Alpha Legion Recon Squad Pt 2

Apparently, I am not very good at preshading.  I spent about three hours going over these cloaks with a wash, dark brown in the recesses, and white on the raised areas.  I then went back over the cloak with the original color but unfortunately this destroyed most of the previous work.  There is a little bit of additional definition to the cloaks but not as much as I would like after the amount of time I put into them.  You live you learn right?  If I add an additional five members to the squad later I'll see if I can come up with a better system for the pre-shading.

As you can see from these two photos there is a little bit more definition, which I think is nice, but I think there also might need to be some additional covers on the cloaks since they are supposed to be camouflage.  What do you think?  Should I make them actually look like camouflage?

Below you can see that I repainted the helmets and they look a lot better.  One thing I have learned from the many test models I have done is that you should always try to redo exactly how you painted it before.  I like the color on the helmets below a lot and think they'll look good on many models and also with the white painted on them.  That will have to wait until the next post!

Alpha Legion Recon Squad Pt. 1

This is the scheme I have settled on for my Alpha Legion models.  I am still wondering if orange might be a nice spot color but I really enjoy painting green and have it as a consistent color throughout many of my armies which means that this would tie them together in a subtle way.  Do you like the green or do you think orange would be better?

I decided to move along with the Alpha Legion Recon Squad and lay down some basic colors on the model bodies, cloaks, and heads.  The bodies followed the typical recipe I have developed using the airbrush and two glazes of Gulliman Blue over silver washed with Badab Black.  I sprayed one layer of on the cloaks and painted the rest on with a brush.  On the helmets I tried to do a metallic blue instead of the recipe above but it didn't come out looking very good with the white so I'm probably going to repaint it to make it consistent.  

As you can also see from the photos I am experimenting with battle damage using a mixture of drybrushing and spot application of the old Chainmail GW paint.  I must say that I like the look but don't know if I'll continue it on the other models in the army.  We'll see.  I like that the drybrush sort of eliminates the need for line highlights (making this painting much quicker) but it's hard for me to make them look all beat up.  We'll see I suppose.

As you can see, I think I've made some good progress and the squad is looking good.  Next I'm going to see if I can add some definition to the cloaks using the airbrush.  I have a sneaking suspicion that it isn't going to work very well but we'll see.

Alpha Legion Color Scheme

Well after what seems like ages of trying to figure out what color scheme I wanted to do I think I have finally figured it out.  As I was writing my last post about color schemes and picking a Horus Heresy Army I posted this picture, which I love, and realized I wanted to figure out a color scheme as close to this as possible, while giving it a bit of my own flair.  So, what do I love about this scheme?  I love the metallic blue paired with grey/silver.

So, as I was perusing blogs I came across a post (unfortunately I can't remember whose or I would link it here) where they talked about spraying a glaze onto a model instead of brushing.  This allowed a relatively even coat and you could make it darker or lighter depending on how many coats you did.  Well, I decided to try it out with a bright metallic base with a badab black wash and got the following after two passes.  

I really like the color scheme of this model.  You can tell that it is metallic blue and the glaze makes real shadows as the light hits it from different directions.  As an added bonus it is relatively quick and I feel that it looks different from a typical Ultramarines blue.  I really like the white helmets and I can't really figure out why except for the contrast.  I also like the grey detailing but I'm still trying to figure out what the spot color should be.  What do you think, orange or green?

On the model above you can see that after washing the original metallic color with black I went back and line highlighted with the metallic color.  I decided not to do this on the final models mainly because I don't like the look.  I really enjoyed the finished look of the blue model above and how it contrasts with the line highlighted grey detailing.

So, that leaves me with a color scheme mostly decided upon (besides a spot color) and I can now get to work on my Legion Reconnaissance Squad.  I have loved this squad since Forgeworld first put them out and hope I can do it justice.  I'm also going to try doing some battle damage with drybrushed silver and so we'll see how that goes.  This is my last post of the week which means I'll be going to 2 or 3 posts a week from now on.  In the next post I hope to have some really good updates on the legion tactical squad for your comments and criticism!  Until next time.

New Airbrush

So today a wonderful little gift arrived in the mail from that wonderful place called Amazon.  A few days ago someone on the Facebook group Warhammer for Grown-Ups said that Amazon had a great deal on Badger Sotar 20/20.  I read through some of the reviews saying it was a great airbrush, perfect for fine detail, and many people said that it was like all other well made and well supported Badger products.  I'm really happy with how quickly the airbrush arrived and especially that since I bought the last one on Amazon it was 90% off!  I've heard of other people getting these deals but it's the first time I've ever gotten one.  

Like many have already said, the Sotars 20/20 does not come with a hard case like many other badger airbrushes, but the cardboard box it arrives in is sturdy and adequate.  As you can tell from the picture above, it comes with an extra needle, a few other replacement parts, and all the tools you need to take apart and clean the airbrush.  I actually think the replacement needle might be a different gauge so that you can change out the thickness of paint you can use in the gun.  I'm not completely certain, though, as I haven't had the chance to switch out the needles and compare the spray patterns.The main reason I got an additional airbrush was to do very targeted pre-shading and highlighting on models without bleeding into areas I didn't want to affect.  The Patriot 105 is a great airbrush but I couldn't figure out a way to make really thin and consistent lines so let's see if the Sotar 20/20 can help!

In the picture above you can see that the 20/20 ends with an additional nut that has numbers circling it dash marks periodically.  This is the coolest feature of the 20/20 so far.  What you do is screw this nut in all the way and it completely locks the two-stage trigger from pulling back and sending any paint through the airbrush.  Then, as you unscrew the nut pictured above you slowly allow the trigger to move more and more, making your spray pattern larger.  This is great because if you are going to make a lot of lines the same thickness you can simply set this nut at say 1.5 and pull the trigger back all the way knowing that every line will be the exact same thickness.  I know that if I were a better airbrusher it wouldn't matter but for a beginner this is awesome.  You can even adjust it as you go so you can switch from a 1.5 to a 3.0 in two seconds. You can see the effects below.

This picture shows you the consistency and control available to you while using this airbrush.  I was amazed at how simple it was and how it made putting paint where I wanted it to go so much easier and quicker.  With the detail available there are a few things I've noticed that are different than my Patriot 105.  First, the paint dries on the needle tip a lot more quickly.  I think this may be because I need to thin out the paint more and also turn up the PSI on my compressor a little more but I haven't tested that out yet.  However, I did learn that if I use the two step trigger to stop the paint and then stop the air, rather than just letting off the trigger completely, it did help.  This may be something that people already know, but I've never seen the tip to let the trigger push all the way forward before letting off the air so I thought I would include it.

Overall, after one day I really like this airbrush.  As a beginner it is simple to use and really gives me a lot of control.  The one downside is that it doesn't come with good instructions about the airbrush itself. However, my Patriot 105 didn't come with good instructions either so it must be a Badger thing.  Would I recommend paying $400 for the airbrush?  Probably not unless you are going to be using it for your job.  However, right now on Amazon it is 80% off and will likely keep being reduced.  For that price I would definitely recommend you purchase it if you want to do more detailed airbrushing and don't trust your own ability to maintain consistent, small lines.