The Ophelia Crusade

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Thanks! I popped into a FLGS near(ish) to me this week where they have a 'wall of shame' which is a shelf of second hand models which have all been horribly mistreated and I purchased a knackered grav falcon for a few pounds. My purpose was purely to use it to practice different techniques and colour mixes to find one I liked for my Knight project.

I think I get the theory around this now, and have had a go, but I need to use a smaller brush and less glaze. How do you prevent it streaking in the middle?

[Marshal Vespasian]

Use less water and more Medium to thin it.

Depending on manifacturer paint can break down when thinned a lot.

Scale 75 and warcolours are gel Medium those you can thin way down with water. GW and Vallejo loose coherency at some point and just become streaking messes.

[Haldredd]

Thanks! I popped into a FLGS near(ish) to me this week where they have a 'wall of shame' which is a shelf of second hand models which have all been horribly mistreated and I purchased a knackered grav falcon for a few pounds. My purpose was purely to use it to practice different techniques and colour mixes to find one I liked for my Knight project.

I think I get the theory around this now, and have had a go, but I need to use a smaller brush and less glaze. How do you prevent it streaking in the middle?

Glazing as I’ve described really only works for a minor colour change over a small area. For larger areas (like panels on a vehicle) you need to tweak it. As Vespasian says, you can add more medium to the paint and give it a go like that, experimenting with consistency to get it smooth. Here are some other options for achieving colour blends that you can try:

- Easiest by a mile is an airbrush. You don’t need anything fancy for basecoat style work (including getting some transitions) so a basic Chinese compressor (with tank) and airbrush kit off eBay would be fine, probably around £80-90.

- If you don’t have the budget for that then your next best bet is to practice the “wet blending” technique. I’d recommend searching for that on YouTube and giving it a go. It gets faster results than glazing for larger colour transitions.

- If you want to practice glazing over a larger area then start by painting your colours using normal consistency paint. This means you’ll see bands of colour with no transition between them. Then you use the glaze consistency paint to glaze over the lines where the different colours meet, which will blur those lines. With enough glaze coats you’ll reach a smooth transition. Remember your brush strokes should end on the colour that you’re glazing with. It’s a little harder to describe this way of glazing in words, so YouTube will help you out with this too!

 

In all cases I’d stick with a larger brush though, I don’t think going smaller will make things any easier!

[Marshal Vespasian]

The screaming skull glaze did not transform the shoulder pads into a war er colour?

I am thinking about how best to do white shoulder pads, it has been and propably forever will be one of the parts of the army I have the biggest problems with.

I thought about painting them in almost white grey. Glazing the low points darker and the highpoints in pure white. Or I could do the highpoints in off white, but I am not sure that it will look good over a ver cold grey

[Haldredd]

The builds of the Sword Brother and Initiates from my first Crusader squad are complete!

My aim was to capture most of the squad in motion, so some are charging and some are walking purposefully. The sword brother is directing his initiates, whilst the brother with the flamer stands giving covering fire for his brethren. Hopefully you can also tell I wanted each member of the squad to be an individual, almost a character in their own right. I love that about the John Blanche artwork that is my main inspiration. They’ll become even more individual with the paint scheme.

Time to break them up into subassemblies and then prime!