Sunday 7 July 2019

All about that bass


I had to break the knight down into 53 sub assemblies and that's just masochism.   I belatedly remembered that the piping/door handles were still on the sprue had to add them.  I can't believe I forgot during the build but it was deliberate, at first.  Once you release a tiny piece of model from the safety of its little sprue prison, it becomes a ticking time bomb.  Just waiting for that perfect opportunity to disappear discreetly down the back of the sofa.  Something you don't notice for days, even weeks and end up howling in despair and frustration because you know, for certain, that you will never see the cursed thing again and now the model is ruined.

All cut up and finding the negative spaces very interesting

So the handles stayed on the sprue till the last possible moment. However, right at this very moment I am convinced that I'm going to ruin it with paint.  I spent so much time and money on this folly, it is probably a stupid idea to be going all 'experimental'.  Nevertheless, I have committed to colorshift metal paint.  And copper and bone effects.  And gloss black paint.  And door handles.  As a daemonic entity, you never know when a convenient handhold is going to save your bacon.

I used plasticard, sprues, blu tac, green stuff and lashings of glue

Then of course, there was the base which I had no idea what to do with.  It all began to seem like too much effort and I started watching shite on Netflix instead of painting.  Inspiration finally arrived in the form of plasticard.

Tidied up with milliput

The half painted knight was a bit monochrome so I added some bone effects to the head and missile lanuchers.  It seemed ok but I needed more of the same colour to set it off.

Primed and recess shaded

I thought it might be good to contrast the dark themed model with a clean base and started mucking around with a sheet of thick plasticard.  If I chopped it up, maybe I could make it look like marble.  A cream coloured marble base would pick out the bone colours nicely, I thought.  Admittedly, I'd never tried to paint marble before so this could easily end in disaster but there are a surprising number of tutorials out there.

Ok I may have gotten a bit carried away with the veins.  And you can't tell that I used Brass Scorpion.  Oh well. 

After watching them and downloading a batch of marble pictures from shutterstock I reckoned I would try my hand at a brownish, cream marble with metallic veins.  I'm not going to post the inspirational pictures because mine looks nothing like them.  It is however very acceptable and may have gotten me back into the painting mood.   I definitely enjoy building models more than painting them and the whole base only took 3 evenings from concept to paint drying.

Glazing medium is fucking magic in a bottle

24 comments:

  1. I really like the marble you got there! Do you plan on painting in the panels with the aquila and mechanicum cog in a different colour?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, I was thinking about doing them metallic but just got lazy in the end. The best colour is done!

      Delete
  2. That came out great! Far better than any of my attempts at marble, that's for sure.

    I also really like how the Knight itself is coming along, from that one pic where it's done up all shiny. 53 sub-assemblies does seem vaguely ridiculous, but with a conversion that complicated, I can see it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheers Westrider. It was mostly door handles and armor plating that made up the sub assemblies and it probably saved time overall since there is less tidy up and hard to reach areas. I just need to pull my thumb out of my arse and get on with it.

      Delete
    2. Ah. I wouldn't really count those as "sub-assemblies". Not if each one is just a single part.

      Delete
  3. Mate the Knight looks amazing and so does that marble effect, brilliant, love it. which tutorial did you find works the best for you ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, I like it but I don't think it's the best example evah. I just typed 'marble effect warhammer' into the search engine and browsed through about half a dozen videos. They all seemed to be variations on a theme: Build up base layers, random veiny effects thinned out, make it shiny. I thought Duncan's example on Warhammer TV was simple but effective.

      Delete
  4. You're insane, but if you need a break you can build my faerie swarm bases for me :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Rob. 'Faerie' and 'swarm' should never be in the same sentence, surely?

      Delete
  5. They're riding squirrels and giant snails. What could be more terrifying?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What's the charge range on a snail again?

      Delete
    2. The Quest for the Blank Claveringi by Patricia Highsmith does an excellent job of showing just how terrifying giant snails would be.

      Delete
    3. Interesting and grisly story. I'm still not convinced about the charge distance (without magic, at least) but you could give it rules like a Sporocyst and use them to ambush I suppose.

      Delete
  6. 12" because they're magical.

    ReplyDelete
  7. That base is stunning!!!

    Also I definitely sympathize with ya on the bits disappearing into the ether, (any) tiny bit that drops from my hand I hear bounce off of the hardwood floor once and then...nothing. They're simply gone, never to be found again no matter how long I curse and swear beneath my desk with flashlight in hand.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have carpet so the bits dont bounce so much so instead of losing the bit I get to crawl around the floor with a flash light for 30mins.

      Delete
    2. Haha, we've all done it. Crawling around on the floor looking for that space marine head, trying to work out deflection angles and trajectory.

      Delete
    3. I kind of thought that when I moved, and went from plastic-grey carpet to brown hardwood floors, it would cut down on that, but it still seems to be happening. Possibly the cats are eating them.

      Delete
  8. You have made my morning, what I can see of the colour shift paint looks good so far. The base looks great and the marbling looks marbly in the photos. Also if you are not already watch Stranger Things.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheers, I don't know why I'm lollygagging on this one. I need to finish it! I'm pacing myself on Stranger Things. Up to Episode 4. I hated Steve in the first series but now he's my favourite!

      Delete
  9. You can get vacuum cleaner attachments that separate anything bigger than dust.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. really? I might give that a go.

      Delete
    2. https://www.godfreys.co.nz/turbo-dust-accelerator

      Delete