Memorial Day

Zenital Airbrushing Tutorial

     I was looking around for ideas on painting my Grey Knights army and found this awesome tutorial at DakkaDakka.  I was all fired up to give it a try, but lately Warmachine has been occupying the majority of my time, and I was pretty gung-ho about getting those models painted.  I took another class with Matthieu Fontaine at Adepticon this year, and I realized that by combining the color theory that Matthieu taught us with the techniques in the tutorial, I should be able to adapt the technique to my Khador force.  And, to be honest, I'm less concerned with the results with the Warmachine models - seriously, there are no "paint snobs" in the Warmachine crowd - half of those guys don't even have their models primed (sorry guys, but it's true!)
To start with, I gathered the three colors I would need for the airbrushing:

I'm using Vallejo Model Air paints, as they have proven to be the least finicky with my airbrushes, and I like being able to use them straight from the bottle.  I chose Fire Red as my base color, Italian Red as my highlight color, and made my shading color from Fire Red + a few drops of Ultramarine Blue.

Next, I gathered the models I would be airbrushing:

Pretty much everything in the army that will primarily be red.

Step one was to load my airbrush with the "shading" color, hold the model upside down, and spray from about a sixty-degree angle, which resulted in this:

This gets all of the "low points" of the models covered with the darkest paints, where the shadows would be.  (I also painted the cinematic effects on Karchev's smokestacks in the above pic, as I needed that color as a base for those anyway).

Next, I loaded the airbrush with the Fire Red and, with the model right-side-up this time, sprayed from above, again at probably a sixty- or seventy-degree angle:

...this gets the "main" color on the model, while leaving the darker color underneath & in the recesses.

Next, I loaded the airbrush with the Italian Red and sprayed from above at a more severe angle, probably closer to eighty degrees, and from a bit farther away:

This gets the lightest "highlight" color on the highest points.  Here's a pic in the lightbox where it's a bit easier to see the effect:

Now, I wanted to see if I could finish the above models to a decent standard fairly quickly - I grabbed the Juggernaut warjack and gave it a coat of Boltgun Metal on the axe, joints & rivets, Tin Bitz on the axe & shoulders, Chaos Black on the edges of the armor, and Fortress Grey on the base:

Next, I gave the axe, claws & base a wash of my APJ Black wash.  When that was dry, I gave the axe & claws a quick drybrush with Mithril Silver, and gave the exhaust stacks a bit of Forge World Black Soot weathering powder:

Last, I gave the model a spray with some matte sealer and added some of Secret Weapon Miniatures crushed glass snow effects and an Army Painter Winter Tuft as an accent:

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the result - the three pics above were taken with lighting only from the sides at table level, so you can see the shading effect of the zenital airbrushing technique.  The only unexpected thing that happened is apparently when I sprayed the model with matte sealer, it dislodged some of the weathering powder, which blew on to the top of the model.  (This was my first time working with weathering powders, I will fix them with mineral spirits before clearcoating from now on).  It only took about thirty minutes to airbrush all of the models, and probably another 30 - 40 minutes total to finish the above model, and that was mostly because I had to keep stopping to go look at a reference pic, since I'm not familiar enough with the Warmachine paint schemes yet to do it from memory.  This is definitely a technique I'll be using in the future...

Mazes & Minotaurs

My gaming group recently got together after a too-long hiatus to play a game of Mazes & Minotaurs:

...as our GM explained it to me, Mazes & Minotaurs grew out of a discussion on an RPG forum that asked the question, "What if Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson had been inspired by Greek mythology instead of fantasy literature?"  Someone took the idea and ran with it, and published a role-playing game, complete with an imaginary publishing history & backstory.  The best part is that you can download it it for free here.  Overall it was a fun game for a quick one-shot, and I had a great time!

Last Elite Nobz

I finished up the last of my Nob elites for my Freebootas:

(I'm particularly pleased with how the anchor-on-a-chain for a "counts-as" choppa came out on the far left).I went with yellow for the stripes & accents on this set, 'cause I felt that orange, green, or black would be too easily confused with the red & navy blue that I already to designate my other elite units - the only possible issue is that the yellow stripes might be kinda hard to see at tabletop distance, but the non-elite Nobz are going to be painted with dark brown pants, so it should be obvious which ones aren't elites.  Now I just have to finish 10 Nobz & a few independent characters, and all the single-figure models for my Freebootas will be finished...

Deffrolla Mark V

...as I mentioned last time, I finished my final Battlewagon - I just needed to build the Deffrolla.  Here's a photo dump of the build process - if you want the complete write-up with detailed instructions, you can find it here.

The Last Battlewagon

I finally finished my fifth (and final!) Battlewagon:

As you can see above, I gave it some Freeboota markings, made from my Green Stuff press molds.  As before, I also gave it a cannon with a scratchbuilt mount in the rear hatch:

I cut a panel from the Forge World Ork Glyphs & Doors kit to cover the big empty space at the top of the rear hatch:

I just need to build the Deffrolla and it'll be time for a Battlewagon painting party...

More Freeboota Nobz

I got the next unit of Nobz for my Freebootas finished:

...pretty much the same deal as the last unit, except I used blue for the stripes on the pants instead of red.  I actually used a bottle of Vallejo Game Color since I didn't have any Citadel blues that I cared for - I think it was "Imperial Blue"?  It actually looked somewhat metallic when I applied it, but luckily the wash I used on the pants afterward toned it down quite a bit.  I guess I need to come up with a couple more colors for stripes - I'm using the stripes to denote my Elites, and red & blue were obvious.  I need something that's going to stand out easily from the other colors, but isn't going to get too "muddied up" by the wash I'm using to make the pants look natural - maybe GW Scorpion Green for the next set?

Ork Deff Dread

Finished painting a Deff Dread the other day:

A pretty basic job - this is one of the models I got in the Craigslist lot, and I'm not even that sure it's going to be used in my list, so it mostly served as a color test.  I do like the way that the GW Sunburst Yellow works overtop of the Foundation Mechrite Red.  I also played around a tiny bit with the Forge World weathering powders on the exhaust & gun barrel, not enough to develop a technique or anything, I just wanted to try them.  The other main thing I was experimenting with was that this model was primed with GW's Chaos Black spray - I'm planning on basing a lot of vehicles with this, and wanted to give it a test run.  Overall, I'm pretty pleased - I was worried about it being too fragile, as it's not a "proper" primer ("real" primer is actually a mix of paint + liquid adhesive, the GW spray is just paint).  It was a bit more susceptible to scratches, but I'm pretty gentle on my models when I'm painting & generous with the matte coat, so it should be okay...