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The text below is for the sake of the literate, bored, or otherwise inclined. It's clear to me, based on my innumerable hours on the internet, that many will just skip ahead to the pictures.

Well, my pedigree chums, I've created this thread with the idea, i suppose, of sharing with any and all who are interested, of any age, talent, or creed, some of what I do when I paint a model, and how I go about it, and what happens in my process. Because it IS a process.

Don't let the fact that the techniques and commentary enclosed are oriented to the beginner, novice, or dissuade you from reading. You can always count on a gamer for a fancy prose style. As is so often the case, what we can learn from the introductory processes of taking on something new is applicable across the board of learning, a gestalt, an initiation of which the opening inductions are always the same.

Perhaps a quick introduction. I started gaming in general at the tender age of pubescent fourteen, and with M:tG in particular, with all the accompanying awkwardness, (possible?) body odor, unpopularity, hormones, and rage. Inclination drove me to gaming, irritation kept me there. Along the way, trading for moxes and unlimited gauntlets of might at the FLGS, I came across 40k, and helped a friend of mine paint some plastic gretchin.

I enjoyed the focus and attention to detail, and looking through dozens of old white dwarves that I'd gotten from somewhere, I learned very quickly techniques of highlighting, shading, inking, and washing etc, to the point where I was more concerned with painting the model than playing the game. Many years passed, and I've spent far more time in my 20s in the gym than in at the gaming table, but I still enjoy the focus and zen-like state of attention that painting a miniature really well demands.

That's still the case, but in the instance of this thread, the Sisters of Battle army that I'm starting from a few lowly special weapons models will likely be fielded at the local shop by the time I have a sizable enough force to be somewhat competitive. My goal with this particular army is singular: I want to have a better looking army than my opponent, even if I lose. My only obstacle in this regard is being lazy with my bases. So I'll be working on that here...to an extent. The model is the star of the show here. I hope you enjoy.


The Molten Corps, Sister Eliza with Roasty, her flamer

We all know that, alongside being righteous babes, the Sisters of Battle are stunning models that deserve attention--and reward it handsomely.

So the first obstacle one has when painting a Sisters army is establishing the color scheme. Tradition dictates a blend of Black, Red, and White. Far be it from me to deviate from tradition! Observe poor, nude Eliza, chaste and unspoiled, in a state of Prime*. Can we not but drive ourselves mad to decide exactly where each color will go? We can, but yet, our experience tells us to proceed with boldness and panache.



Can we not but drive ourselves mad to decide exactly where each color will go? We can, but yet, our experience tells us to proceed with boldness and panache.

But the Daughters of Geddon deserve, if I might opine, something a little grander and, apropos of their names and combustive nature, hotter than the basic color scheme. So the problem of how to improve on something that is already aesthetically balanced and clean jumps up quickly, but fades to the background just as quickly. I played a shaman in MC. That's all the inspiration I need.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. First we have to lay a basecoat. I go with Scab Red and Bleached Bone as the Primaries, and Chaos Black and Beaten Copper for Secondaries.

I wash out the Flamer with watered down Chaos Black to fill the holes and crevices. I plan to go over it with Boltgun Metal. I give the same treatment to the ornamentation on her pauldrons. The gas canister I leave alone. I'll do it later, once I've finished Eliza's armor and face. I blackline the inside of her helmet's eyes with a base of Midnight Blue. I sloppily blackline, then do her Pouches and her holster in Snakebite Leather. I 'blackdot' the buttonholes and buttons on her greatcoat/robes right off the bat so I can highlight and shade them in phase 2

Note to Noobies: I suggest, when laying your first coat, to get all out of the way and pain in the ass areas done first. This is where we run into the advantages and disadvantages of using white and black primers. With a while primer, you can see areas you've missed. With black, you can pretend they don't exist (unless you don't lay clean lines on your borders!)

Then I lay down some blackline in areas that I think need it.

All at once, I have a brilliant idea, since my chaos black is a very old bottle and the paint is not of the caliber it should be.

I decide to use some ink to fill in, blackline, and wash some of the model. Nothing particularly interesting about that, but I use artist's chinese ink (i do brush and ink paintings: bamboo, grass, that kind of think) to fill in the imperial crest on the pauldrons, the cables, and some of the cresting.

Then, I use a watered down ink to wash the Scab Red of her robes, her pauldrons, and greaves. And I'm starting to like what I see. Here's where we're at after the first coat.

Front:


and Back!:




But this is only the beginning. I have bigger and bolder plans than a simple black wash over red.

Stay tuned. I'll update as regularly as I can =)




* I prime most models white nowadays because painting over black is cumbersome and a poor use of resources; the vast majority of models (Chaplains and BA DC exempt) will not be mostly black...so why use black base? If you want to paint over black in certain areas to get a 'dark' effect, paint the model black in those areas. It costs less time than priming black and painting the same areas over and over with light colours.

Kinky sisters... NOM NOM


There are 100's of reasons to have a black prime, but I am not going to argue with you, guess you will find it out for your self.

Watching the bloggie

I tend to prefer white prime for light colours as it is eaiser to paint colours like yellow , light blue , pink over white than it is black. And i tend to prefer black primer for darker colours like Dark blue , green , red so i think it all depends on the colour scheme.

This model looks pretty neat so far the only thing i would suggest would be to give the robes a wash of maby devlain mud or maby gryphonne sepia.

Nice work ! .

~UnDeAd~

~UnDeAd~ wrote:
This model looks pretty neat so far the only thing i would suggest would be to give the robes a wash of maby devlain mud or maby gryphonne sepia.

Nice work ! .

~UnDeAd~

thanks! i have a special plan for the robes and armor. sepia may come into play at some point, but this model is in many ways an experiment.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tauzor wrote:Kinky sisters... NOM NOM


There are 100's of reasons to have a black prime, but I am not going to argue with you, guess you will find it out for your self.

Watching the bloggie

heh i don't debate that there's reasons to prime black. i just think the cons far outweigh the pros =) hope you enjoy it, i have a feeling these sisters are going to look shithot when they're done =D

Now that the basecoat and an easy black wash is done, we can move onto phase 2, which is where things start to get meaty and fun. I look over the model critically, and clean up some overlaps here and there. i continue to blackline various areas. I slap a coat of boltgun metal on the flamer and wash it with black ink. I paint the gas canister on the flamer sunburst yellow, but while i do, the india ink blackline mixes in with the yellow and makes a nice dark cream colour. I leave it, and do the skulls in bleached bone. The little bit of piping betwixt the black and scab red of her bosoms I paint Mithril Silver, and then I realize that both my Mithril Silver and Burnished gold are in abysmal condition because I'm having trouble drybrushing the piping over the black on her shoulders. I resolve to go into the FLGS tomorrow and grab new versions of these colours (as well as a wash or two) because mithril silver is an absolutely critical paint to have when your armies, wear, ah, armor. This may or may not be possible as it is BC day and monday is a stat holiday, but we'll have to see. I lay boltgun metal on the imperial crest and have to leave it pending other metallics.

Then, my itchy trigger finger can't wait any longer. I grab my 'test model' (a poor, defiled space marine which looks like someone puked a rainbow into a pile of dog crap, then stirred it. sloppily. I slap a few colours together on his legs to see if my plan will work, aannnnnnddddd...it does! Sort of. I know that I just slapped the colours on to see how it looked on a model, but I have an idea. I whip up a quick blend of Bad Moon Yellow and Blood Red to make a bright orange. Yeah, this looks good. This looks gravy. It's a nice, bright orangey-red, but it's made with old paints so it will dry quickly (Problems with my paints are a regular occurrence. I attribute this to them being 8 years old.). Here we go! I paint lines over all the red robes with the black wash to try to give them the look of active tectonic plates. Imperfect coverage from the imperfect paints is not a huge concern, because i'll be going over most of it with Sunburst Yellow later. By the time I'm done, I have a gak-eating grin on my face. I wash the Scab Red with another coat of black ink, focusing on the bottom of the model, careful not to paint over my nice bright orange lines. I lay some orange on her helm, fading it out front to back. I pull some of the ink from the blackline on the underside of that helm piece down over the bleached bone to give it a darker look. At this point, it's now a question of playing the waiting game because I need the new metallics to go onto phase three. So I wash the scab red again, and it's really starting to get the look I want.

So in the meantime, I start a orange to yellow shade/fade/highlight on her helm, and once it's in place and i've blackdotted the studs, I see that they're very distracting and don't do the otherwise clean lines of the helm any good. I resolve to file them off other, similar models. I'll leave this one unmolested and try to make the studs look as good as I can. I may just paint over them and forget the blackdotting + absent mithril silver. Otherwise, the helm is bright and I'm happy with the highlighting and subsequent touch ups. Next, I shade the bleached bone areas of the helm with a slightly watered down Skull White. I lay some Ice Blue down on her eyes, and screw up my blackline there, so I have to go back and fix it. I am unimpressed with my work on the eyes, so I resolve to do the best i can with them, and not worry too much about it. I drop a dap of skull white in the middle of the eyes and call it a day.

Here's where we're at near the end of Phase 2. I'm surprised at just how close and how well that this camera can pick up detail on a deep zoom. Enough that it makes things that look fine to the naked eye look sloppy otherwise =)

Front:



and Back!

Its really nice to see some SOBs on here..

I like the mask especially...or is it a Grotesque?

Looking good...and welcome to Dakka....

...its addictive.

manoknok wrote:Its really nice to see some SOBs on here..

the guys at my FLGS seem to think SoB are one of the top armies. nobody on the internet agrees, but i think if played to their strengths, they can beat most anything.

Very nice work, I love sisters of battle, keep it coming!

Phase Three:

Eliza is pretty much done, sans base.

I've gone to my FLGS and gotten the metallics I need, so I'm ready to finish highlighting.

I wash the robes a couple of times with sepia, and go on to gently highlight with skull white. I go over the orange magma lines with sunburst yellow. Wow, this looks awesome. I do the imperial cresting on her pauldrons and the fleur de lis (sp) in my new mithril silver, but because the wings on the pauldron have been mashed a little bit, the detail doesn't really come out. I silverdot most of the studs on the model. I highlight her sabatons with burnished gold and reblackline them. I drybrush the piping near her neck in mithril silver but don't care much how it looks. I highlight her flamer with mithril silver and put a few blue and red dots on the circles. then I blend oranges and reds and yellows into a fade on the gas canister.

I touch up her helm and even out some of the colors with blazing orange and sunburst yellow. At this point I'm pretty happy with the model. I'll start on her backpack and base and possibly flock her at a later date.

Enjoy!

Front:



and Back:

Very nice hemingway. Nice solid scheme and striking detailing!

Here's an update with three new sisters In Progress under the Molten Corps color scheme. I've subbed the copper and gold in the pauldrons out for silver instead since my copper is in poor shape and is not covering models well.

This is after base coats, and black washes. I've begun highlighting the pink haired sister (Sister Alizaveta) and will be ready to start putting on armor and robe highlights soon. Enjoy!

Nice blog, well-written. The pink-haired Sister in the last pic looks like an escapee from Lazytown ... good stuff.

Well, it looks like I've managed to finish 3 models of my squad (the pink haired sister needs some touching up, but for the most part, she's done) and with a slight change in the color scheme, I'm slowly making these 'batch jobs' come together. At 5+ hours per model, I'm not sure that 'batch painting' really describes what I'm doing here, but nonetheless, I'm moving forward. Now, to paint the 11 other regular sisters, the inquistitor and retinue, and 10 repentias + mistress that just showed up.

Thank god we're moving out of summer and into a miasma of rain, rain, and rain, for the next 8 months.

Front



and back!

My Repentias have come in, my (three! yes, THREE) Penitent Engines have come in, and, most infuriatingly, Saint Celestine the Heiromartyr, Celestine, the Living Saint, Celestine the Beautiful, Celestine the "Fought Azrael, Chapter Master of the Dark Angels to a Double KO in a Kill Team game with my 5 year old son today without Acts of Faith, Holy feth, Celestine is TOUGH" has come in, my Inquisitor w/ retinue has come in, and I'm left with fifteen regular sisters in various stages of prime, strip, and paint. I try to ignore the fact that I have a canoness, some seraphim, old grey knight termies and more coming in soon to tempt me to further acts of modeling adultery.

Now, anther blogger here (another parent, if I recall) has indicated that there is a policy in his household forbidding moving onto a secondary unit until the first one is painted. I think this is a fine policy and have informally adopted it; however, while paint is drying, I have had occasion to work on, uh, aneversorassassin.

As much delight as I glean from painting the regular sisters models, I'm beginning to raven for fresher, newer, even more beautiful meat. Excuse me while I cough into my fist whilst saying, at a rapid staccato, PAINTINGCELESTINE.

Thus, I've resolved to finish a solid 10 model squad of sisters by what might loosely be called 'batch painting', such as it is, with me spending 4+ hours on a model. Along the way, I decided, while painting the VSS from this 'squad' (legally, I don't think it could even be fielded as it consists of 3 sisters with storm bolters, two flamers, and a meltagun (perhaps as retributors? i'd have to check the codex, but retributor squads aren't high on my list of Heavy support fielding options with 3 penitent engines and a land raider involved) with black on red robes (as opposed to bleached bone on scab red) to indicate her rank and I feel confident that, even in the early stages, this was the right move.

It's curious, how you build an army in your mind before you actually field any units, and along the way units that you suspected would be important, even critical, fall to the wayside in terms of prioritizing use. The Big Idea, of course, with this army was a lot of fluff, beautiful to look at, lovely to hold, but if you break it, consider it jammed in your fething nose and me throttling your face in abject, ugly rage, lips twisted into a terrible rictus. A central part of this Idea was that it would be run by Inquisitor Lord Baron Geddon and his adorable entourage (of eight minions, of course), but as I progress, the more I see a Canoness death-starred to the devout titties with jump pack, blessed weapon, cloak of st aspira, etc. etc. busting tanks up with a squad of flying, faithful seraphim with melta bombs and twin-linked inferno pistols. Poor Geddon has found himself stranded by the wayside, perhaps demoted to an elite alongside the Eversor, the Mob of Repentia, and the Grey Knight Terminators that are planning to be a permanent part of my FLGS matches in the future.

Let's hope, for now, dear reader, that the day when IL Baron Geddon is demoted from the pious HQ never comes.

In the meantime, let me tide you over with a humble photograph of my own style of batch painting in media res.

really like!

Sageheart wrote:really like!

thanks man! =)

Looking good! Love the hair colours btw!

I love the colour! Very different and works good. Keep up the good work!

You had me at 'pedigree chums'. Subscribed, you literate bastich.

No sooner did I declare that I would finish the Daughters of Geddon special weapons squad before moving onto another model than I pulled out one of the penitent engines that came in and gave it a good hard look.

You might say I mad-dogged that engine.

The fellow who sold it to me sold me three engines in total. Two are new in box, and after seeing the third, I know why he didn't complete the other two. I also quickly deduced why I had gotten such a good deal.

The legs had been assembled in such a way that the model couldn't stand up. A pin had been driven into the middle of the model's cup where it meets the 'hip ball'. The hip ball had not been drilled in the correct position. Putting this model together so that it would stand up, let alone not fall apart at the drop of a hat might be a challenge. Conversions and model altering operations are not my strength, but I have no doubt that a file and properly applied Crazy Glue will help seal the metaphorical deal.

I twisted the poorly assembled legs off the hip. While I lost a lot of structural integrity by doing this, I know that if I should run into problems in the future, I can always just pin them. I filed down the stumps and got two flat surfaces. With some help from my wife, I managed to get a solid mate on either side, but the legs and feet were still slightly unbalanced. I solved this problem by making my first 'terrain-style' base. I shattered a 'failed to burn' CD and glue some shards to the base. Using them as a prop, I see that the hips align better and that the model, and when glued to the base, will likely stand up. I assemble the upper body and keep it separate for the purposes of painting. A brief fitting tells me that the model will be front heavy, but it should balance as well as may be expected. I go outside, and prime the base.

While I'm at it, I prime Celestine and admire her winsome look of humility and grace.

At this point I should advise you that I've drank a glass of wine and 5 crunchy Stellas, but my faculties are intact. Celestine winks at me suggestively.

I slap a basecoat of space wolf grey on the CD shards and snakebite leather on the base itself. There is, conveniently, two 'footprints', ridged thick with glue from the previous owner's attempt to mount the recalcitrant mechanical nightmare of fury and fire. This gets the space wolf grey treatment as well. I slap some bleached bone around, some ultramarine blue, a bit of black wash, and some ral partha shamrock green that, while probably older than every citadel paint in my collection, is completely intact and of perfect consistency. A little dark angels green here and there for the plants. I don't have any flock, and don't care much about basing as an art form, but this is what I turned out.



I work on the penitent engine legs for an hour or two. Pics to come.

I've diverged, briefly, from painting the Molten Corps, having received via trade from fellow dakkaite Leo_the_Rat, some five arcane, ancient, grey knight terminators to compliment my sisters of battle force which is slowly growing to 'able to play a game with' levels.

I love these models. They're old school, models from a style and time in which I feel most at ease. They are models built not just to paint, but built for ME to paint. Everything on them is exactly how I want it.

The primary aim in painting this model is to get it to what I call "High Tabletop", ie: I can paint it in under 5 hours, but it is still highly detailed and a work of striking contrast that will get some oohs and ahhs from fellow gamers who see it. For the most part, but for a few small details that came out under the merciless scrutiny of an 8MP camera, I feel this is a wonderful model.

I looked long and hard at this particular model and used it mostly as an experiment with shading and ink. I don't own a blue ink, but I figured Prussian Blue watercolour paints would work just as well. I'll be using watercolours for all inks and washes.

Colours used:

Primed: White
Basecoats: Boltgun metal and Bleached Bone and Red Gore
Shaders: Sepia wash, Snakebite Leather washes, chaos black, Prussian blue watercolor, Blazing orange,
Highlights: Skull White, Sunburst Yellow, Mithril Silver, Ice Blue.

The watercolour wash worked brilliantly. I love the bluing effect it has on the boltgun metal, and the mithril highlights just seal the deal for me. I didn't go apeshit highlighting the force weapon. The eyes were very difficult to paint.

Enjoy!

Front



Sides

Cool

Whoa, this army is intense. I like it.

The color scheme is great and I like the old grey knights as well. The RT/2nd ed aesthetic is definitely a lot more fun and/or interesting.

I wish my posts were as interesting to read, also.

right on man you really do not see the sisters out and about on the internet anymore.

glad to see someone execute the paint jobs on them so well

that model is really awesome! i would really like to see how it all goes down at the end.

So, as some of you may or may not know, I'm trying to barter my marines for WH, GK, and Necrons

Apparently, this is because I like armies that are gimp.

While it looks like I might be on the cusp of an army for army trade (fingers crossed that it doesn't fall through), I'm riding the crescendo of Big Barter and Acquisition Excitement™ to motivate me to paint more models.

I have no idea how I got this particular necron lord. When I took all my old marines out of storage, there he was, alongside some other random characters that I don't recall ever buying. I never thought I'd paint him until I actually read the Necron codex and was totally turned on by all the tactical trickery you can pull to buttphack the opponent in his starting zone, to hold objectives, and basically make his life miserable. If you can screw your opponent out of forcing Phase Out, I can see Necrons being an awesome army and a tonne of fun to play. Plus, they have an easy list to make, and something about popping vehicles with St 5 gauss weapons makes my boy parts tremble in delight.

For the sake of time, however, I decided to not spend more than 3 hours on him.

So I primed my Lord white last night (see my note above about priming black), although I will admit that Necrons are an army that would benefit from being primed black.

I changed tack approaching my paintjob on this model. I wanted him to kind of look like he just crawled out of a tomb, so my normal 'poppy' style of painting wouldn't work. It would have to be dull, but shiny.

I laid two base coats: Boltgun Metal and Burnished gold, then laid a wash of Brazen brass down on the gold to get some better coverage, because burnished gold is very watery. I laid a wash of Prussian blue watercolour down over everything, trying to sink in into the cracks on his necklace thing and staff especially.

I resolved not to blackline unless absolutely necessary. I continued on with different washes, black ink, blue, watered down chaos black, etc. Then it was basically a Brazen Brass and Mithril Silver drybrushing extravaganza, with a little highlighting here and there. My idea was to give the impression of the armour being dulled by age but still having some shine to it.

As usual, my flash was too bright, so it resolved colors on the model that are not really visible under normal light. Under normal light, it appears considerably darker. Enjoy.

Front



Back

I simply love the cape on your Necron lord.

LeBaron wrote:I simply love the cape on your Necron lord.

thanks man! =)

As soon as I saw the marine swap thread, I knew it was something I wanted to do. The color scheme of my sisters is a great deal of fun to paint, but it is time consuming and difficult, which is one of the reason that I've taken on little side projects like Necrons and GKs and such; they are simply easier and faster to paint to a decent standard.

In light of that, and the fact that marines are about as simple as it gets, and the few remaining tactical marines in my possession may be taken apart and painted with a great deal more ease, and have large, easy flat surfaces and straight edges (qualities my sisters all lack), I decided to do one. I started this marine for dakkaite Sageheart in the Molten Corps colour scheme.

I made a new change. The blue watercolor was so successful on the GK and Necron Lord that I decided to switch to black watercolor to grimdark up the red gore I use as a basecolor rather than the india ink I was using before. The problem with the india ink is that it comes off when it makes contact with finger oils, or any moisture. This doesn't do me much good when I want a consistant smokey color. So, I'm trying the watercolor, which I have a little more faith in.

I constructed a base out of fragments of CDs to simulate plates of cooling magma. Black and orange and yellow later the base is done.

I've laid down my basecoat on the model, and a few preliminary washes, and a couple of black, snakebite leather, and ultramarine blue lines. Here's a teaser pic before I move into the highlighting stage.

Sageheart's marine is pretty much done, sans backpack.