THE
WARP STORM

Stephen wrote: ↑10 Feb 22, 09:14

pawl wrote: ↑10 Feb 22, 01:08 Excuse #4 - redecorating came first.

You should have taken an oath to decorate your livingroom!

Aside from the skirting boards there wasn't any painting involved though, so I'm not sure how much that would have counted!

Excuse #5 - I simply stopped caring.

So Aenur is finished, and he is awful. Truly shameful. He was finished in a brief moment of spite with no painting light, no palette, a single big brush and a complete disregard for pretty much everything. The paintjob is at about the level I would have been pleased with when I was 11 years old, and yet I don't care! His cloak has brush marks (and isn't orange per the original plan simply because orange paint wasn't the first thing I picked up), his gems are flat, I don't know what's going on with his skin, nothing is layered or highlighted and his base came from a teabag (the regular kind, not the fancy kind that actually has colours!) and a tobacco pouch (it seemed like it was worth trying). All in all he is a complete failure in every aspect but one: technically he's a finished model - my first in a year or more. Everything has paint on it and the base isn't plain. Well, it's got something on it at least!

I'm not proud of him and he definitely won't do, but now I can put him in a dark box to have a think about why he's such a fiddly model to paint and I can pretend that he never existed!


(note: when you add water/iso and water/pva to the contents of a teabag they seemingly expand, and look nothing like they did while dry. They also make pools of awful tea! )

So now that I've totally given up on a model that I really didn't enjoy from the moment I picked up a brush (but one day may come back to) I can focus on other things. Two, specifically: February's Just One Model entry and more lizards.

For the J1M challenge I'm going to try a quick scheme test that I'm hoping will allow me to churn out a scary number of space robots in fairly minimal time. My plans for a Necron scheme involve an airbrushed silver zenithal, a little Contrast bronze and then a simple accent colour. All that would be left then is glow and power weapon effects, which is where I'll likely end up spending most of my time! More details before the end of the month!

On the lizard front I've been tinkering a tiny bit with plastic again, but more importantly I've managed to grow my pile! After my eBay splurging in the last update I had a couple of boxes turn up in the post that mean I now have 23 Saurus Knights available to me. Twenty three! Ridiculous! (all those mould lines and awful saddle joins though!)


(just the new plastic!)

My plan is still to build everything I can first, and worry about painting later. This is partly because I'm running out of room for sprues, and partly because the scheme I wanted to paint is causing me a headache when I try to plan out how I would actually paint it. This may yet cause a rather drastic change in colours, but I have plenty of time to worry about that!

The next update will hopefully contain more of the same - a single finished model and a growing pile of grey lizards. Not exiting, but it's the most actual modelling work I've done in a long time so I'm still pretty pleased with myself!

Excuse #6 - priority management is not my strong point.

As I may have mentioned before, I have a pretty limited amount of hobby time. There is a period of about an hour that comes up three times a week where I can do my thing. In addition to building and painting, 'my thing' also includes activities like reading, cleaning, tidying, staring at the walls and working on The Warp Storm. As of late the last point seems to have been my focus and it's eaten into my hobby time.

Even still, despite being limited on opportunities to paint (and then being further hampered by the fact that half my hobby time is spent setting up and cleaning up) I at least managed to finish the model I pledged for the J1M challenge. It was intended as an attempt at painting Garfy's Occiputek Dynasty in a lazier way involving less steps, and while only semi successful I did learn a little along the way. Mostly that trying to paint under Necron armour is an exercise in frustration, that my metallic zenithal was far too heavy and that oil paints are kinda cool. The next lazy-Occiputek test will come out better, I promise!
Towards the end I cut some serious corners though - I made a bit of a mess with the white on the gun (the orbs were meant to be black!) but didn't clean it up, and I realised that I never bought the flourescent paints I wanted so I just grabbed the first Contrast that came to hand and slathered it on over the top. Also the cable and the blade never got any work done to them. It's cool though - this model was only ever a test and I had already learned all I wanted to, so this fella can be stripped before he gets his final scheme.


(Yes, his knee is white. Yes, I realised too late to clean it off!)

On the Lizard front I have done almost nothing since the last update, unfortunately. I need to dedicate a little more time to them instead of allowing myself to get distracted by thoughts like "I forgot to take the bin out" and "I should tidy up before I start modelling".
Fortunately when I'm a little further down the road and ready to paint, my batch painting intentions will work nicely with my limited time - I can simply work with a single colour each session, reducing the amount of things I need to get out/pack away, and also reducing the amount of time wasted flitting between things.

I've also been thinking more about the colour scheme, but I think I'm going to save that for when I can knock up a good test model.

Looks good mate. You could have passed the knee off as a reflection
Nice and gnarly looking tho.

In all honesty I'm not a fan of any part of the end result, but I also know why and what I'll do differently next time. I don't think it's necessarily bad, it's just not quite what I was going for. As a bonus the next one should be a fairly quick affair so I'll know soon if the new plan works

Excuse #7 - I couldn't find the parts!

Okay, so that's not the real reason, but it's still true!
Since my last update I've done almost no building or painting work at all - life has managed to get right in the way of my hobby time until tonight, and so I only have a single finished model to show off!


The month of March brings the 'March For Macragge' event over on Twitter (and possibly elsewhere, I don't really know), so I painted up this fella:



(please ignore the helmet lenses - they're flat and washed out in the photo!)

He's my first Heresy model, first Ultramarine in the best part of twenty years, first time I've sworn at decals in about as long, first sponge-chipping attempt in ages, and first time trying to hide my sponge-chipping attempts with oil weathering. Lots of firsts!

The initial colours were put down with the airbrush - Talassar Blue over a black/white zenithal looks superb, and if I ever have reason to paint the XIII Legion again I can see that being my go-to method. Absolutely no edge highlighting of course, because I'm still awful at it! The metallics were all Vallejo Metal Color - the gold was done using Vince Venturella's recipe (a mix of VMetC Gold & Copper, plus a touch of GSW Antique Gold pigment), the silvers with one of the VMetC silvers (I forget which), cables and pipes with AK's Rubber. All relatively simple so far.
The decals however were a nightmare (hence why they're not in the photo!) - Micro Sol & Set helped, but I still really struggled with the shoulderpads. There's a couple of little wrinkles that I just couldn't get rid of, so I simply flattened them and tried to cover them in the weathering stage. More practise needed I think!

Then we come to the weathering... I started by stealing the corner of a sponge from the kitchen cupboard. It turns out I'm not very good at sponge chipping! I don't know if it was improper dilution, poor-coverage paint choice, bad technique or something else, but it simply would not work for me! I started with a brown, and when that didn't seem to play nicely swapped to a silver, but neither looked great and I was just slowly ruining the model. The obvious solution? Switch to oils! A dark brown mix, over-thinned (being new to oils I didn't realise this until too late) and applied liberally to the whole model hid my mistakes. And everything else. Once I started to take it off however it did a good enough job bringing everything back to a point where I was reasonably happy with it.

All in all the model isn't a complete failure. I actually rather like him, as much for the things that didn't work (and what I started to learn along the way) as the things that did.


So what have I been doing since? Well, annoyingly nothing scaly - I've simply not had the time!
My current work is for my Just One Model oath - an Imperial Guard Chimera! It's not going to be just a transport though - I have a little diorama in my head involving it being lost beneath the surface of a lake, rusted to the point of unrecognisability. My main inspiration comes from this photo:



The Chimera was pulled from an old, murky isopropanol bath, and came out looking something like this:



As you can see I have most of the parts, but not all. The little plate that sits on the front is missing, and I can't find it anywhere. Quite why it would be missing I'm not sure, as it should be with the rest of the tank! Fortunately though I don't have to worry too much as we'll not be able to see it properly by the time I'm done anyway. Rather than make a proper replacement I simply took some card from a frozen pizza (don't judge me, it's food!) to make my replacement...



As you can see below what I created is a perfect replica, utterly indistinguishable from the original!



I did a dry fit on the tank and decided that it would do...



And then when trying to remove it to tidy up one corner I discovered that my 'dry' fit actually involved a lot of still wet, extra thin super glue. Turns out this stuff gets everywhere, and if you don't notice in time then you can end up in a (PG13) American Pie situation...



This of course is fixed with swearing, and then acetone!



New modelling rule: when working with extra thin super glue (or any kind, in fact), wear gloves! It means that when you then inevitably stick yourself to the same piece of your model again it's only the glove that gets left behind!



So! Onto the first weathering step!
Scale modellers like to use Mr Hobby Surfacer to rough up their tanks, mimicking the patterns created when tank armour is cast. Something like that, anyway. I don't have any Mr Hobby Surfacer. What I have is cheap plastic putty and poly-cement, which I'm told does pretty much the same job.
(a word of caution to any who repeat what follows: the vapours given off by this stuff is ridiculous - open a window or work outside, and don't be stupid like me and realise just how bad the smell is after it's hit your lungs!)



Mix the two together on a disposable surface and you end up with a horrible gloopy mess that destroys your brush (use a cheap one!) and dries annoyingly fast (work quickly!)



After working for about half an hour (after which Real Life popped up again) I've ended up with about half the tank covered. Some of it may receive a second pass for extra texture, and the cardboard plate needs some more disguising, but that may be left for later steps.




So that's where we are currently. An absolute mess? Quite possibly, but I'm sure it'll be a fun learning experience as I go!

Awesome work!

Excuse #... no excuses today?!

This update is actually from last night's work. That's right, updates two days in a row! No excuses! Madness!

Last night's hobby hour got interrupted early, but I still managed to get a little more done.
Here is our tank before I started working on it - the texture is nice, but there's a few areas that I apparently didn't stipple properly. These will get fixed later.



From here I threw a load more putty round and tried to cover everything I hadn't already. When I was done we had this:



First step done!

Now onto the second step. Before I started this project I asked in the TRFT Patreon Discord server for suggestions, and Stephan (no social links - you'll have to join if you want to see his work!) kindly threw loads of useful stuff at me. One of these was to use Mr Surfacer, which I've kind of done with the putty. Another was to use watered down texture pastes, which I'm about to kind of do. Keep in mind that if any of this goes wrong it's all Stephan's fault

Now the only texture paste I have is an old pot of Vallejo Black Lava. It's starting to dry out but there's plenty of usable paste still.



Logic (and Stephan) would suggest to thin it a little. I didn't do that. Instead I took another cheap brush (two have already been thoroughly destroyed in this project) and got to work. I had planned to be careful and focus on corners and recesses, but what I actually did was stab like a madman until I started to run out of places to actually hold the tank. Once it's dry I'll be able to go back and check for spots that still look too smooth, but until then we're left with some rather fetching cow camo



Once I'm done with the physical texturing I'll be able to move into priming. I had been planning to use a rattlecan for ease, and so that if the finish wasn't great (gotta love British weather and a heavy trigger-finger!) it would add to the rough surface, but now I'm concerned that I might actually end up smoothing out the finer textures. I'll more than likely end up getting the airbrush out, but thoughts are welcome!

No more hobby time this week, so hopefully another update early next week

Excuse #8 - I used the wrong primer!

...well, I don't know that yet, but I have concerns!

So let's start by taking a look at where we left off last time. The cow tank!



We're now about to start making this thing look rusty, instead of just feeling it!
For my next few sessions I expect to only be taking the following out of the tool box:



AMMO Heavy Chipping and Scratches fluids. Most, if not all of the heavy lifting will be done by the chipping fluid, I think.
Airbrush thinner.
The AMMO Rust Effects set of acrylics.
Molotow One4All Signal Black
AK Ultra Matte Varnish

To apply them we will be using a Badger Patriot 105 that desperately needs a clean, with a 0.5mm needle.



Compressor is set to approximately 28psi (working pressure) - most recommend ~22, but for some reason this never works for me. I'm very much an airbrushing novice though!

Oh, and a cup of tea, because obviously!



Now I spent a little bit of time considering my primer options. I like the Molotow paints because they seem to airbrush nicely - a really important factor for me because I'm not very good with the airbrush! They aren't dedicated primers however, and because I'm planning to rough the tank up a little I'm worried about pulling up the primer. I do have a bottle of AK black primer, however previous attempts to use it were frustrating to say the least. It would probably bond better and give a stronger finish, but I'm hoping that varnish will help even things out here. In the end ease-of-use won, and I'm sticking with the Molotow!

While spraying the tank (and everything around it, apparently!) I discovered that it was difficult in places to see where I had covered, as I was working black-on-black. Still, I think everything got two (slightly heavy) coats, and I'm ready to move on!



Our first actual colour is A.MIG-044 Chipping. It's the first time I've used the AMMO paints but I'm rather impressed. They come with a stainless steel agitator already inside the bottle, and while it needed a little more thinning than I expected (again, not good with the airbrush!) it went on beautifully. The colour when wet wasn't unlike melted chocolate, though as expected it dries a little darker (I absolutely failed to capture this in the photo!)



I haven't tested it by brush other than unloading after mixing in the airbrush cup, but it seems to give pretty good coverage - I imagine that these would be a pleasure to paint with using a regular brush.

After spraying two layers (with much more control this time - I almost felt like I knew what I was doing!) and employing a hairdryer I'm almost done for the night. My last step will be varnishing.

Something of a common theme - I've never airbrushed a varnish before! I'm using the AK Ultra Matte straight from the bottle. It looks rather like soya milk in the cup, but we'll give it a go anyway! (the photo makes it appear rather white, but it has the same yellow tint that soya milk does!)



Two passes (with only one area getting too much spray by mistake, no issue though!) and we have gone from a cow tank to a very matte chocolate tank!



Before applying the varnish however I noticed this:



You'll be able to see that there's a couple of little white spots. This is where I've been handling the tank and managed to remove both the brown and black layers - what you can see is the putty I was stippling in the last two posts! It would appear that my primer concerns may have been warranted!

To help prevent this from becoming an issue I will start my next painting session by sticking the Chimera to a painting handle. I should have done this from the start really, as it will make spraying the whole tank at once much easier, and also reduce the amount that I have to physically touch it. I will also probably begin by adding another layer of varnish, because it probably can't hurt!

So that's where I'm leaving off for tonight! Thoughts and suggestions welcome as always. =]

Excuse #9 - how many times can I get away with "this is my first time" as a potential excuse?

Tonight I have my first real opportunity for problems! Fortunately on this project if something goes wrong it's easily fixable, as things like 'neatness' aren't really a concern. I've also come to realise that having a hairdryer (or heat gun, if you're fancy) at the painting table is really, really useful! Cutting a twenty minute drying time down to just a couple of minutes really helps stop you from losing momentum.

Chipping fluid isn't something that I've ever used before - it's my first time. It's quite thick, and seemed a little reluctant to come out of the airbrush - I didn't increase my psi at all, but I did have to open the trigger up a little more than usual to get any real flow. I'm also coming to realise that my painting light simply isn't up to the task, as I can't see anywhere near clearly enough. Another thing to add to the to-buy list!

Anyway - I varnished again first just in case, and then threw some Heavy Chipping Fluid down. Two coats with a blow dry in between. A.MIG-043 Shadow Rust is the next colour in our set - it's not that much lighter than the previous Chipping coat, so if it all goes wrong it doesn't actually matter too much. I can go back and forth between these colours anyway, so all will be fine. Two quick passes with the Shadow Rust and I armed myself with a size 8 AMMO saw brush - for no other reason that it was to hand, and it had an interesting shape. In hindsight it probably wasn't the best choice, but it's what I went with.



I did briefly break out an old toothbrush, but that was quickly sidelined as I was scared of being too rough. I started out brushing water on to the tank before getting impatient and simply spraying it on with the airbrush.

While working I actually found it quite difficult to see what I was doing. The water was bubbling up almost like soap, which obscured my view somewhat. In the end though I managed to get it to work - it almost felt like the best results came when the surface started to dry out a little and go 'tacky'. I don't know if this is how it's supposed to work, but I'm sure a little practise will help here!
Another thing that made the process a little more difficult was the fact that I was working with two colours that were very similar - on a wet surface it wasn't particularly easy to distinguish between them, and on a few occasions I stopped brushing through fear that I had taken too much off, only to discover that nothing had chipped at all! In future I think I might try taking larger jumps in my colour choices, and I'll definitely be doing some YouTube research before my next attempt.

In the end though the results weren't actually all that bad, and I'm perfectly happy for a first go. Apologies for the poor contrast in the pictures - I'm simply taking them quickly with my phone, and under a bright light it can be difficult to see in person!



The tank is now back in storage curing, but next time it comes out I'm thinking varnish, chipping fluid, and then maybe something like a bright orange, maybe even a couple of different colours thrown together in one layer? Suggestions on a postcard...