Friday 5 April 2013

A Parade of Purple Predator Panzers

Hello to one and all, remember these chaos chaps [Emperor's Children]? Well to outfit them for the slightly more rough-and-tumble world of Apocalypse gaming, they are getting some heavily armoured friends. Rather a lot of them in fact:

These are the first three Predators for this army. Yup, you heard me, first three, there is another trio of Predators - this time Annihilators - to come. So lets take a look at some painting right?


These are the first marine tanks that I've used the airbrush with. Really speeds up the basecoating stage. With these I did some preshading (where you spray black into the recesses and leave the rest white) before adding a couple of layers of Minitaire Ecchymose - which, by the way, is the purple bit of a bruise and I only know that because I have a Biomedical Sciences degree. Seriously, what is it with stupid paint names at the moment? Why not add "Purple" to the end of that, descriptive while retaining that smart alec feel. Harumph. Anyway, tangent klaxon is sounding, on with the show. The result is that the edges glow white through the top coat and self highlight. It won't work for everything, but for Slaaneshii purple tanks, its a winner.


The TwiddlyBits(TM) elements of the scheme went a whole hell of a lot faster now that we have an actual paint to replace the dry Lucius Lilac. Hello Dechala Lilac (see? Obscure reference plus actual colour, that's how to do it, sheesh) and some freeform patterns. I deliberately kept them random but structured in the same way, mostly geometric with occasional curves and loops. In my mind these gradually change and shift with the mood of the crew. The weathering is perhaps a little heavy but I have a reason for that... beware Karak Stone. This thing is the most heavily pigmented paint in the damn range - I now discover - seriously, foundation paints weren't this dense. One swipe of a drybrush and I had inadvertantly painted a great swathe of Karak Stone over the purple. Well, you can imagine, sound the Panic-Tuba. Mercifully a combination of the client talking me down and realising that they could just have been driving though claggy clay mud and some remedial highlighting with bone fixed it. I think I just went into artist-meltdown a little as the result was so very not what I was expecting. Forgot my own advice. Everything is fixable.


While I kept the weapons nice and clean the trophy racks were lightly rusted with the AK Interactive Rust Streaks. (Given that I use a lot of different companies now I think I'll have to figure out a glossary of abbreviations), the trophies themselves were also weathered with a wash of very thinned Karak Stone, important as otherwise they stand out too much. An Imperial Fist and an Ultramarine graciously donated their helmets to the cause.


While we're talking trophies I thought I'd mention how I did the severed head as it came out nicely. If nicely is the word. A Rakarth Flesh basecoat was shaded with Agrax Earthshade and some patchy Athonian Camoshade followed that to give a mottled look. A quick rehighlight with Rakarth, some Pallid Wych Flesh eyes and then on to adding a discrete amount of blood. Given that this head was repeated on two tanks, I painted the service studs silver on one and as boils on this one. The boils are just Bugmans Glow with a Balor Brown "head", eww.

And that is your lot. Another three Predators and four renegade Land Speeders are on the painting table then it is back into more guard. Huzzah!

TTFN

4 comments:

  1. Nice free hand going on there. How come the lights are missing?

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    Replies
    1. I don't know! Came that way from the client.

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  2. Er, if one were to have a purple predator platoon, one would be so delighted that one would not drive them about in the dark where no one could see them. Hence the lights being superfluous.

    Or, Demonic Possession means that they sense their surroundings through the warp. Hence the lights being superfluous.

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