Pre Heresy Era Thousans Sons

cassar

BALLSCRATCHER
Haven't you heard? Green is SO in this season gir'fran!

And yes, I have it on authority that Cass is, in fact, the best painter ever.

ok can you please relax that thing now?! At least put the safety back on?

good man, you know it makes sense lol.
 
Big update of what is going on. I DONE A MINI LOOK!!!!

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I am happy how it turned out. I am pish with red but getting there. lots of thin coats helped.

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Tee999

New member
Nice work. I really like the eye's shoulder pad and back pack.
I also like the large pre heresy shoulders in the termies!

did you make them? If so that's some really nice work!

Tee
 

Mr.S.Marbo

New member
Cool are you making the shoulderpads? I've never seen them before? What is the model with what looks like a "hawk mask" (yeah I know terrible description) - that is the marine second from bottom? Is this going to be a whole army? Yeah questions questions and more questions with me tonight hehe
 
Aye pity about the painting skillz :eyeroll:

Although the more i paint i now feel like i am getting better, knowing where there should be a bit of shade ect.
 

Meph

Cat-herder Extraordinaire
Indeed, once you get 'the eye' (not lidless, neither wreathed in flame) you'll see it gets easier every time. And I think they look good now. A good trick to have the model's details pop out a bit more is to do some outlining with some slightly thinned black or dark brown ink.
 

cassar

BALLSCRATCHER
MOF i've got to agree with you, i've seen better......i've seen a lot worse too, have faith in yerself you are well up the learning curve in fact i can see your arse from here!
 

BPI

New member
Hi MoF, re. your painting, just looking at that most recent red & gold guy. Nice TT, far superior to the stuff I saw last time I paid any attention to the ongoing games in my local GW.

Starting with prep, I know you've got any army to do so time is limited, but if you're relying on washes and/or drybrushing then you need to zap those mouldlines. The front of the gun is particularly noticeable. Though I see you've drilled the barrels, Freak will be pleased ;) I imagine the twirl around the staff was a nightmare to clean, or is that a plasticard addition to a plain staff that you've done yourself? Most of the metal looks nice & smooth & even, well done.

Colour selection. Red & gold primary, nice strong choice. Purple accent is a classic for the gold, only works so-so with the red. Blues and the green eye? One too many at least. There's no neutral on him at all. Well, unless we're including silver or the skull. My solution, hmmm...

...I think I'll go with the green. It can be used to shade both red & gold effectively, will provide a compliment to the red when gleaming out from the eyes & can be tinted into the base to tie the whole thing together. Then a dark grey neutral that tends toward green, use dark green/black to shade & highlight with Rotting Flesh. Applied to loin cloth, skull, etc. Anyway, just an idea if you want to tighten up your colour scheme going forward.

If you wanted to just play with this one a bit more before starting on a fresh model:

Clean up the purple that's run onto the gold on the headdress. Shade the gold Thraka Green in shady bits & glaze with Ogryn Flesh on the bright bits. Quick line highlight with Shining Gold. Miniscule amount of Mithril Silver mixed in for spot highlights where you want to draw attention (eg. top of headress but not toes or knees).

Purple highlight on headdress, try a few things on your pallete, Liche Purple then see what you think by lightening with Space Wolf Blue, or Elf Flesh, or Dwarf Flesh, or for a more aged approach Rotting Flesh, Kommando Khaki or Bleached Bone. Whichever you prefer, run your horizontal highlight along the top edge of the purple strips, rather than through the middle where they are now. Don't have to be precisely at the top as the Thraka Green wash in the recess & the brightness of the gold above should define the panels nicely. I think I might be tempted by Dwarf Flesh as it would be an easy colour to also use for red highlighting.

Purple loincloth. If you just want a single stage layer highlight, a nice effective army painting technique, you could try using less! Your highlight covers the entire raised area when it doesn't need to. It's already two colours, dark purple in the recesses from the wash & mid purple on top. You've painted over all of the mid. Keep the centre highlighted & the closer to the edge the darker it gets as you go up and lighter as you go down. A tiny bit of Bleached Bone in the mix on that middle horizontal bit as a single final highlight & it's done.

Halberd handle. Ice Blue & Space Woolf Grey highlight on the top edge of the coil, all the way up & down. Not all the way around though. Just on the upward facing side (left side of photo). Don't try & paint the line like freehand embroidery, it'll be too wide & wobbly, use the edge of the brush & run it across the top edge. It doesn't matter if the brush point occasionally splodges into the dark blue recesses, they're dead easy to overpaint & the crisp highlight will distract from any thick paint issues in such a dark & shady area.

Halbard blade: The zippy-zappy power line. Block in where you want it, the lines are never fine enough & overrun, you just want the shape. Now run the dark colour around & carefully define the powerlines. Far easier because you've only got one edge to be careful of rather than 2 or 3 (left hand side of brushstroke, right side, line you're meeting up with). Don't keep the paint too thick though. The white from the powerline showing through will be your OSL.

Gun. Has the front of it got a blue design? It just needs a couple of neat coats (Shadow Grey?) to smooth it out. Then a nice darkline around it to crisply seperate it from the silver. Easily done as you're going to wash the silver in Badab Black anyway. Go gently, don't let it pool until you've got a dry layer on, then work with quick brushstrokes on any area that looks dry & swiftly shade the underside, recesses, etc. Because your shading has defined the shape you don't have to worry about highlights too much. Fine edge highlights of Chainmail in a couple of spots but not much at all. Bottom edge of gun barrels, top of nobbly bits along upper surface, edge of ammo on the outside of the mini only. Very thin Badab Black brushed over highlights to blend them in.

Red armour: Be bolder with your highlights! You've edged them when you could fill in most of entire panels. Whole upperside of that shoulder pad, whole lower side of the hip guard, upper face of feet, etc. Final highlight, just mix a bit more of your highlight colour in with the red, don't switch to white. If you don't want tp spend too long, try thinning the paint massively. Put a wet dab onto the mini, swiftly rinse & dry brush. Now the pigment in the watery blob on the mini has all dropped to one side through gravity. Hold the mini so that the intended highlight area is level, then nudge the pigment into the middle of the pool. Keep it level while it dries. Try a handful more times to brighten it up, or to fill an annoying dark blip. Very thin red glaze over whole thing. If you wanted an enameled/lacquered effect then red ink would be a simple thing to use for that final glaze.

Green eyes: final dot highlight of Camo Green? Same colour edged along lower eyehole rim for OSL effect. Overpaint any splippage with red :)

That's probably enough isn't it? I'm just putting off repainting my crow's eyes that I was rather pleased with last night :D

Lots of nicely put together models there, should be an impressive army :good:

Cheers, B.
 
Hi BPI thanks for the input. I am trying to go all out on these so i will read over your post. The axe was sculpted like that. When you say green for the eyes these are the eyes on the armour as opposed to helmet ones?
 
RIGHT

These terminators are now a practice project for my next set of minis (the power armour egyptian ones) so they will still be part of the army.

Now i thinned blood red a WHOLE lot more than i usually would. In fact was right out of my comfort zone.

Here is a pick of 3 layers of blood red over mechrite red (next time will try Mech then 50/50 mech/red then red. My question is if i keep layering will it become more "blood red"?

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BPI

New member
No it won't, looks about as Blood Red as it's going to get to me :)

You do appear to have covered ALL of the Mechrite with Blood though? Why haven't you left any of the Mechrite/Badab Black showing through to provide shading?

I'm hassling you because of this comment "...knowing where there should be a bit of shade..." which rings big bells for me! It must be even worse painting just an arm rather than the whole model but the rule of thumb stands: the sun is directly overhead, anything pointing up is light, anything facing down is dark. It can be hard to see up close with brush in hand though :)

That top arm that's Mechrite with Badab Black. Get more Badab & paint it onto the bottom third of the arm, around all the rivets and anywhere else where the planes/pieces of armour change. Then just use your Blood Red on the top third of the arm. With your thinned BR take care to dot it onto the tops of rivets but don't let it pool around them, that's our shady bit! If you can get these three levels on comfortably (shade, mid-tone, main highlight), then glue it together, then that's effective enough. Extra finish by going around it with washes, just painted onto areas that have suddenly become shady (because of a weapon hanging down that wasn't covering his thigh before, etc) and then your final highlights, which are really just tiny dots.

I've backed away from it at the moment but good practise is the "shade to black, highlight to white". Once I'd tried it I realised how limited my shading & highlighting were! E.g. Dark Blue, mid-blue, light-blue. Looks really weird as I paint and only really comes together once those final highlights are on. Of course you're painting in red which is a complete pain in the proverbial. If you think of Blood Red with a tiny drop of (eg) Dwarf Flesh as your final highlight then that restriction in range makes it clear how important shading right down to black will be.

Final thought, Badab Black will only go so far. If you see an area that really needs depth but the 5 coats of BB haven't done it, just mix a bit of Chaos Black in so that you don't waste too much time (I only recently worked this out for myself).

Cheers, B

PS, think I may have misunderstood your last question, I finally spotted the eyes on that shoulderpad. All content in that long post was aimed at the single painted mini in that post, not the unpainted ones. I'd probably do those armour ones in a rotting Flesh base to play off the green elsewhere & paint them as real eyes (iris, etc.).
 
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