The first two units of my Primaris Space Wolves army for 40k are complete. There's a lot to get through so they're getting split into two posts. In this one I'm gonna show you the completed Redemptor Dreadnought. More below the jump.
The Redemptor kit must be the most complex kit I've ever built. It's a lot of fun. But damn; it's hard work.
For this Space Wolves project I'm aiming to keep kitbashing to a minimum and see what I can do with the models as they are. Even so, I customised the Dread a little - switching out the iron cross faceplate iconography for a skull bird one from the older Dreadnought kit. I left off the armour plating covering the sarcophagus since that's my favourite feature of the iconic dreadnought design. I brought in the arms very slightly by trimming away at the joints because I like my dreadnoughts stocky. Also I left off the upper armour plates and ball joint covers on the legs to de-emphasize their gangly length, for the same reason. I had a little trouble with the join-line on the two halves of the autocannon so I added a small piece of offcut to cover it (it fits well, and simply looks like a gun sight). In short, it's a beautiful kit, and my slight customisations were to bring it a little more in line with what I like about the old Dreadnought models.
I painted in sub-assemblies. Both arms, legs and torso separated, missile launcher removed, gun barrel removed, and all loose armour plates unattached. In another first for me, I'm using an airbrush for the first time. All the armour plating got an airbrush of Vallejo Air Pale Blue in several thin coats, and received no further shading or highlighting until the weathering stage.
The pose is meant to communicate that Space Wolves are an assult-oriented force. The gun is lowered, the power claw is reaching out towards an enemy, and the legs are posed striding (at least as much as the Dreadnought kit's legs would allow).
As well as airbrushing I stretched myself with several other new techniques. On the metal I used a graphite wash over a very clean Tamiya Chrome. Airbrush thinner works well for diluting metallic paints, even though I applied the chrome by brush. The graphite wash was made by crushing an artist's graphite stick into powder and then applying with matt medium and water. If you use HB graphite or harder (more H's), it has a dull silvery colour that works for both accentuating and shading a painted metal surface.
After applying the wash, you can then rub it away from areas and scratch it in places with a needle to produce realistic metal dulling, weathering, scratching and so on.
 |
| The graphite wash is cleaned away from the tips of the power claw, a machine part that gets a lot of use, leaving the shiny metal undercoat visible. |
I also used black pigment to add textured, sooty effects to the undersurface of the armour. Again I got this by crushing an artist's pastel stick. This is cheaper than buying artist's pigments.
 |
| Black pigment makes for a very matt textured surface. |
I'm using two styles for gun surfaces in this project - either a white "painted" style which is chipped and weathered, or a matt black "coated" style that is scratched and reveals shiny metal underneath. I used both on this model.
 |
| Autocannon with a white gun body, chipped and weathered. The muzzle is painted with a mixture of matt black and graphite pigment. |
 |
| The storm bolters are matt black painted over a chrome basecoat, then scratched at with a needle to reveal the chrome underneath. |
The sarcophagus was also a painting experiment. In this case, translucent marble. I started from a warm orange-brown basecoat and then built up with lighter browns to Vallejo bone white, then highlighted with pure white. Ideally this leaves the shadowed areas looking like warm light is passing through to them. Taking a tip from Hagen Pinxit, I added marble veins with a sharp pencil and selectively glazed around these with cool brown colours. After that, the marble was glazed all over with Vallejo stonewall grey, which helped to cool down the colour a little.
 |
| The sarcophagus is a marble coffin that is slotted into the Dreadnought body and wired into its control system. |
I added a few transfers. After a lot of searching for a white version of the Space Wolves chapter logo, I found some Epic 40k transfer sheets on eBay - actually the only place I've seen the logo in white.
Finally, the weathering. I consciously avoided doing the usual edge highlights on the armour since I'm aiming for realism. Instead I relied on the weathering to pick out panel lines and so on.
The weathering was all done with acrylic. I mixed up a rough blend of black and brown with some airbrush thinner and a little Vallejo mud texture for good luck. Using my scuzziest brush I glazed this all over the model's armour plates in vertical strokes to suggest dirt that is running realistically down surfaces. After applying this messy glaze, the next step is to immediately start removing it. This has to be done before it dries but it looks better if it's started to cure a little. Using the same crappy brush, scrub away at the glaze. Try to maintain the vertical direction again - follow the contours of the model. You actually want to remove most of the glaze. Then what's left will be the stuff that has really stuck to the model like real dirt.
As a final touch, I used the base armour colour to paint some moisture trails over the dirt. This simulates rain or humidity running through the dirt and leaving trails where clean armour can be seen.
The base is Vallejo Russian Mud, with some black pigment sprinkled onto it. I'm going for a thawing permafrost look - choking black mud and sharp rocks.
Well, thanks for reading. This post got long fast. I've also finished an Intercessor squad that I'll blog soon. I think I've covered all my main new techniques here (at length!) so I can write less next time. And there's more Space Wolves on my desk on their way.
Hek
No comments:
Post a Comment