Dreadtober Progress Reports #2 and 3: Basic Colors and The Base

This week I have two Dreadtober updates to share in one post. I was out of town last week, so I missed the update on blocking in colors on the model.

Here's the current painting progress on the Raven Guard Venerable Dreadnought:

He's nearly done. You can see that I left his shins off for painting. You can also spot a small dot of silver on his left thigh area that needs cleaned up. I used Runelord Brass on small details like bolt heads and ribbed cables, washed it with Devlan Mud, and then touched it again with Ironbreaker because it looked too flat. It breaks up the monotony of silver nicely.

I'm supposed to use this model in a is weekend, so I'll probably concentrate on decals and final details like lenses and targeters next week.

In order to get him table-ready, I also started work on his base. I use a flagstone style base scheme for my Raven Guard, and I covered the process I used to make the first bases HERE.

The first step for the Dreadnought base was to slather the whole thing in plastic glue and start slapping down carved squares and scraps.



The scraps are left over from building my original 32mm bases and the base for my Leviathan Siege Dreadnought. All the overhangs are very intentional in order to get a more random placement of the center flagstone on the base. The overhangs go away when I turn the base over a couple days later and use an Xacto knife to trace around the top edge. This scores the plastic and allows me to snap the overhanging parts off. Those scraps go in a bag for later use. The result is here:

 

After snapping the overhangs off, you angle your knife and carve the flagstone texture into the edges. You can see some of the little curls of plastic produced by this process in the picture above.

 

The final step is to add bits, rocks, and sand. I have a bin full of random offcuts from which I pulled that skull-arch thing (I believe it came from a 40K scenery scrap), and obscured by the glare in the upper left are two resin skulls from Secret Weapon's "Sack 'O Skulls". Those are top-notch quality, and I highly recommend them.

 

The bits get stuck on with superglue, and then I use PVA glue top make little puddles where I want rocks and sand. I randomly drop small rocks into the puddles, and then cover the remainder in sand. Both materials came from the springtime washdown at the end of my driveway. That's the little piles of sand and dirt left in the drive by the melting snow.

 

I try to focus on wonky areas of the base for rocks and sand, like the corners of the center flagstone. I got lazy and didn't carve it up enough, and so it looked too sharp and geometric. The rubble obscures that and solves the problem.

 

The base is now sitting in my garage, waiting for the primer to dry. I'll paint it tonight during the Bruins game.



Picture time!

As I promised, here are some pics I took over the course of a couple projects, but that never panned out into anything resembling the tutorials I wanted them to.

First up is a series of WIP shots of my Hive Tyrant's base.

This one is the base with the materials glued down. It's gravel and washdown material from the end of my driveway, resin tree stumps and a doric column chunk from Secret Weapon, and some Greenstuff mushrooms.

Then the same base primed white (very exciting). It took quite a few spritzes from the can at various angles to get all the rocks covered and gaps primed.

After that it was a few coats of Reaper MSP Stained Ivory on the dirt and exposed wood. When that was dry, it got a thinned wash of Gryphonne Sepia on the ground and Thraka Green on the wood. I wanted the wood to look soggy and decayed, and it was the one thing i feel I didn't pull off well. I was generally unhappy with the end result of the stumps, which you'll see in a future post.

I wanted some shadows and a moist soil look around the stumps, so I went with Devlan Mud wash around them. I then added a few more areas of Devlan, Ogryn Flesh, Leviathan Purple, and even a few dots of Thraka Green. I mostly concentrated on the areas where grass and reeds would be, figuring they'd retain and grow in the moist areas.

This final shot shows where I started basecoating the stone grey, and added some purple and brown washes to the stump bark.

And that's where I stopped taking pictures because I was short on time.

I grabbed these two shots of my WIP Devastator Sergeant in order to start a tutorial on how to shade red. Here's the sergeant with a basecoat of red on his helmet:

 

And then again after washing the red with Thraka Green, which is the proper color for shading red. I abandoned this tutorial because I was painting my ass off for the Standish Standoff.

 



Then I have this shot of my drop pod being assembled, using slide clamps to hold the fins in place while glue cures. I was going to do a whole article on these and other clamps, but I assemble models far too slowly for that.

 And finally, a shot of one of my Genestealers after I had put a Sepia wash on the basecoated talons. The green skin is complete in this shot.

So, that is make-up picture day. I'll have some more shots of the finished Tyrant and Genestealers next time.

Picture Time!

It's time for some photos!

I'd mentioned that I'd bought a couple of Secret Weapon kits. One of the problems I ha when deciding if I should buy them was determining how big everything was. SW isn't legally allowed to show GW models in their product photos, so I'm going to do so for them! First up is the Tree Stumps kit:

They're good sized, but should probably be reserved for 40mm and up sized bases. Most simply won't fit on a 25mm alongside a model.

Then you've got the Broken Doric Column kit:.

Again, too large for a 25mm base, so stick with 40mm and up or terrain.

Both kits are of very high quality, with almost no visible mold lines. Some flash, sure, but it peels away without leaving much behind on the tree stumps. No flash whatsoever on the column pieces.

Now, here's the next Tactical Marine I've been working on:

Basic stuff. I'm trying to make an effort to use more grenades and wargear on my Marines' belts. Basic Marines get one item, Sternguard are getting two. I'm swimming in these little bits, so I should probably use them. They also break up the monotony of blue paint.

Speaking of Sternguard:

These guys were the last two members of the 5-man squad I'd planned out and tried airbrushed helmets for. I departed from the all-Mk8 armor theme, as I was simply having too many problems with fitting heads into necks/collars. The guy on the left is underwhelming because I used that plain skull-adorned torso. It works ok for a basic Marine who'll be all blue and gold, but it doesn't provide the gold areas needed to make a white/blue Marine stand out. Lesson learned.

Now I need to learn how to use these guys, having never run Sternguard before.