Lead Figure Painting Tutorial 4: Space Marine Land Speeder
This was originally posted as a thread on the RelicNews 40K: DOW forum.
Read first:
1. I often use Vallejo paints in addition to Citadel ones, these will be indicated by "V paintname". For reference: Vallejo colour chart and relation to Citadel colours, and standard Citadel colour chart.
2. I'm aiming for a good, but efficient standard, neither an army standard nor a top-notch display standard, but somewhere in between. Perhaps an army character standard or a warband member standard, or in my case, an actually-getting-damn-figures-painted standard.
3. Photos won't be as clear as usual as I've needed to use a cruder set-up for the WIP photos.
Stage 0: Plan
Chosen to round off the tutorial series as vehicles are obviously a major part of 40K gaming/painting. I wanted to go for a more vehicley vehicle rather than a Dreadnought, something with simpler, larger areas that could show off typical vehicle painting. Browsing Forgeworld I found a couple of things I liked and this seemed a nice choice. It's not a tank but similar painting could be applied to tanks, although care would have to be taken with the tracks - sometimes it is best to paint them seperately and attach them later to avoid messing up the hull painting or vice versa.
Anyway, onwards... I ummm and ahhhed a bit about the colour scheme and settled on a darkish crimson. And, errr, that's about it since the hull is just one big area. Metal bits should be cleanish metal, details in an appropriate colour. Some symbols or transfers would be good, and I will try to do a bit of weathering too.
Stage 1: Preparation
Uhuh well this was everything ForgeWorld resin promised to be. Suffice to say the quality <=> price ratio is impressively low and I'm unlikely to buy many more FW products. Each part was carefully scraped, trimmed, and sanded - actually, most parts fitted together well, but there were several mold ridges and random flanges that needed a lot of work. Then it was all washed and scrubbed in soapy water before being glued together.
Part way through assembly, I painted the pilot. He's almost entirely hidden in the cockpit but I wanted some paint on him just in case. This was done very simply to avoid wasting time on it: Undercoat with thinned Chaos Black, drybrush with Skull White. Armour painted V Scar Red, lined edges with Blood Red. Console painted various colours. A few metal bits painted with Chainmail. Eyes painted with Snot Green then Scorpion Green. Chest painted with Glistening Gold then washed with thinned Brown Ink. That's it. The inside of the cockpit hatch was painted black as well.
Finally assembled (I left the stand off until it's finished) and undercoated it, using a new technique for me: since I was going to paint the hull a dark red, I didn't know whether to spray with black or white....so I did both! With both spraycans to hand, I gave it a solid undercoat of Chaos Black spray, then whilst that was still wet, a fine covering of Skull White spray. The idea being that it will end up a neutral grey, but with some black left in the recesses to give some definition.
Speed: Preparation was very slow simply due to the amount of trimming etc needed. With better casting this would be quicker. Painting the pilot was quick. Assembly and undercoating were fairly quick.
Next: The hull.
Stage 2: Hull basecoat and lining
WTF? Fiend is showing us how to apply a basecoat? Has he lost his mind entirely. Well yes, but that's not why I'm showing this step in detail. I'm showing this because the model consists mostly of flat hull areas and getting those areas right starts with a good basecoat (well, starts really with good preparation and undercoat too). They need to be flat and smooth and consistently painted.
Bearing that in mind, I did a few things:
1. Bought a larger brush especially for this - a flat 1/4 inch brush. GW Tank Brushes are great but a bit stiff so can produce a "scrubbed" effect, and are harder to get in the recesses.
2. Mixed up a half pot of the desired basecoat. This is a mix of V Scar Red and Chaos Black and a little water. I have no idea of the exact proportions as I kept chucking in the colours at random (and testing them on a bit of the wing) and random until it looked okay. I made sure I had plenty mixed to cover a large figure....and ended up with far too much...
3. Painted 3 full, thin coats, standard really but the large areas really do need good coverage (on smaller areas the shading and highlighting will cover more and disguise blotchy painting). I made no attempts to be neat with these coats, the hull is far too large to dick around trying to avoid painting on the what-will-be-metal areas etc. These can be neatened later.
Coat 1. Noticably streaky on the wing. BTW, I've called my colour "Vin Rouge: Vintage 40,000". You'll be able to buy it in the Dulux Warm & Contemporary range soon.
Coat 2. Doesn't show but it's still a bit streaky in the larger areas.
Coat 3. Now it's consistent all over the model. Each coat took a little bit less time than the previous one.
Lining and touching up: I lined in between the hull plates with Chaos Black, and also lined this into some of the recesses, and around the recessed engines and vents. The more complex underside, I washed with thinned Chaos Black to save time. I do this stage now because invariably there is some overspill and it's easier to touch up with the base colour.
Whilst painting, some of the paint started rubbing off the edges. To try to get a tougher coat, I gave the edges a drybrush with the basecoat mix, then another light coat, then another drybrush. Not much extra work and hopefully it will stay painted :disgust:
Speed: Okay overall. I mean, it's slow, but this is a huge area of the model. The basecoats were okay. Lining took some more time until I figured it was quicker to be a bit messy with this and touch up, rather than really fiddling around in the recesses. This was quite a tedious stage which makes it slower for me as I keep procrastinating and putting off painting. Next ones should be more fun.
Next: Hull highlighting.
Stage 3: Hull highlighting and shading
A stage that's bigger than your mom's ass ;). Basically this is the main stage of the vehicle. It's painted using the fairly standard for vehicles - careful drybrushing across the edges, using a tank brush. This is not standard drybrushing as you'd use on textured surfaces though. Rather it's a careful building up of highlights using repeated and very dry drybrushing. How dry? This dry:
That's SUPER DRY.
Things to remember:
1. Use a good, large, stiff brush for the overall drybrushing, and a smaller one for final highlighting. The GW ones are fine for this.
2. Make sure the brushes are very clean and have no residue of previous drybrushing as this will completely bugger the model up.
3. Load the brush with paint when wipe it off as normal until it's dry.
4. Then wipe it off a whole lot more until it's SUPER DRY. If it's not the result will be streaky and 'orrible.
5. Brush back and further across the edges to slowly build up a slightly textured highlight.
6. For further highlights, brush closer to the edges and corners.
First highlight of a mixture of the V Scar Red / Chaos Black basecoat mix and more V Scar Red. Mostly just a test highlight to check the drybrushing.
Second highlight of pure V SR. This was repeated 3 times to build up the colour, and is an overall heavy coat to brighten the whole model.
Third highlight of V Scar Red and Skull White mix, applied more along the edges.
Fourth highlight of V SR / more SW mix, applied along the edges. closer to the corners along the edges.
Fifth highlight of V SR / more SW mix, applied closer to the corners along the edges.
Some shading was applied at this stage - the general recesses had a thinned V SR / Chaos Black mix simply painted into them (like lining, but a broader line - the thinness of the mix stops it looking too crude). The deep recesses and gaps, which had already been previously lined with CB were re-lined with CB to define them more clearly.
First lining along all the edges with a V SR / SW mixture (same as in 4th highlights), using the flat of the brush. A lining stage is useful as it looks sharper than the drybrushed result.
Second and third lining, progressively closer to the corners, using V SR / more SW mixtures. This was applied mostly to the upper corners which would get more light.
The overall effect is still fairly dark but with quite vivid highlights. I could have made them more subtle, but I quite like strong highlights AND since the basecoat is dark, it's useful to bring more definition to the appealing angles of the model.
Speed: Slower than the average British train service. But, this is by necessity - the hull is, perhaps, 90% of the whole model, so it needs attention lavished on it. The drybrushing doesn't take as long as the lining. For a simpler style, this could easily have been made quicker by less drybrushing and less lining stages.
Next: Metal bits.
Stage 4: Metal bits.
The second most involved stage. There are no less than 19 significant metal areas on the model (bottom studs, 2 lower vents, lower sensor, 2 engines, 2 outer probes, rear rod, 2 main grills, 2 outer pods, 2 missile housings, 3 window trims, and assault cannon) as well as 141 rivets (yes I counted). Which is really quite a lot of stuff to paint. I went for a fairly clean metal as befits the proud Space Marines, with an oily sheen from all the Adeptus Mechanicus sanctified ritual lubrications.
Basecoat Boltgun Metal, just took one coat - GW silvers at least still cover very well.
All appropriate recesses and metal/hull boundaries were lined with thinned Chaos Black. Not all areas needed this as these areas had been undercoated with CB before.
First highlighting was Chainmail fairly roughly layered on near the edges. Most of the rivets painted at this stage.
Second highlight was a strong line of Mithril Silver along the very edges, using the side of the brush. Final rivets painted.
The metal was then washed with a thinned mixture of Black and Yellow Inks (I used Yellow to give an oily, rather than rusty look), and a bit of V Glaze Medium. However the grills were washed with the same mix but Chaos Black instead of Black Ink, as I didn't want the glossier ink effect in the recesses.
And that was that. Except I realised I missed out the slim top grill (area 20), so that's still to be done, doh.
Oh and during this stage I broke off one of the wing sensor probes as I just bloody knew I would (thought I might have got away with it as it survived the drybrushing stage, but no). Thus I got cross and clippered the other one off and filed them both into stubbier rounded probes. Inevitable.
Speed: Slow but that's just due to the amount that needed to be painted. The actual techniques were quick and quite effective I think.
Next: Sensor areas and further details.
Stage 5: Sensor pods.
Painted differently from the hull to give a bit of variety. For speed, these could have been painted the hull colour. I chose a grey I use fairly often - a neutral, hi-tech grey that's good for stuff that looks vaguely important but you don't really know what it is.
Also in these photos you can see the new Mark II Compact Sensor Rods, a recently developed more aerodynamic version, approved by the Adeptus Mechanicus boffins... :rolleyes:
Basecoat of V Cold Grey.
Shading with a thinned V Cold Grey / Chaos Black, painted into the deep recesses, and blended where it was painted on a larger area. I should make a mix pot of this darker grey as it's very useful.
First highlight with V Stonewall Grey, blended roughly along all the edges (I could have made this neater but went for speed instead) AND then lined along all the edges to reinforce the colour.
Second highlight of Skull White lined along the raised edges with a slight focus on the corner areas.
Finally it was lined with Chaos Black around the rivets, and also around any sensor pod / hull joins that hadn't already got enough black between them. I usually do this step before highlighting but in this case the highlighting can overlap with some of the areas-to-be-lined (e.g. around the rivets) so I did it last. Rivets were painted Chainmail again.
Speed: Okay. The method is pretty quick, but it had to be done carefully to avoid getting any grey on the hull.
Next: Details.
Stage 6: Details.
Various odds and sods around the vehicle that needed to be painted. A couple are worth looking at in detail I think...
Gold eagle
Basecoat 1 with a mix of V Shining Gold and Chainmail (V SG and the GW golds have poor coverage, this mix covers better). Basecoat 2 with V SG. Washed with a mix of Brown and Yellow Inks. Highlight 1 with a mix of V SG and Mithril Silver painted onto raised areas. Highlight 2 of pure MS painted onto the very edges/tips, then tidied up with Chaos Black, and a final glaze of thinned Yellow Ink to bring some colour back.
Sensor "gems"
Painted using the standard gem technique. Method described is for the green gem. Sorry for the crappy photos.
Basecoat with a few coats of V Dark Green. Highlight 1 along the underneath of gem with two coats of Goblin Green, roughly blended back from the bottom edge. Highlight 2 with a thin line of a GG / Skull White mix painted along the bottom of the gem, and a tiny line of GG / more SW painted near near the centre of the bottom edge. Paint a little V Dark Green / Chaos Black mix in the upper centre of the gem (not shown, camera wouldn't capture it). Finally, paint a little dot of pure Skull White near the top of the gem - make sure it's in the same place for all gems.
Speed: Pretty quick. I took a bit of extra care over these but because they are small areas, it didn't take much time, and was fun after painting the more tedious bits.
Next: Symbols and stuff.
Stage 7: Symbols and weathering.
By this stage, the actual painting of the 3D model is finished. If you're in a real hurry you could be done already. However it's common to add a bit more "realistic" detail to vehicles. Quite fun too...
Symbols:
Which include various markings, logos, etc etc. I painted a few "warning" type things on, but also used a few skull transfers instead of having a chapter symbol. Hazard stripes add a bit of flava to the model. The trick with these as with most such freehand detail is to use a small, high quality brush, keep cleaning it and tweaking it to a point, use thinned paint, slowly build up the paint and thickness of lines, and take your time as it IS fiddly.
Undercoat with 3 thin coats of Skull White. Basecoat with 3 thin coats of Sunburst Yellow. Using a fine detail brush, paint Chaos Black on in diagonal stripes, carefully building up the thickness of each stripe to ensure they look uniform. Then, highlight the black with thin lines of Codex Grey and the yellow with thin lines of a Skull White / Sunburst Yellow mix - this highlighting should be subtle, it's really just to give a bit of depth to the area and avoid the primary colour look.
Weathering:
Ah yes the fun of weathering, where you get to look at your smart, stylish paint job, and make a complete bloody mess of it ;). I don't tend to do it myself, which is a bit daft as it's easy and quite effective.
Chipped paint. Start with the clean hull. Roughly paint a bit of Chaos Black around some edges and corners. The trick is to choose places that would be naturally chipped e.g. around doors, hatches, hinges, weapons, exposed edges (in the example shown it's where the missiles would be loaded into the launcher). And keep it subtle at first, you can always add more later, but it's a lot harder to tidy up the fully-painted hull colour. Then paint some Mithril Silver over the black, taking care to only leave the thinnest of black lines (if any) for definition - thicker black lines will look cartoony.
Exhaust / smoke stains. Start with the clean hull. Drybrush some Chaos Black in trails backwards (to show the trails have mostly been blown horizontally by the speed of the, err, speeder) from the vents/grilles etc. Then if you like, drybrush a lighter colour, V Earth in this case, in the centre of the black streak. However the black does look fine on it's own.
Finally (not shown) I drybrushed a very faint amount of V Earth then V Khaki around the forward facing aspects of the model to give a little dirt from flying too close to filthy battlefields, coming into land, etc etc. This takes the edge of the chipped paint and stuff too, makes it all look more natural.
Speed: Slow for the symbols and stuff, as one has to be really careful with those, although I think the effort is worth it. A lot quicker for the weathering as the very nature of weathering means that rougher techniques look more appropriate.
Next: Tidying and varnishing woohoo.
Finished model:
Well...
There ya go it's done. I'm quite happy with it. It is a cool model, quite different to the normal Land Speeder. The painting, from the drybrushing technique, is a bit rough close up, but effective from a normal viewing distance. Compared to previous tutorial figures, I went for a more "future military" and less flamboyant look.
This took more time than comparable painting on normal sized figure - although the colour scheme etc was pretty simple, there's just a lot more of it to paint. Also, I find it harder to paint in long spells when doing repetitive painting, so I struggled a bit with this one. But one notable aspect is, most of the techniques can be speeded up or qualitied (?) up according to preference. And some of the nice little touches like details and weathering aren't that time-consuming.
Most prominent things I learnt / noted during this:
- Vehicle techniques can be very effective.
- Choice of paint brush and painting style is important - choose what is appropriate to the figure.
- Painting large complex areas the same colour just takes time and bores me.
- Detailing and weathering is effective and efficient given the result / time taken.
Right. That's all folks.
