My final post to bring my blog up to date is in-progress shots of some Grey Knights I’ve been working on. With fantasy changing so significantly and the new AoS miniatures not really
speaking to me I decided to paint up a very small 40k force as a painting project. To emphasize the “very small” aspect of that point I chose
Grey Knights and prepared a little 500 point list made of six terminators, a
terminator librarian, and a dreadnought.
This project largely came about as the result of probably
the most significant hobby purchase I have ever made, both financially and in
terms of its impact on said hobby.
 |
| Shiny and expensive. |
The Grey Knights are my project to accompany this, and I
have purposefully chosen a variety of techniques that I have never attempted
before in order to really push my limits. These being:
- Airbrush base layers and basic zenithal highlighting
- Sponge weathering
- Oil washes
- Resin bases
So far I’ve only gotten around to two of four, but the
terminators are progressing nicely! I chose a color scheme based on pre-heresy
Death Guard as I wanted a nice set of colors to showcase the heavy weathering I
planned to do. I borrowed extensively from
this excellent tutorial on painting Death
Guard. I dislike how perfectly “Mary Sue” the Grey
Knights are in the fluff and I loved the idea of really dirtying them up a
bunch.
My airbrushing for these guys was fairly straightforward as
I didn’t want to get too flashy to start. I used a grey spraycan to prime, then
airbrushed layer of doombull brown everywhere as a basecoat. From here I did a
very extensive airbrushed zenithal layer of Vallejo Air Aged White, to the
point that it *almost* totally eclipsed the doombull, but there was still a
hint of depth. Finally I used a more restrained airbrushed zenithal/spot highlight
of Vallejo Air Dead White.
From here I did some sponge weathering using Vallejo “Extra
Opaque” Heavy Charcoal, which was an absolute blast and my first time using
this technique. I know I went rather overboard here but this was always my
intention with these particular units, I wanted them to look absolutely covered
in chips and battle damage. The last stage of prepping the white before the oil
wash was to do some shading using watered down Army Painter Soft Tone ink in
the recesses to provide a little extra depth once they get an oil wash.
After painting all the metal components and the gold script on
the armor in black my plans for the green were frustrated somewhat. I had
intended to use a Tamiya “Black Green” which is a gorgeous shade, but didn’t
realize that Tamiya paints were formulated specifically for airbrush use, and it did not want to brush on nicely. The picture above is after two coats and you can
see the coverage is terrible. I had to switch and go over this with GW
Castellan Green, which came out nicely.
Here we have them as they are presently. The green looks a lot
smoother, the metals have been painted, everything is has been washed for a
bit of depth. The last thing I need to do before the oil wash is highlight the green and maybe some basic highlights on the metals. Once that’s done I’m
gonna varnish everything and prep for my first ever oil wash! Then its just some glowing blue eyes and weapons and they’re
good to go!
After the six terminators are finished I’ll be painting up
one of the new plastic terminator librarians using the same methods described
above. My last bit of Grey Knights
will be the dreadnought seen above, which will involve lots of lovely
airbrushing and be my first ever painted vehicle!
I will make a second update once my terminators are finished
to showcase the final result and let you know how the oil wash and resin bases
go. In the meantime i'm already thinking of a different 40k army to do 500 points with, perhaps something to act as the Grey Knight's allies?
Thanks for reading!
-Tom
