Titan Builder

So…
I finished the Titan:

I put her into the Painting comp at Salute on the weekend. She didn’t win, which wasn’t a surprise. But she stood on her table and was all growly at people and I had a lot of fun standing back and watching people look her over. 🙂

I will be putting together my thoughts over the next few weeks on everything I’ve learned and getting some themed articles written up… But for the moment I think I’m going to pack everything up and tidy my desk and take a few weeks off from painting.
Besides… I need to go down to Anvil Industries and retrieve all the stuff that I accidentally left there while helping them get ready 😉

Heat staining Titan gun barrels

Over the weekend I took Bola for an outing to Darksphere for a bit of a painty.

It was really really busy, so I am glad that I decided to be painting on details and weathering, rather than the last little bit of assembly…

I painted in the gold bits on the Blaster there, but it needed something more to break up the barrels. I didn’t want to put anymore gold bits on, because there is not a lot of gold throughout the rest of the model. And I didn’t want to introduce another colour to the Blaster, she needs to look like a coherent unit.

But I had seen the following article in heat staining brass come across my twitter feed, so I decided to see if there was something out there that showed a really good way to do heat staining on steel.
There was!

I didn’t have the exact colours in that post, so this is what I used:

That is after 1 coat.

Start with the blue and dab it up into the crease in a band a couple cm wide.
Wipe off excess from brush & dip straight into purple (don’t rinse!) adding a smaller line of colour overlapping the blue using dabbing touched of the brush, you want the blobby doittie thing happening.
Wipe off excess again and go straight into the sepia. Add thinner line into the bottom of the purple.
Wipe off the sepia and dip into Lamian medium. Gently pull the edge of the sepia down so that there isn’t a defined edge anymore. Pull any tinted dotties over to the edge and let them sit in the gutter.
Wait for that to dry and go a second time (or even a third if you want to up the colour intensity even more).

Here’s what she looked like after 2 laters of this effect:

I love this! It’s nice and subtle, and gives the barrel a little bit more detail without guilding the whole thing!

Painting Eagle Warrior Space Marines.

B bought an army of Space Marines from eBay and we need to be able to paint additional tabletop quality models that fit in with the current models:

I’m writing my notes here so I can refer back to them later, and to hopefully maybe motivate someone to paint a Space Marine!
(Although I would suggest that maybe a Space Marine from a Chapter that doesn’t have a paint-scheme that makes you paint large smooth white panels, bright yellow, and half the model in a contrasting colour… The figure in this post took 6 hours to paint, including drying time!)

1. Assemble your Space Marine, but don’t glue his little armies on yet.

2. Undercoat white spray. (Very light coat, is OK to see a bit of grey through from underneath!)

3. Wash Nuln Oil into all the lines and crevasses. Pull it off the large flat panels as much as you can.

4. Basecoat – Ceramite White on the left arm, leg and any panel that has a smooth flat surface passing over the centre line. Leave a little bit of black showing at the edges. It should take 3 coats to get good smooth coverage.

5. Mask off the left side with tape or blue-tac

6. Basecoat right half with Caledor Sky (don’t paint his knee and hip ridges, the skulls, ribbons, seals, parchment, wings or other decorations – if you accidentally catch them with the blue, re paint with the white after it’s dry)

7. Drybrush blue half with Etherium

8. Lightly Wash over blue parts with Drakenhof Nightshade

9. Gently Peel off the tape/blue tac and run a line of white paint over any of the places where the blue got a bit enthusiastic and blobbed over.

10. Paint a layer of yellow over the left knee pad and both wings. Red on the ribbons, seals and lens covers. Basecoat Leadbelcher over any metallic parts.

11. Wash Agrax Earthshade over skulls, parchment, ribbons and seals. Nuln oil goes over the metallic parts.

12. Add a TINY dot of white on all the lenses and you done!