Damned Legionnaire OSL Fail

You know when you thought you got something right and then you look at the pictures and you realise you haven't?  

I've been looking for a decent and different way to paint Legion of the Damned marines.  My previous attempts, including a browned aged look to the armour, and the standard GW paint job didn't feel right, so this time I tried to do something a little different again.  

What I tried to do was go for a standard-ish paint scheme, an aged look to the metal and some OSL effect around the flames and eyepieces.  I also wanted this to be a quick (well for me anyway) paint job, so I can knock one or two of these out every so often so I have something to show for my efforts.  Just from looking at this picture, the OSL effect around the flames has come out reasonably well.  Unfortunately I dropped a boo-boo when it came to the eyepieces - particularly  that there is a clear line where the OSL stops and unlit bone coloured face mask begins, where that should have been graduated.

Damn.

I am pleased with the black.  I've been looking for a dark grey to purchase - I know it's lazy but I don't want to mess about mixing up a colour if I can get it ready made.  So I found Tamiya's NATO Black in my local HobbyCraft and thought I'd give it a go.  The coverage isn't great, but it does the job.  My biggest bugbear however, is the pot - bearing in mind it's a screw lid, it was a royal pain in the backside to get open the first time.  To be honest, it's such a pain that it's put me off Tamiya paints altogether - I shouldn't be in fear of shattering the pot while trying to open the damn thing (yes it was that bad when I first opened it).

So my new, all-conquering (when I can get the damn pot open) black scheme:

• Basecoat - Chaos Black
• First Highlight - NATO Black
• Second Highlight - Adeptus Battlegrey
• Final Highlight - Codex Grey
• Glaze - Diluted Badab Black

The metal follows my usual method for steel these days, working off a Charadon Granite basecoat, but I also added a wash of Gryphonne Sepia at the end to give it a more aged look.  I also drybrushed the highlights in places to give it a more worn, rough look.

I went for a rougher look on the bone too (these guys are meant to have gone through the wringer) - drybrushing with a few painted on highlights.  All-in-all (OSL aside) he's come out pretty well for a quick and dirty paint job, at some point I'm going to make the other 3 I've done so far match this chap.

Elsewhere on the workbench, Boris is about half done, and I've made some progress on Ashkasa (the Rackham miniature), while working on my next article for the Ancible.  I've opened the packaging on my Finecast Harlequin Shadowseer, and I'm pleased to report I'm one of the lucky ones, I can't find anything more serious than a couple of mold lines and some flash!  While I'm not overly happy about the price increases, based on my solitary experience with Finecast so far, I'm happy with the quality of the new material.