Brushwork – Sunday 19th June

This week I decided to try out a new technique on one of my models – Non Metallic Metal. It’s not something I’ve ever tried before, so I was a little nervous about it, to say the least (if only because of the hassle of stripping it and re-painting it is something I hate to do).

Still, I got to work on him in the usual manner for my Yu Jing models, while the sword got the lions-share of the work.

Imperial Agent Pheasant Rank – click to enlarge

Imperial Agent Pheasant Rank – click to enlarge

Imperial Agent Pheasant Rank – click to enlarge

Before starting, I did a bit of research and found an image as reference. I didn’t actually read any full articles on the subject, as I worried that would either put me off by daunting me, or just plain confusing me! In the end, I used the image at the end of this article for my reference.

I began by painting the hilt with Averland Sunset then washing it with Reikland Fleshshade. I then highlighted it with the old Golden Yellow colour, with an additional highlight of Ceramite White.

The blade was painted first with P3 Meridius Blue, washed with Asurmen Blue, then re-highlighted up through Meridius Blue up through P3 Arcane Blue and then some Arcane Blue with Ceramite White mixed in. I added some light Asurmen Blue glazing towards the darker areas to darken them slightly. I then added a couple of sideways brushstrokes in the lightest colour, as well as edge highlighting the whole thing. This is the stuff wet palettes were made for!

In all, I’m pretty pleased with the look, and while it could use some refinement, as a first attempt I’m happy with how it turned out. I look forward to trying it out again on other models!

Here’s the Pheasant in a group shot with his other Yu Jing models:

All Yu Jing (June 2016) – click to enlarge

Moving on from the Yu Jing, I went back to some Aleph, this time with a Dasyu, one of my favourite models:

Dasyu – click to enlarge

Dasyu – click to enlarge

I didn’t do too much out of the ordinary with him (my standard procedure is here), other than to add a thin wash of Naggaroth Night to the lower areas of purple to darken them up a bit and add a bit of definition.

While on the subject of Aleph, I managed to pick up Atalanta and Spotbot on the cheap from a friend as part of an eBay lot that he’d won. Her rifle was damaged (to the point where the barrel had broken off at the end), but luckily I was able to fix this with the spare Aleph Sniper Rifle that comes with the Chandra Spec Ops. Rather than try to attach it to the end of the barrel (a ridiculously small join at the best of times, I decided to cut the rifles off near the grip and re-attach at that point, to give a larger contact area. As you can see from the image below, it needs a bit of extra tidying around the join, although this shouldn’t be too difficult:

Atalanta with repaired rifle (work in progress) – click to enlarge

When basing her up, I hadn’t initially noticed that the person who’d assembled her initially had managed to mess up her leg positions (whether by bending the model or by gluing the rear leg on at a slightly odd angle), but luckily by using one of the bases with a road/pavement transition, she sits perfectly naturally without any disassembly required!

And as an added extra, here she is next to Spotbot. It was purely by chance that the last two resin bases I had left over were ones that matched up nicely, and so I’ve based Spotbot at an angle that complements Atalanta’s. It’s a bit difficult to spot on the uneven surface of my light tent, but I’m sure it’ll be more apparent when I get them painted:

Atalanta and Spotbot (work in progress) – click to enlarge

That brings my total up to 37 models painted this year so far, and brings the (newly re-formatted) Pile of Shame down a bit, although I’d mistakenly left off most of my Bushido models, so it’s bumped it back up by 5 again! That number is only going to grow further when my Kickstarter stuff arrives, which should be any time in the next month (I hope)!