So Close!

I have been silent on the blog for these last several days because I was away on vacation. I did find time in the first couple days of my vacation to get some painting done, and again in the last couple nights. I am pleased to say that the Hive Tyrant is nearing completion!

The carapace is complete, as are the talons and hooves. As of this writing, I'm in the second stage of painting the purple ribbed flesh (the Leviathan Purple wash part), though the pictures below were taken before that.

Here is what the Tyrant looked like as of abut 8pm last night:

 

The first shot is of his thigh plating. The spikes on the plates of current Nid models add a ton to the model's overall look, but are sometimes challenging to properly blend into the surrounding plate. Because of the size of this model, I found I was constantly rubbing the paint off of the tips of the spikes when I was handling it. Thankfully, it never wore past the primer coat, or I'd have had an odd flat ring around each spike tip.

 

The second is his back armor. The streaking is a little more stark than it was on his talons, but I think it works. I'm really interested to see how the streaking and blending I did reacts to Dullcote. A spray of Dullcote tends to flatten down all of the layers on my marines, and I lose a bit of the transition
from one color to another. My fear is that the Dullcote will wipe out some of the more subtle layers.

The final shot is his hoof and toe talons. I like the brighter ivory colors for talons when lined up against the green and brown of his flesh and armor. I also wanted to show off the deep rings I apply using a Gryphonne Sepia wash in order to create that line between claw and flesh.

I want to get some more work in on the purple tonight, but I have about six pounds of beans to process through the canner tonight. Seriously, I'm drowning in dragon tongue beans from my garden! Hopefully, I can get some coats in while the canner is heating up.

I also sat down last night and gave the model a very thorough looking-over for errors and mistakes, and I wrote each thing down on a slip of paper. That way I don't think I'm all done, seal the model, only to realize I'd left a dot of brown on the green or forgotten to clean up a transition line.

No movement on the Marine front. I'm still staring at the same base coated Sternguard model. I do need to ramp up my Marine work soon, as the new book is due out. You can read all the rumors and confirmations over on other blogs. I'm excited about the new book. It sounds like a lot of fun, but one big hit I'll take personally is that I can no longer run an all-bike force. While that sucks from a modeling and painting perspective, it's not all bad. I may try to move some of my collection of bikes and switch over to a drop pod force. I have a diverse enough collection that a wholesale change like this is easy enough for me to pull off, but I really feel for those poor White Scars players who either have to change play styles, or sit and wait for a codex supplement to play their army.