pleased with the milky eye effect, as though while he still has half a face, it's only the augmetic side that actually works.

Really happy with the progress on the models so far, and am feeling confident I can get them done before the event on the 30th!

10 comments:

  1. Brave man, that's a lot of batch painting. Of course I've got the 31 Genestealers on the go but I think they're probably a little bit more straightforward, possibly, perhaps, maybe?

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  2. Awesome progress dude, they are coming together nicely :)

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  3. Good work that man, some real speed on them. You can tell that they aren't up to your usual standard but will work really well on the battlefield none the less. Leaving yourself some time to go back and do touch ups anyway.

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  4. @Dave Weston: Hah! Good luck, man - I found that the 'stealers had a metric TON of detail on 'em, much moreso than the generally spartan marine models. ;)

    @NafNaf: Thanks man!

    @Rory Priest: Aye, they're still only at about the halfway mark, so plenty of slop to clean up yet. At least we're past the "these look like utter garbage" stage! Hah!

    Cheers, folks!

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  5. You are the king of batch painting. It takes me months just to get started. You'd have filled my entire house with mini's by then!

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  6. Agree with Greg king of batch but one of the kings of getting it done in general to a high standard. Nice Job!

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  7. damn you. damn you and your inhuman speed.

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  8. @Greg Hess: It's all about the pre-planning and incremental goals, my friend. I don't try and 'finish a model' per se, rather I just plan on doing 2 or 3 specific colors in a given session of an hour or two then walk away. After 4-5 sessions suddenly a whole slew of models are complete like magic! :)

    @Extremedoc1: Thanks very much!

    @Zab: Hah! The Inquisition not ruled out that I may in fact be a filthy Xenos of some variety. ;)

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  9. That there is about as soul draining hobby work as I can imagine. But not for you, o no... Good stuff mate, keep it going.

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  10. @Dai: Hah! It's a bit of a drain, but the looming deadline has really helped me stay focused and get on the painting table every day. Usually it'll be fits and starts...

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