Dreadtober, Done. First legion "Dark Angel" Saturnine Dreadnought

I am done. This year it was a fast project, mostly because it was so much fun to paint this model. At the build stage I feared that it would take forever to paint it. But once built and divided up into the appropriate sub parts it was actually a very fast paint jobb. I am happy with how the free hand turned out. I used another brush than what I have done so far and it really paid of in the control and details of the finer lines. This, combined with some sponging, and edge colouring really helped sell the model. I am always equally surprised how the almost blue base colour of the black armour turns darker once you start adding the contrast paints and weathering. Over all I am very excited about the progress and it really has me itching for doing the lion, and some more rank and file to fill out the lines. And some more tanks perhaps, looking at the plastic Fellblade. 

I hope you enjoyed this project. 

Dreadtober WIP5

This week I finished of all the armour etc. Adding some rust and dust to get things a bit more gritty. So over all not much change except for in the details. I also started the base. Formerly I would have just glued the dread to the base and added som gravel. Nowadays it is a whole day process. First I glued down some cork that I hade broken upp into some chattered surface. I also added some left over parts to add some connection. Once that dried I added some filler, smoothing the tops of the cork and adding some ground structure to the rest of the base, including some small impact craters. Then I need to wait until everything is dried before starting to paint.

Next week will see the fully assembled dread. I bit early but it is what it is.

Dreadtober WIP4

Since last post I have added some freehand Dark Angel iconograph to the armour panels. I think I am getting better at this, but I still need a lot more practice both on an of model. Over all I am sort of happy with how they turned out, but I think I should have done a little more research on the actual heresy iconography instead of just improvising.

Next step will be adding some chipping, rust and streaks.

Dreadtober WIP3

The weekend was spent getting all of the subassemblies for the Saturnine Dreadnought base painted. At this stage the paint job is fairly basic as it is just metals and some blue black armour panels. I am pretty sure I could take this to any number of legions, Ultra marines, Raven guard, Iron hands, Night lords and Space wolves by just adding the appropriate complementary colours. I am really tempted to try this at some point. But not this time. This will be a First Legion Dark Angels dreadnought, so the next step is to add some checker patterns, split heraldic shields etc... all the parts that makes the mind see this as a jet black canopy instead of a blue or grey. Also, once the weathering goes on the black will be really black. This is the thing with colour theory and contrast.  

Dreadtober WIP2

So just a quick update, as I could not let this go. Once I got home from work I slapped on some base colours and did the base drybrush. It is a bit messy now but that will clean up with the next layer. Over all I am excited to see what this will look like one done.

Dreadtober WP1, Dark Angel Saturnine Dreadnought

Welcome to this years Dreadtober build. I am not sure if this truly qualifies as a pure Dreadtober build, as it is a quite new model that has not been sitting in the pile of grey shame for long. Initially I had planed to do a Deredeo dreadnought, that has been sitting around for some time, but as the new Hours Heresy box dropped I could not help my self and I ended up with more grey shame.

I did build some of the Terminators recently and I liked how they turned out so I wanted to do the dreadnought as well. So I pulled out the sprues from the big box and I realized just how complex this kit is. There are a huge amount of parts. Just the legs consists of 16 pieces each, the torso is 24 pieces and the shield generators are 8 pieces each. So I got really concerned about this build, as the build it self would take some time and then painting all the details to an acceptable standard might not be possible in one month. But I will give it a try.

So the first task was to build the model, and as mentioned there are a lot of small parts to assemble to build all the major parts of the model. It is impressing how good the pieces fit and interlock with each other. The model is as complex as any scale model I have built and I did enjoy the process even if I felt a bit under pressure. All in all it took me three days to build (about 2h each day). I decided to leave it in as many sub assemblies as possible to be able to get to all the details.

Next step will be a base spray and start with the paint. I will do this as a pre-heresy First Legion Dark Angles dreadnought, similar in style to my previous ones. Lets see how this develops.

Fallen inner circle

This week I painted some Inner Circle Companions. This was the first time in over a year where I managed to take a whole day to just paint. I must have been at it for at least 8 hours straight, and it felt good and it really got my hobby juices flowing. I really love these models has they have a very distinct Dark Angels feel with the robes, large swords and power armour that looks more like medieval armour.

I decided to paint them in "black" armour instead of dark green which is more in line with my fallen Dark Angels. I know they are not part of the original legion organisation but I think they look better in black. This means I will also paint the Lion black, once I get around to doing him.

The robes got a purple colour, which I am happy is also the box art colour, and not the bone white that was popular some time ago. When I painted my original Dark angels in the mid 90ths I decided to use purple robes even though it was not standard then and they go well with these newer models.

The trim got my standard rusted metal look, but it has this brownish tone that gives it a feel of gold unless you look closely.

All in all this was a very nice trio of models to paint. I did not do the standard this time so I might do another three in the future, or I use the standard for some other model. We will se.

Now I spend some time building stuff for opus while I am getting ready for Dreadtober. This year I will do the Saturnine Dreadnought, also for the first legion. 

Saturnine Terminators

I just had to get these, so I ordered the Heresy starter box even though I do not play, as I figured it was a very good deal on the amount of models, instead of waiting for the separate release. I sort of remember the old original but it was not a model I like then, and I am not sure I like these now but they have something I can't put my finger on. Anyway, I just had to have them as they looked like nice models to paint with a lot of details and it would be a great opportunity to paint some more Heresy Dark Angels.

I read a comment someone made somewhere, that GW models are getting more and more like scale models, and I would agree. These models require a lot of assembly of quite small and fiddly bits. But that is also what makes them great models as the 3D feal is much better. It did however take me one evening sit down to build each one of them. Just getting everything of the sprue, clean up mould lines and assemble to an absurd amount to time.

Normally I would have done just one, and then perhaps one more at some time later, but I really need to get better at batch painting so that I can get through the pile of grey. The experience with the death riders were positive as I managed to paint five large models in parallel to an ok level, so I thought I could do it again. I did beak it up by painting the bodies first and the shoulders and weapons after before final assembly. This also helped with getting access to the shoulders of the arms and also made it easier to try to get some freehand on to the plates.

I decided to do the black in the same way I did for my fallen Dark angels and other heresy era models I have painted over the years. I start from a black base and dry brush up with blue tinged grey before washing with nunoil. This is very similar to how I paint my rusted metal so I decided to do that and the black at the same time. It was a bit fiddley to not over "spray" in the drybrushing but it blended quite well. This process was done twice before I painted the free hand symbols and patterns. I still need to figure out how to do this properly. I think I need to experiment with some other brushes, because I can't get the details I like. It all comes across a bit clumsy, especially the Dark Angels symbols.

But I am ok with how they turned out (It will be better next time). I had to dial back a bit on the use of red details (the chest eagles were red at one point) as they stated to look to much like Night Lords. This is also true for the black which can very easily turn into Space Wolves if the grey become to dominant. At some point I thought of testing this by painting three models with the same base and just use different accent colours to see if I could turn them into the three different legions.

Another thing that became quite obvious when building the models is that the legs and arms are robotic, as the joints are literally the same as used in the Imperial robots. This means that the marine is fully enclosed by the torso. Not sure if that means that the arms and legs are amputated or if they are folded upp some how. GW has not given any details on this as far as I know.

I still have three more to go, but that will have to wait a bit as there are other things in the pipeline. Also, October is soon here and that means I have to do a dreadnought size model...