Breviccus Flavus

  OK, that was a really poor attempt at Latin – Breviccus is a poor Latin bastardization of Brevik and Flavus is Latin for Yellow.

No prizes for guessing what this is about, Dverning said he’d be interested in a stage-by-stage thingy on how I painted the Yellow for the Lamenter sergeant I did recently, so here goes…

It’s all yellow…

This is not the bright yellow you’ll see in White Dwarf, it’s a softer tone.  I’ve also highlighted differently – I’ve never liked the way they highlight Space Marine shoulder pads at GW, so I tend to highlight as if there is a light directly above the miniature.  I can’t stress how important it is to water down your paints, especially for the highlighting stages – go for more thin coats than one thick one

 1.  Basecoat – Thinned Tausept Ochre was applied in a series of coats to create a solid block of colour.  It might be worth trying a lighter primer than black here, as it did take a lot of thin coats to get to this point.

2. Shading Wash – One wash of pure Gryphonne Sepia – try not to use too much, as it will darken the overall colour.

  

3. First Highlight – Thinned Tausept Ochre is applied to the whole rim apart the bottom right corner (as you look at the picture) as this is effectively “in shadow” from a top-down perspective.  It’s also applied to the top 2/3 of the inner shoulder pad.

4. Second and Third Highlights – The second highlight is a thinned 50:50 mix of Tausept Ochre and Iyanden Darksun, the third highlight is just tinned Iyanden Darksun.  Hopefully the picture shows that these highlights are graduated towards the top of the inner pad and towards the top edges of the rim.

5. Final Highlight – A thinned 50:50 mix of Iyanden Darksun and Dheneb Stone is applied to the very top edges of the rim and the top 20% or so of the inner pad.

The End.

At some point I’ll do something similar about the battle damage on the sergeant.

As always, comments and criticism always welcome.

Grrr, was this worth the effort…?

So I had these grand plans to do a little “painting a Genestealer” stage-by-stage, taking pictures as I went.  Unfortunately the pictures haven’t turned out great, I really need to practice this picture taking malarkey to be honest.  As it’s my first attempt at one of these, I thought I’d throw it up here for people to criticise, comment and advise, rather than hide it and try and perfect it for some unknown time in the future.

So here’s how it went:

Intro

I’m a huge fan of the movie “Pitch Black” (the movie that gave Vin Diesel’s Riddick his first outing), and I’ve always been tempted to paint some Tyranids in something like the colour scheme of the monsters in the movie.  I’ve had these old Genestealer models hanging around for an age, and the new Tyranid Codex has got me toying with the idea of starting an army of ugly bug creatures.  As all armies start with a single soldier (this is in NO way a famous, or even a particularly good phrase…), I started with this one.

1.  Undercoated Black.  Nothing novel there – I tend to undercoat in black as it gives me a good start for shading.  My miniatures tend to be a bit more “grimdark” (love that term), than in White Dwarf, as I don’t like bright colours.  I also base miniatures before undercoating – I notice my local GW store doesn’t do this – I think it’s crazy, as it saves a lot of time in the long run.

2.  Basecoats.  Main body is Khemri Brown, Claws and feet are Charadon Granite, and the head and fleshy bits are Leviathan Purple.

Nothing particularly ground breaking here, just a good solid foundation. I wasn’t too fussy here, as the next stage would cover up any mistakes…

3.  All over wash with Devlan Mud – this ties everything up together and provides the basis of some graduated shadows.

4.  Highlighting the purple.  I did the highlighting in two stages:

• 50:50 mix of Codex Grey and Leviathan Purple
• 33:33:33 mix of Codex Grey, Leviathan Purple and Astronomican Grey

Not too bright and not too purple – the effect I was going for!

NOTE:  By this point I was reasonably happy with the way this was going – it was all going together the way I wanted and the pictures weren’t too bad.

5.  Highlighting the claws and feet.  Here a three stage highlight:

• Charadon Granite
• 50:50 mix of Charadon Granite and Dheneb Stone
• Pure Dheneb Stone

6.  Highlighting the body.  Again a three stage highlight:

• Khemri Brown
• 50:50 mix of Khemri Brown and Dheneb Stone
• 10:90 mix of Khemri Brown and Dheneb Stone
  

NOTE:  This is where it starts to go downhill a bit (in my opinion, readers may think the decline started much earlier…).  The picture’s not great and the highlights on the body look a little “slapdash”.

7.  Finishing up.  I’d already planned to throw some “Blanchitsu-style” at this ugly monster, so I gave it an all-over wash of very watered down Devlan Mud.  Once this was dry, a very, very light drybrush of skull white was added to the top edges and surfaces – this helps pick out the top parts of the model and gives a little more definition – good for standard troops, not so great for character models where a more controlled highlight works better.  Final painted bits

• The tongue was highlighted with Gretchin Green and Dheneb Stone
• The teeth were painted Bleached Bone and the the tips painted with Skull White
• The eyes were painted Snakebite Leather, shaded with a line of Chaos Black and highlighted with Iyanden Darksun
• Base done in the usual Brevik way, drybrush with a brown (Khemri Brown here) and then Skull White.  Edge of the base is Graveyard Earth

Finally the model was sprayed with Humbrol Matt Acrylic Varnish – which is a far better product than that satin stuff that GW sell, this is a proper Matt finish.  Some gloss ‘Ardcoat was painted into the mouth and on the tongue to give that slimy “Alien” look.

NOTE:  It really falls down here, the picture is bad and in no way does the miniature justice.  I’m going to sort that out.

End of “Article”

So what do people think?  Was anything good about it?  Was it useful?  What can I do to improve it?  As for all the things I’ve posted on this blog, all comments and criticism greatly received.  Feel free to be brutal (as long as it’s polite ;-) ). 

I’ve learned a hell of a lot from various sources on the internet, and I really want to start paying that back.

Brevik's Lament

Mrs Brevik and I went to see the Moctezuma (apparently "Montezuma" is wrong) exhibit in the British Museum last night - the exhibit was really good, but has the side effect that I now want to do a Lizardmen army in the style of the Mexica (apparently "Aztec" is wrong too...).

I don't need new army ideas right now...

No painting done so far today, but I've been trying out a few new things when taking pictures.  I can't seem to get enough light, so even though these pictures are better, they're still a bit too dark.

Lamenter Sergeant

This guy was painted a month or two ago and was an attempt at "better battle damage". I hadn't got the Modelling Masterclass book then, so I was still trying to paint battle damage on, rather than using the sponge method.

Here I used Scorched Brown as the dark colour, rather than using black, and it's a much subtler effect.  I washed the greaves and feet a couple of times with watered down Devlan Mud to "dirty it up" a bit.

Lamenters are supposed to be a Blood Angels Successor Chapter who follow the Codex Astartes, hence the red helmet.  The bolter was Chaos Black highlighted with Scorched Brown and Codex Grey - it's the paint scheme I'm using on my Legion of the Damned models, rather than the normal black.

Comments and Criticism welcome...

A night of no progress...

Well, not much happened tonight, due to me being down the pub playing skittles...

So just the one picture, just to keep things interesting:

Tzeentch Chaos Champion

A relatively quick paintjob, not too much in the way of blending, but it looks pretty effective.  I'm toying with the idea of giving him a wash of watered down Devlan Mud, just to take the edge off the colours, and tone it down a bit.  I think the axe needs it anyway, so that will certainly happen - advice gratefully received though.

In other news, I've been doing some research into better photography - looks like I might have to build my own lightbox, as the one I've been using (obviously not for the picture above) has panels that are perhaps too opaque, and aren't letting enough light through.  We have a whole stack of white tissue paper which might do a better job, but I'm going to have to make a frame for it.

I kind of wish we hadn't chucked away all those carboard boxes now...

Why did I bother getting up this morning?

I've had one of those days.

Stupid slushy snow made the walk to work "interesting" this morning.  Work was decidedly uninspiring.  Walk back from work was cold and unpleasant.  This evening I watched the rather dull Liverpool v Tottenham game (2-0) rather than what appears to be the rather more exciting Aston Villa v Blackburn game (6-4).

So I decided to take some pictures of some of my latest work:

Huron Blackheart

These two (not great) pictures were taken before he fell off the desk and bounced off the floor, knocking off his backpack, bending the talons of his claw and chipping the paint off his head.

...and yes, I was a little upset...

He's now on the shelf awaiting me to get the motivation to repair and repaint.

Classic Skaven Sorceror

This is the only picture that came out well of this guy - I've put him in this post as it's my best attempt so far at Object Source Lighting (based loosely on the tutorial in a recent White Dwarf), and I needed a positive...

As always, comments and criticism welcome.

Guitar Hero

Got 3 of these old noise marines, and this is the first one I've painted:

Not quite finished, and it's been suggested that the greaves should be another colour. Not sure about that, especially as I spent a lot of time getting the black right!  The purple was Hormagaunt Purple, washed with Leviathan Purple, and then highlighted up through Hormagaunt Purple to Astronomicon Grey. I'm pleased with the result, and it's more of a pastel colour (more befitting Slaanesh), than a bright purple.

It's had some really good feedback at the Bolter and Chainsword WIP painting forum, which I'm really pleased about - I'm trying to concentrate on painting for me, but it's nice to get some praise/validation.

Chaos Champion of Tzeentch

An update of sorts.  A while back I got my grubby little hands on 2 old Tzeentch flamer models - as in really old, from the early 90s.  I'm usually a "preserver" of older models, but the base/trunks/lower bodies of the models have always looked like they could be used for a Tzeentch chaos warrior/champion conversion.  Not having done a huge amount of converting before (my GD entry was about as adventurous as I get), I thought I'd actually try it.

Kurze, Chaos Champion of Tzeentch

Most of the miniature is made up of components from the OOP "hunchback" plastic Chaos warrior boxed set.  The sword strapped across the back is from the accessories sprue and the metal right arm with axe is from the champion bits from the box.  The fungus lower body is a long time OOP "Flamer Body 1" (Stuff of Legends link).  The slate bits on the base come from the WH40K basing kit.  He's not brilliant by any means, and he's probably quite a bit out of proportion, his upper body being a bit too big for the lower half, but hopefully when he's painted up he won't look too bad.  He's meant to look like he's waving forward his troops with his axe.  He'll also be carrying a shield in his left hand (see below).

Colour scheme wise he'll be mainly painted up like this:

Blue: Gradual transition through Fenris Grey, Space Wolves Grey, Astronomicon Grey

Yellow: Tau Sept Ochre, washed with Gryphon Sepia, then highlighted through Tau Sept Ochre, Iyanden Darksun, Dheneb Stone.

Comments and criticism welcome.  Photos of other stuff to follow.

More Legion of the Damned...

Not for me yet, but if you pop into your local GW store, and watch the screensaver at the order point, you'll get a sneak peek at the next batch of Legion of the Damned models.  The new sergeant is particularly nice (and better than the one just released in my opinion), plus there's one trooper with a broken helm and exposed skull - nice!