As forecast, this weekend saw a decent amount of progress on my miniature. As you may be able to see from my Flickr Pool, the base has had quite a bit of work done on it and I’ve finally pulled my finger out and got some more of the cloak done (though there is 60% left to do!).
I discovered to my horror that I’d almost run out of Chaos Black. Now this is almost a cardinal sin (I’m sure there must be some pots lurking somewhere) so when I nipped into town for a hair cut, I purchased a new pot of Abadon Black – a base paint so it’s quite thick but thins down remarkably well. I do fancy that this is more black than the old Chaos Black.
At the same time, I treated myself to one of the new Citadel drybrush paints – Longbeard Grey. This is an almost white paint that’s specially designed for drybrushing. It has the consistency of jelly made with plaster, and I am truly shocked at how good it is for drybrushing (I thought it was a gimmick). The end result is that I’ve applied this onto my base, although I have softened/blended some bits with an airbrush of Administratum Grey.
The top received some highlights and shadows, they’re really subtle but they’re going to be hidden underneath snow effect. I’ve begun the laborious task of picking out all of the elements of the top such as wires, pipes, skulls. Although this is quite a dull task, the variety of bits I’ve glued on is keeping my interest.
The other thing that I also achieved was to get the armour base colour onto the actual Dreadnought. After quite a lot of experimentation, I mixed up a colour that looks grey until you put it against grey and then it looks blue – which is precisely what I was looking to do. This is a mix of 40 parts Russ Grey, 80 parts Dawnstone and 12 parts The Fang. One word of warning I’ve discovered with this mix of colours – the airbrushed colour is significantly paler than if you brush this on… The base colour will just be lightened up for the highlight, most likely removing The Fang completely and adding Administratum Grey and the shadow will need a touch of Abadon Black added – although I may change my mind on this.
Next steps are pretty straight forward. I’ve the assault cannon to airbrush with the base armour colour which I’ve still got mixed up. Then it’s continuing with picking out the base elements (the skulls need to be base coated with P3 Battlefield Brown then highlighted up with P3 Menoth White Base and then into Skull White, bolter needs to be red with silver etc) and lots of weathering of things – I plan to do a variety of different weathering effects too, so will do some salt weathering, pigment mixed with oil paint (makes an awesome rust), pure pigment and such like. I have picked up a new can of gloss varnish so I can do things like the oil weathering (else the spirits will remove the acrylic paint).
I tend to speak as I find and the new Citadel paints appear to be pretty good overall. I feel that you’re short changed on the paint within them – 12ml looks more like 10ml. But the quality is superb. I would say you want to keep an eye out for the new style pots (printed with 2011 on the base) as they’re actually security sealed and the lid is a better design (plus the paint is fresher). The base paint Leadbelcher is actually a brilliant metallic paint, especially when applied over a grey undercoat. The end effect is very realistic rather than the shiny metallics we’re all used to and I certainly plan to use it more when I’m painting a silver effect metallic, including parts of the joints of the Dreadnought.