Night Scythe

My color scheme for my Necrons might be starting to shift, largely due to my enjoyment of gold energy. The models I use this on can easily be taken back into the fold, though, as I found that the gold works well as a base for my gloss red.

However, as this guy is in my round three list, he is going to stay golden for the moment, just like my scarabs.






While this shot it horrible, I would like the point out that both the portal and Death Ray are magnetized.



Also, my new project showed up in the mail today. I really need those Hormagaunt Claws/Gene Stealer Scything Talons now.

I like it.

But I also like these, and when it's wrecked or destroyed, I'd have something to chew on!

http://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2012/6/17/378189_md-Humor%2C%20Necrons%2C%20Warhammer%2040%2C000.JPG

Would edible proxies be acceptable, then? There is a deli right next door to the Den, after all.

This sammich is my Battlewagon, the salami, my death rolla.

The left overs of this chicken is my Ghost Ark?

"Ummmm what's that?"

"My proxy for a Slannesh/Nurgle Thunderhawk. I borrowed it from my girlfiend."

*hurl*

Number two, fresh from it's date with the Air Brush. Well, I did the base coat with the air brush, as I only have a single action. However, my blend seems to have perfectly matched Leadbeltcher, and that gives me some confidence as to how I am going to base my Grey Knights.









My first one was "battered and ancient", my second one still has that "new Doom Scythe scent". Mmm... rarefied air...

Any tips as to how to keep the wash in the recesses and only the recesses? I don't want the Baal Red staining the adjacent areas.

I'm half ways thinking of spraying on a thinned down Shining Gold into the cracks and simply wiping off the excess with some paper towel before it has a chance to dry.

Metallics don't thin down very well. Something to do with the medium and the metal flakes. As I recall, if you thin down Shining gold, it will actually get more silvery as a result.

GW metallics are actually just Mithral Silver (or whatever its called now) with color added. Its 3 thing mixed: pigment/metallic medium/water. They explain this somewhere.

Boltgun metal and chainmail are just mithral silver mixed w/ black. No idea about the others.

Back to the matter at hand. I'd hit it with badab black/nuln oil/dark quikshade ink. I'm lazy, so I'd just hit the whole thing w/ a tank brush or throw it in that fancy spray gun you have:)

If you like the idea of gold there, I'd just fine line it in the creases.

I like the idea, not so much having to do it by hand.

I still have some Chaos Black on hand that could be thinned and sprayed, though.

I have also heard that generic acrylic paints thin down nicely for model airbrushing with the use of Windex, as the ammonia content really makes the colors pop. I could scrounge through the Rubbermade full of old paints to see if any colors in there catch my eye for this purpose. I remember having a few metallics in there, as well.

Also, what is a "tank brush"?

big ass brush from GW. They recommend it for basecoating tanks and large monsters. I find its good for "skill in a can" style washes where you wash the whole fig to get some contrast (as opposed to dipping).

I only have one "big ass brush" currently, and it is dedicated to dry brushing currently. I need to figure out how the clean the damned thing, though.

Sounds like Air Brush, masking tape, and some paper towel to me!

Badab black is the pro-wash, I think. I'm still on my old "Armour Wash" that GW used to sell in the 90's. That stuff lasts *forever* (I actually have a flesh wash, ork flesh wash, blue wash, and red wash all from the same era, and I use all of them).

It looks super clean Tom, which is great.

Well, now it doesn't. Clearly this is an order of operations issue, as I think it would have turned out just fine if done in a different order.

Having already done the red detailing, I felt it would be a good idea to mask it off so I wouldn't have to re-do it. The thinner I used to get the paint spray-able seemed to disagree with the pre-existing coat of faux Leadbeltcher, doing a certain extent of erosion. Over all, not that bad, and I got a nice gold wash into the cracks, wiping off the excess with paper towel. However, after the drying and removing the masking, there are now lines of gold that follow the edges of the masking and then streak underneath, on top of pristine faux Leadbeltcher. Had I gone Base > Fine wing detailing > Big wing detailing the masking wouldn't have been needed, and none of this would have happened.

As it stands, I am going to have to whip up another gold wash mix and hit it un-masked so I can even out the wings, and then very likely have to re-do the red in the armor gaps. I'll snap a photo before doing this.

Here is what happened when I removed the masking. Had I realized I was going to do this from the get go, I would have simply done it before the red, saving me the trouble of the attempted masking. On the flip side, I should have simply done it over the red and touched it up after, as the over all effect would have still been better than my end result.




Now, having done a 4th wash to match the general erosion of the base coat, it seems that along the mid-ridge it had gone all the way through the primer, too, leaving exposed plastic. As my pot of real Lead Beltcher only has the barest residue left in it, I did a quick and dirty brushing of Chaos Black over the length of the mid-ridges and dry brushed Iron Breaker over top of it. While this does bring the appearance of this Scythe closer to the previous, I liked the clean look to it better.




Finally, I redid the red bands, which at least went quicker than the first time I put them in. The solid red really gave it the pop it needed again. Incidentally, the Twin Linked Tesla Destructor now has a bit of a golden frosting on it's top side. Not a bad thing by any means, but a bit of a quirk. At the very least the thinned gold wash very much maintains it's metallic quality, and gives some definition to the tiny gaps that I simply could not do by hand.





Over all, this experience has been a learning one, both in what not to do and in the specifics of how to best achieve certain other effects. I think should I pick up a second Barge, it will likely be getting a treatment similar to this without the fail in the middle.

If it help:

I think the wear and tear look the ironbreaker added looks good.

I actually like the masking lines. It looks like you freehanded adtl detailing on the wings

And if you learned something, +10.

The masking lines aren't as bad now that the dry brushing and washing have happened, as they used to be the border between near pristine spray and somewhat darkened and aged metal. Trust me, the photos don't show off just how stark the contrast was. And it isn't so much that the Iron Breaker looks bad, it just that I really liked the clean spray I had previously better.

One thing not pictured was that on the final coat I went "screw it, might as well" and blasted a touch into the thruster ports. Bit of a golden hue inside there for anyone who cares to look in the right light.