paint: work-in-progress: iron warriors: strum & drang, pt 2

Crisis encountered, crisis averted.

Started this morning by putting a quick splash of VMA Black Metal over the salt to get my base metal/shadows taken care of. My second layer however, VMA Gun Grey, must be from a bad batch. There's WAY to much pigment in the bottle and it clumps no matter how I thin it. The color clogged my airbrush so quick this morning that after three cleanings, I still didn't have a drop of Gun Grey on my model.

Went out for my morning run thinking I'd either have to make a trip to the hobby shop today or wait until after Adepticon to complete the next step. Funny thing about running, it sometimes clears the head enough to rethink a problem. Somewhere around mile two, I got the bright idea to try mixing my shadow and highlight to create a mid-tone close enough to work. After some experimentation, I ended up using a 4:1 ratio of VMA Black Metal to VMA Steel for the mid-tone, and sprayed from an angle 45 degrees above the model. Seemed to work well, so I smacked all the bits with straight VMA steel from directly above.

The overall effect is lighter than I usually go for, but once I've washed it a few times and/or oiled it up, I think that'll calm down. I'm a little worried there might be too many layers to easily pull off the salt. Need to make sure all the layers I dry, so I'm going to wait 'till everyone's asleep before I pull out the warm water and Q-tips and see if the experiment worked.

paint: work-in-progress: iron warriors: sturm & drang

With the Turtons nearing completion and still two days to go before the big drive to Adepticon, I decided to see if I could get the first few layers of paint on Sturm & Drang, in the hopes of finishing one for a Dreadnought Arena event at Friday's 4th Annual BootaTown.

First up I put the rust layers down. The airbrush got the first layer of Vallejo Model Air's "Hull Red" down quick, but stippling the usual combo of Citadel's "Vermin Brown" and "Macharius Solar Orange" took far longer than it did on infantry. I'll likely switch to sponging the rust on when I get to the Rhinos and Vindicators.

With the rust down, I spent some time searching the internet for "salt mask weathering" and found several articles aimed at scale modelers. Once I found Roman's article on the subject I headed to the store to find some Aquanet and coarse sea salt. With some fear in my heart and a "Well, you can always strip 'em again" shrug on my shoulders, I proceeded to spray and sprinkle all the parts.

I won't lie, the salt looks a bit heavy-handed from here. However, I figure it'll be fairly easy to cover up excess rust, but a royal pain-in-the-but to add rust over metal later. The plan is to let the parts dry overnight and start applying metals in the morning. I may tape my fingers crossed before going to bed...