Into The Fires of Battle....

 Hi All!

So first of all I'd like to say hi to the few new followers that Have appeared over the last few days! Hopefully you'll find some of the stuff I hobble together entertaining and I look forward to any comments or thoughts you guys have on any of my finished projects!

So what have I been up to? Nowhere near as much as I thought that I would get done on my week off. That's not a bad thing though as I have managed to get myself thoroughly engrossed in Skyrim again. All those caves aren't going to explore themselves are they?!

On the painting front I did manage to get one of my projects to a finished point; 

Salamanders Dreadnought

Into the Fires of Battle....

I've really enjoyed painting this guy for a variety of reasons. Firstly, this was my test project for my new airbrush! God it's fun to play with. The coverage and control of tone I managed to get on the armour plates was really cool. It was also much less scary than I thought it would be to use this piece of kit. No horrendous mistakes were made which was a relief and I feel that I learned a lot about pressure, paint thinning, technique etc as I went on. 

As I said, I only painted the Salamander Green armour using the airbrush. I used 3 shades of green; Caliban, Warpstone Glow and Moot. I attempted some light zenithal highlighting on the arms and legs, following the curve of the armour which turned out really well I think. I also attempted some gradient shading on the front armour plates which is now a little tough to see thanks to the weathering, oh well...

The second reason this was great fun is that I wanted the model to look thoroughly beaten up. Like it had actually seen war and been on campaign for a long time! I used two separate techniques to do this. Firstly tactically using washes to darken areas, add streaks, scorch marks (I particularly like his fists!) etc. I used combinations of Badab Black, Agrax Earthshade and an old GW Chestnut Ink for the heavy scorch marks on the flamer, melta and exhausts.

Secondly I used the old sponge battle damage technique. Adding a small amount of paint to a ripped up piece of sponge and lightly dabbing the areas you want to be damaged. It worked a treat! I used Chaos Black as the base for the scratches, highlighted with Chainmail and then applied Badab Black and Agrax Earthshade washes to dull down the metal.

I also attempted a lava themed base. Like he was actually fighting on Nocturne! I used wet blending to get the lava effect and scorched the stone using Chestnut Ink. I think it turned out alright actually, even if the base is way too small.....and square.....it's all I had alright!!!

So there you go, a Salamander Dreadnought using the old school Blood Angels Furioso Dreadnought that I stripped in a previous post. You see, I can actually finish things that I start......sometimes......

...Unto The Anvil of War!

Cheers,

Phil