Blood Angels Army Project (pic carpet bombing)

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**Meph**

Oh, those magic tracks look nice indeed. Say, did they take a lot of time to clean up? Mold lines & such. Because those metal tracks required zero cleanup time. ^_^

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Here's the post-restoration. This morning the frosting was a little bit more present this morning, after night's drying and curing. So misted some oil paint thinner on with the airbrush and then immediately followed up with a coat of Klear, to capture the moist state (which made the white disappear). Then I needed to touch up some areas; basically again a thin basecoat, wash, highlights, glaze, and then re-apply the weathering.
And now the model is sealed with Klear again for a black oil paint wash.

As you can see on the Contemptor's body, the frosting did leave some texture behind on some parts of the model but actually I don't mind. The picture's don't do it justice because of the gloss glare, but the texture is fine enough to pass off as layered paint of an old and battle-worn machine.

I had absolutely no desire to strip and start again so I decided to roll with the punches.

**Knightley**

Wow, the weathering really brings it together, real shame about the frosting, it didn't really show up on the Spartan, however the poor contemptor looks like he had a case of Charlie Sheen covered in white, certainly not winning, but luckily your bring it back

**Meph**

Well, stuff like that does bring out the alchemist in me.

Last night I applied a black oil paint wash, some slight touch-ups here and there while it was drying and let it fully dry out overnight. Following some other advice, I took that demon spray can of Purity Seal and shook it hard for a good 4-5 minutes and tested it on an old model and lo and behold, no frosting. It came apparently from the satin coat consisting of both a gloss and matte component that weren't properly mixed (probably due to long storage before sale), and if there's a concentrate of matte, that produces the frosting. I usually shake my cans pretty well before use but usually in the 30s-1m timeframe. This took several more to fully mix.

So lesson learned; when buying new cans, or using ones that have rested for a long time, shake it like you're single.

**Knightley**

Ooooh, very nice.

On the arm of the dreadnaught (last pic) on his wrist looks like a BA icon outline, is that free handed or is that what you had suggested for me as a computer printed decal?

**whalemusic360**

Oof, that frosting is brutal. Nice recovery though. The Spartan is really looking nice.

**Meph**

Knightley wrote:Ooooh, very nice.

On the arm of the dreadnaught (last pic) on his wrist looks like a BA icon outline, is that free handed or is that what you had suggested for me as a computer printed decal?

Ah, no, that one comes from the Forgeworld BA decal sheet, which has some brilliant decals on it.

For examples of home-brewn decals, you'll have to back-paddle a few pages to my Stormraven conversion. I've used them extensively on those. As well as on my large scale terminator.

whalemusic360 wrote:Oof, that frosting is brutal. Nice recovery though. The Spartan is really looking nice.

Cheers, mate. yeah, I panicked there for a while, before my inner alchemist took over. (What do you mean, mortally wounded? Put him on that table of there, I'll see what i can do. But don't come crying if he can't remember your name afterwards, or go to the potty unassisted.)

**Gitsplitta**

That Land Raider is glorious Meph... With treads and all it's simply amazing!

**jabbakahut**

Those treads are sick. Matches your painting well. Tough about the spray.

**Tech Guard**

Meph wrote:

Progress!

the pipeline for the following months, quick photos. The first ones up will be the Contemptor and Spartan I think.

I decided to ditch the stock Spartan tracks as have no love whatsoever for those 'old' style Land Raider tracks, they never made sense to me. So after searching around on the net a bit I decided to go for 1/35 scale tracks from a Merkava II, which had the right width. I decided to with tracks from the modeling company fruilmodel, which seem to be very good as they can easily be found in many model webshops, and ebay .

For those of you who might be interested in something like this; older tanks like a T-55, and the larger WW2 tanks would suit a Rhino nicely, as the more modern MBT's like Merkava 2 and above, Abrams, T-90, Leopard 2 suit the width of a Land Raider.

A T-55's tracks in 1/35 are 15mm wide, which was too small for the Spartan. And I found that modern MBT's tracks are 61-65 cm, so I guestimated that they would be around the desired 20mm for the Land Raider/Spartan. Luckily, that was the case.

So I ordered two sets, 800 grams of Merkava II tracks, from Djermany. Arrived in two days. Together with the huge weight of the resin brick which is the Spartan, this is going to be a mighty model indeed, capable of crushing any styrofam hill on the table. But luckily it turns out I actually need just one set. Guess I have spares for another tank. ^^

One track completed, 42 centimeters worth of little links put together one by one. It took me 3-4 hours I think. I made them over a few sessions and kinda zoned out each time as those links and holes are rather tiny. :S But after a while I got the hand of it; clip off 5-10 pieces of wire with a few mm to spare, chain up tracks using flat nosed pliers because sometimes you need to apply gentle pressure to pierce through a little membrane of metal in the 'hinges', and repeat until you run out of wire. Then cut some more wire.

But the result is sure worth it, looks a million times better than the stock tracks. Even though they do have a lot of leeway between the running wheels, they do stay on track quite nicely when going round. Depending on how it goes during the painting progress, I might even leave them loose. The little kid in me grins at the sight of moving tank tracks.
But with weathering powders 'n all... ah well, we'll see.

Now the second one...

Yay, great success, I am glad my assistance has lead to success!!

**Meph**

Cheers fellas!

@Tech Guard; Yeah those tracks were definitely worth the effort.

Alright, little progress over the past two weeks. I started on further weathering, which was going well, but I had yet another frosting incident when sealing the models.
And I really had to awaken my inner alchemist. After several other attempts, following some advice i read somewhere, I resorted to a rubbing with olive oil...
And amazingly, this cleared up the frosting 100% while leaving the colours intact. But then of course, I had to seal that olive oil in when it had dried and cured as much as possible.

The big bottle of Vallejo satin varnish had completely shifted after sitting still for too long and even laborious shaking did not re-mix it properly. This seemed to work but it became clear there there was too much risk with matte flakes, or whitening.
I tried all of my other satin spray cans on one part of the models and all of them resulting in frosting; requiring further olive oil treatments, further waiting and drying...
Seriously It seems as if I'm stuck with some painting pixies who peed in all my spray cans...

So I went out and bought a satin spray from Motip, non water based. Works great, but needs 24h to fully dry and harden, and is a bit too shiny for my taste. The models are currently coated with this.
I also bought a water-based can from Liquitex, which I think I'll give a try soon. Fingers crossed for no more frosting.

I think I'll keep further weathering to a minimum, as the model already had a lot of varnish coats, more than it should have had. So I think I'll just do some heat colouring on the lascannons, black weathering powder around vents and exhausts, and then weathering powders for mud and dust

The positive side of all this is that to keep busy during all the waiting, I assembled and undercoated a Vanguard Squad (front) and an Assault Squad (back). Muhahahaha

**Gitsplitta**

Wow, you've certainly had more than your share of trials and tribulations when it comes to getting your LR properly varnished. I've heard about (and experienced) the clouding issue before... usually it's associated with high humidity. Glad you seem to have found a way to sort it out. LR still looks fantastic.

**Meph**

Cheers, mate. Yeah, it was quite the struggle.

**jabbakahut**

That red, soooo deep in color, it's great! I haven't read every post, do you say what paint you use and how you are getting this effect?

**Meph**

Cheers, mate! Yeah, the entire painting recipe is in here somewhere, more than once I believe.

And with the #of posts per page on max, it's only 14 pages.

Oh, with the beginning of the Land Speeders you'll find some explanation; page 10 (on max settings)

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Here's some progress on the Contemptor. It's almost finished. I just need to touch up the black weathering powders here and there and I'm calling it done. Now I just need to paint up the Striking Scorpions.
I'm leaning towards a very deep, dark green to lend some credence to their alleged sneakiness. ^_^

**jabbakahut**

Such a great dynamic pose. Looks like it belongs in a diorama, I love it.

**Meph**

Thanks!

I do think I'll tweak some of the striking scorpions a bit more, to add even more schwung.

**Solar_lion**

Excellent .. nice use of all the figures . I imagine the gun stuck scorpion get blasted off.

**Meph**

To bits, mate, to bits.

**Meph**

Well, I did some painting over the past few weeks, just haven't been online much.

Thanks to all the varnish problems I had maybe there are a few spots here and there that aren't 100%. Because of the olive oil polish they needed there some tiny area's that kept giving trouble during the weathering, but I plowed through them as these models are intended for gaming purposes, and not for competition.
So I call these two finished.

**Knightley**

That contemptor is a total badass, great conversion and spot on painting. Well done Meph!

**Snrub**

Meph, you are a master of all things Blood Angels.

That contemptor is amazing looking. Perfect posing, great execution, and just the right about of scuffing and damage.
Love the dark green scorpions too. Makes a nice change from the light greens you generally see.

**Meph**

Cheers guys! Your words humble me.

Yeah, I wanted to try something different for the Scorpions. Waaay back, when the animals still talked, I painted up an Eldar force but most of those were GW carbon-copies, bright & blended. And especially since reading Gav Thorpe's Eldar books, I really wanted to give them a darker, grittier, almost-camouflaged look.

Up close they appear a bit too messy because all those plate sections are so damned small for comprehensive stippling and colour variations. But when viewed from a normal viewing distance, it kinda works nice. The dark brown wash worked nicely.

**Malika2**

So erm, can we expect more dead Eldar?

**Meph**

Or maybe some Tau being tossed around like this?

**Snrub**

That is the greatest statue of all time.

Pray tell, where would I find such a masterpiece of sculpture?

**Meph**

Oh, it's a bit far off from Downunder; The Vigeland Sculpture park, Finland. Sculpted by Gustav Vigeland.
Ah hell, that's even far away from Belgium. I'd love to go there though.

**Snrub**

Yeah, nah that don't matter.
I'll get their eventually.

**Meph**

That's the spirit!

Automatically Appended Next Post:
In the mean time I decided to give these old fellas some lovin'. They've been lying around undercoated since a few years and base coated since several months. There are some mold lines here and there, but since they're just gaming models...

**Solar_lion**

well .. you have been busy.. I too like the dark green on the scorpions.

Terminators look awesome. You have tied them in very well to your overall scheme. Spot on!

**Styrofoam04**

Excellent Stuff. I love the weathering