I'm starting to reach the end of my backlog for 28mm, a recent bout of illness, the ongoing plague, and the usual enforced isolation of rolling lock downs has given me ample time to make solid progress on my pile of shame. In my case so much so, that I only have a handful of projects left. At the time of writing all I have is a Blood Bowl team and a bunch of scale model kits.
The nature of scale modelling requires the use of airbrush work and highly organised staging of the project, especially in the painting stage. Which often means waiting for a free weekend for some airbrush time, or just weather that is generally amenable to the usage of rattle cans outdoors. This has often left me without something on my hobby desk that I can do in bits and pieces, which is what minis are great for. So to ensure that I have something on hand to paint I've gone through a lot of my old minis and stripped some of the older character sculpts to be painting fodder for these situations.
The subject in this case is Captain Tycho. Like every kid that got into Warhammer 40k at the second edition boxed set I had a Blood Angels army, and I was up sold this particular model one night at a games night. Say what you will about GWs predatory sales practices, at least the mini they sold me has a nice, iconic look.
Another reason for this project is my contentious relationship with true metallics. They've never worked quite right for me and I've never enjoyed doing them. This goes double for gold and since most high ranking Blood Angels officers have gold armour, like the primarch, I thought this would be a good opportunity to take a solid shot at doing an all gold power armour paint job. Since Tycho was already in the pile he seemed like a decent distraction to pass the time. A bunch of my other projects were on hold, either waiting for the weekend or on materials to complete.
Throughout this article I will refer to a lot of paints with a shorthand to describe which range of paint they are part of.
VMC - Vallejo Model Colour
This range is designed for scale modelers and tends to provide more natural and earthy colours. All of the technical paints that I use for this project are part of this range.
VGC - Vallejo Game Colour
This range is designed to compete with Games Workshop for the fantasy and sci-fi market. It has more vibrant colours than the model colour range. This tends to be my range of choice for middle of the road paint jobs as they work well with many of the technical paints from the model colour range
GW - Games Workshop
You all know who these guys are, they aren't quite the hegemony they used to be, but many of their products are still quite useful for getting a good paint job, especially for reduced effort.
Stage 0 - Preparation
This is the universal stage for almost all my minis without exception. The one break from the image posted above is my newly adopted habit of fully painting the base prior to the miniature. I do this so I can do dry brushing without having to work carefully around the feet of a painted mini. Of course prior to this step I prime my model along with the base work already glued down. My primer is an all over coat of Corax white, as I am a firm believer that white is the superior primer for achieving a good result, but it does mean you have to work a little harder to get coverage. My usual method for painting the base is very much like 2000s GW house style. A Black rim, brown base with static grass. My method for achieving this is as follows.
- Paint gravel on the base all over with VMC German Camo Black Brown. This will require at least two coats, as it will need to first soak into the sand or gravel on the base before you get good coverage with the second coat.
- Over brush with VMC Flat Earth. This stage is a halfway between a dry bursh and regular brushing. You want to lightly drag your brush with a load of paint that isn't completely wet across the surface to build up the earth tones over the black brown. Be careful that the paint isn't too wet or runny, if it is you will flood the black brown. Once this is complete the majority of the base should be the earth colour which then graduates into black brown in the recesses.
- Dry brush with VMC Dark Sand. This layer should provide some sharp contrast with the other colours and give the base a lot more depth. Keep this as light as you can ideally, though you can make it denser to taste.
Once the base paint job is done I left the rest of the base for the end of the model, as I find that rimming the base now will only end up rubbing off during the painting process. I also don't apply any flock until the very end as well.
Stage 1 - Armour
Since the majority of the miniature will be this colour, I started with the armour. This is generally a no-brainer, as I wanted to get the most surface area done before I start to pick out the detail. Normally I'd also consider doing deep detail as well, like suit linkages, but due to the nature of metallics it is better to do one entirely before moving onto regular colours.
Next up is the gold itself. For this stage I used VGC Glorious Gold to achieve my first base coat. This took two layers. One for the initial colour and the next to even out the first coat.
Next I over brushed some VGC Polished Gold over the previous gold colour. I did this to create some variation with the shine, and to aid with providing some highlights. This only needed one coat, as we've already established the overall gold with the previous layer.
Now the gold is pretty much done, we need to establish our shades. I have always had a hard time shading gold, though the general consensus seems to be that reddish browns are the answer to that, especially given how popular Reikland Fleshshade is for this purpose. I ended up going with two distinct shade layers for this gold. The first was my main shade, the second was a targeted recess shade.
For my first shade I opted to use VGC Terracotta as I am very fond of this colour as it is a very rich reddish brown, and when mixed with water and glaze medium, it can make a great shader for many colours.
I felt like I'd lost the luster of the gold, so I grabbed the VGC Polished Gold and reapplied it on some of the more broader and exposed areas. After that I applied my one and only highlight to the gold, an edge highlight of VGC Sliver on the sharpest areas and a few of the upturned areas. After this stage I called the armour done and moved on to the intermediate details.
Stage 2 - Intermediate Details
This category is broadly anything that isn't the armour, silver toned metallics or the skin tones. For this model, the weapon, the wing details on the buckle and pauldron, and some of belt kit and loincloth, the pauldron trim, and the purity seals, seemed like items that needed to be distinct picked out out at this stage.
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| Intermediate details after all bases, shades and highlights applied. |
Trim and Wing Bit
For this part I used VMC Black I used the VMC black rather than the VGC because VGC tends to have a glossy finish, and VMC is very matt. After that I didn't apply and further shading as black can't be shaded. Instead I applied highlights with VGC Cold Grey and called it done.
Wings and Belt Buckle
These parts are the wing iconography on the left shoulder pad and the belt buckle. My method for these doesn't stray too far from the traditional citadel method for painting such designs. To start with I base coated the entire thing with VMC Ghost Grey then gave it a wash of VMC Black mixed with glaze medium. After it dried I found the effect to be a bit to dark, so I base coated again and washed with GW Nuln Oil, and liked the effect much more. Once the wash was dry, I re-layered the mid tones with Ghost Grey, then picked out the sharpest edges with VGC Dead White.
Weapon
The weapon was base coated with VGC Bonewhite as I wanted a nice, warm white for this part, much like the bone white armour of the Deathwing. There was no real thematic reason, I thought it would look good. To shade this component I then mixed a shade using VMC Glaze Medium and VGC Leather Brown. To make this wash I mixed one part shade colour with two parts glaze medium and two parts water. This results in an extremely pigment thin liquid, that when applied like wash will tone the upper surfaces and accumulate in the deeper ones. Once the wash was dry I re-layered the basecoat of Bonewhite, then gave all of the sharpest edges a highlight of VGC Offwhite.
Loincloth, Belt Pouches, and Seal
All of these surfaces were base coated with VGC Gory Red. After that I applied a wash of 50/50 VGC Hexed Lichen/VGC Dark Fleshtone. The reason for this is that if we apply our colour theory, purple is the shade colour for red, but I also wanted to darken it a bit more with a brown colour, and Dark Fleshtone was already in front of me at the time. Once washes were dry I re-layered with the base coat where appropriate, then applied edge highlights of VGC Bloody Red.
Inner Suit
These are the black flexible joints that connect the various sections of the character's power armour together. My method for these is fairly simple as I dislike painting these parts on space marines in general. I always start with a grey colour, in this case VGC Stonewall Grey then I shade down with a mix of VMC Black and VMC Glaze Medium. In between every application I let the paint fully dry. Doing this results in the deepest recesses having a gradual shade built up, while the ridges of the connections remain grey. I repeated these steps until I was happy with the final result.
Scroll Work
I cribbed heavily of GW house style for doing scrolls and parchment, why fix what isn't broken after all? To start with I used VGC Khaki as a base coat, which is basically identical to Ubshanti Bone. Next up, I shaded with a glaze/colour mix of VGC Charred Brown. Then re layered mid-tones, Then highlights of VGC Bonewhite to finish. I saved the writing on the scroll work for the final details stage.
Stage 3 - Skin and Hair
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| After all skin, hair and face details have been applied. |
To do the skin I started with a base coat of VGC Elf Flesh. I applied two even layers until I was happy with the coverage. I then mixed up a wash of VGC Tan and VMC Glaze Medium. I find that Tan is a great colour for shading flesh, though I accidentally made the wash a bit to thin on the first application, so I ended up going back with a stronger paint to medium mix for a second pass. While the wash was drying I base coated the hair with VMC Buff. This is the base for Tycho's blonde hair. I've always had a hard time with hair, and blonde is my second most difficult to paint colour apart from pure black. The purpose of starting with Buff is that it will be our highlight colour and we will be shading down to our mid-tone. I did by mixing up a batch of VGC Scrofulous Brown with VMC Glaze Medium as a wash.
Again, all of these washes take some time to fully dry, thanks to the glaze medium. I'd definitely recommend having another project on the go, a nice video game, or a book to pick up while it dries.
Once these were dry I immediately re-layered all of the mid-tones on the skin with Elf Flesh. Since the facial detail is very well defined I got a lot of good contrast happening. I then highlighted the face with VGC Pale Flesh paying particular attention to the laugh lines, the eyebrows, cheeks, and the chin. This completed the facial details. To finish up the hair I applied some highlights at the roots and the tips of the hair with VMC Buff and left it at that.
The eyes aren't much of a problem for me, granted I've had a lot of practice and the right equipment for it. The trick with it is to have a brush that has the ideal point for eyes, and use a very thin paint, but not so much paint that it will run. Since my eyesight is pretty bad, I used an optivisor to help see what I was doing in the final stages of the application.
The colour I used for the eye itself was VGC Offwhite. Then I applied the pupil, slightly towards the nose, leaving more white on the outer edge of the eye. The colour I used for the pupil was VMC Black Grey. With the eyes done the face is now complete. From here I went on to the silver metallics on the model.
Stage 4 - Silver Metallics
Broadly speaking, I consider every metallic that is not gold, brass, or bronze, a silver metallic. This ranges from silver jewelry and almost black gunmetal. My method for painting these details is broadly the same. However, for different metal types I did slight modifications to my base method. I'll go into full details for each.
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| After all silver metallics completed. |
This is where the two set of metallics diverged. The first category of metallics are utility metals that are non-ornamental. These include the metallic components of the weapon, and the various connecting hoses on the armour. For these I simply applied a highlight with VGC Chainmail Silver and left them at that. The other category of metallics are the ornamental metallics, these include the necklace and the various blood angels gem sockets on the armour, I also did part of the belt buckle this way. From the current shaded gunmetal, I gave these pieces a layer of VGC Chainmail Silver then highlighted with VGC Silver, to create a shiner silver metallic. The only other metallic I completed at this stage were the bolter shells visible in the magazine. This was simply a layer of VGC Brassy Brass with a GW Agrax Earthshade wash.
Stage 5 - Final Details
This is the stage of the miniature where all the colours are down and things look significantly better. Which means this is the time I took a break and had a think about what details and additional flourishes I wanted to add to the final result.
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| All final details applied, ready for final basing. |
Blood Angel Gemstones
The blood drop gemstones were a bit difficult for me. I started with various layers of Carroburg Crimson and Bloodletter over white, but I didn't think they provided a sufficiently red result. So in the end I went with a contrast paint GW Baal Red as an initial layer, then put in a dot for reflection, then overlaid the dot and the Baal Red with GW Bloodletter as a glaze. I was fairly happy with this result.
Redone Mask Eyepiece
Not much to say here, I didn't like the red for the eyepiece, so I substituted it out for GW Waaagh Flesh. Even though there are no other green details on the model. I was happy to do this because the green contrasts nicely with the red details, thus balancing it out a bit in my opinion.
Decorative Detail on the Weapon
I painted this the same way as I did the wings and belt buckle detail, not much to say otherwise.
Freehand Text on Scroll Work
To finish off the scroll work I sketched out the impression of writing on the smaller purity seals, using VGC Gory Red to give the impression of a leading illuminated character and then the main text with a very thinned down VMC Black.
The writing on the shoulder bad was a bit more difficult. I'm not great at freehand, and I generally find these tasks quite challenging. The trick to painting text on scroll work is that you need to start at the center of the scroll and work your way out. In this case since Tycho is a five letter word I painted a C in the dead center of the banner, then a Y to the left of it and a H to the right. I then added a T to the left of the Y and an O to the right of the H. This resulted in the text going down nicely and being mostly centered on the scroll.
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| Chapter badge and scroll work. |
Freehand Chapter Icon
This part was the only stage of the model that I would consider a definite fuck up. But it was getting towards the end of the project and I wanted to wrap it up, so I didn't feel like trying to redo or remove it. I attempted to sketch out the Blood Angels chapter badge on my wet palette as practice. Once I was happy with the result I tried to translate that effect to the curved surface of the shoulder pad. I initially used VGC Gory Red, but gradually tried to define the shape more with VGC Bloody Red, and VGC Hot Orange. In the end I couldn't quite get the impression of the wings that I wanted, so I left the design as is.
Final Basing
Once all of the work with the miniature was done, I black rimmed the base with VMC Black and once that was dry I glued some patches of static grass on the base with Modge Podge. Thus completing the miniature.
Final Results
Shoulder pad freehand aside, I am very happy with how this mini turned out. I'm not sure I quite hit the mark with attempting to shade the gold armour, but the overall effect against the other details is still quite good in my book. I think the gemstone details came out pretty well, definitely a point in favor of the contrast line for doing a fairly complex and usually annoying detail very quickly.
Overall, it was a fun mini to paint, and it was nice to paint a single and not worry about the rank-and-file waiting for their turn behind him. I hope to do more of these one offs in future as it makes good fodder to write about, and is generally far less time consuming than a full army, even a small one. Anyway, that does it for today. Good luck with your own painting.
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