Flayed Ones Painted (Group 3)

Nick speaking,

Here is my third and final group of twenty Flayed Ones for my Necron Flayed One themed army. These ones have Tau skin, and after painting the Ork skinned group with lots of blood, I decided to tone the blood down a bit on these, and make it look a little older. I still used the new GW blood paint, but I added a little bit of blue to it to darken it down and give it a purple hue...

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Flayed Ones Painted (Group 2)

Nick speaking,

Onto the second group of twenty Flayed Ones for my Necron Flayed One themed army, and this time I got hold of the new GW blood paint and had a bit of fun with it. I went for Ork skin on this group and lots of blood. I wanted the unit to look like it had literally just flayed the skin off the Orks!

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How to paint Fire Dragons (GW Style)

Nick speaking,

I know a lot of people are not fans of how GW paint their Fire Dragons, and yes, they are rather bright, but personally I like them that way and that is how I wanted mine to look. As usual I wanted to add in my IDIC twist of purple and white, with a touch of gold to give them a regal look. So, in this post I will run through how I painted them with the new Citadel orange paints.

First I primed them white...

Then I based the orange with Jokaero Orange...

With a layer of Troll Slayer Orange over the top of that...

At this stage I laid down the rest of the base coats in my IDIC colours and painted the helmets Iyanden Darksun, three layers of Yriel Yellow to give a nice smooth finish, and then a wash in the recesses only with Gryphone Sepia, as seen in the picture below...

 Next I went into the recesses only of the orange with Fuegan Orange...

Then I highlighted the orange armour with Fire Dragon Bright, dry blending on the larger areas...

Then I went in and highlighted it again with a mix of 1:1 Fire Dragon Bright and Yreil Yellow...

Now onto the helmets, this time I highlighted with a 1:1 mix of Yreil Yellow and Skull White. I blended them from the raised edges inwards, leaving the original colour and wash visible...

Then I went over that with a 1:2 mix of Yreil Yellow and Skull White...

Lastly, I hit the very edges with a mix of 1:3 Yreil Yellow and Skull White...

Next, I painted the eyes and gemstones, highlighted the purple and finished off the white sections. At this stage I also painted the Exarch base, doing this one as a piece of Blood Angels tank...

Then all I had to do was sand and paint the bases...

Finally I hit them with some satin varnish, which I like to use for my Eldar, and then added some static grass...

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It's not all Black and White!

Nick speaking,

Recent readers of my Blog will know, I went out and bought as many of the old Citadel paints as I could, for all my painting projects. I didn't want any of my armies to not look right, with a replacement paint that was a different hue. The only colours I didn't buy were Skull White and Chaos Black, along with Astronomical Grey that I use for lining in the white sections on my Eldar. After all, could black and white be that much different? Well, I recently ran out of all three of these colours and so I bought the new Citadel replacements...

I decided to just buy the Ceramite white instead of the White Scar, as I needed it to cover up any purple errors I make on my Wave Serpents. I have heard good things about this new white paint, and I have to say, I was not disappointed. One or two coats easily covered the purple, unlike the old Skull white where I was going over it five or six times!

Next was Abaddon Black, and yes, it's black! I had no problems with the colour, but I did find it a bit thick. The odd thing was, when I added a bit of water to it, it became very translucent. In the end I just added a small drop of Liquid Retard to it, and that seemed to let it flow better without it being very watery.

Finally, was Celestra Grey, I found this to be a near enough perfect colour match to Astronomical grey. I found that I could quite happily paint it right next to the Astro Grey, without any visible difference. This was a bit of a relieve to be honest, as I was a bit worried it wouldn't match in like the new Mordian blue testing I did!

Now to continue painting the Serpents...

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New Paint Testing!

Nick speaking,

I managed to get to my local GW yesterday and have a go with some of the new paints. They didn't have them all, but there was a few in each range there for me to try. I have to say, from what I have seen so far, the new paints seem excellent. The new White covering black will make a huge difference to many I am sure! The new dry brush was amazing, and the new shadow (washes) were exceptionally good, but...

What I went in the store to find out really, was if all my old colours were going to be anywhere near the same. I am half way through two of my armies (Eldar and Nids) and of course, still expanding on my Necrons. They didn't have the new equivalent of my Liche Purple, but they did have the new equivalent of Mordian blue, Macragge blue. Sadly, Maggragge blue is a totally difference colour to the old version, and that was worrying!

I have just got myself a couple of Ghost Arks and Venomthropes with my birthday money from a few days ago. I was going to buy a Tervigon with what I had left over, but this new paint viewing has scared me into buying up loads of my favourite old paints instead! I am sure, if you are starting a new army, like when I eventually get around to painting my Space Wolves, the new paints will be amazing, but I would recommend anyone who is half way through an army to go out and buy as many of the old paints as you can, especially if you want the army to look the same!

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Rihanna, Anna, Anna, Hair, Hair...

Nick speaking,

Sorry for the title, but well, I can hear the song in my head as I write this! So why Rihanna on a 40k blog?

When I was painting up my Farseer and Warlocks, AKA The IDICBeer council, I just couldn't decide what colour to paint the Farseer's hair and ended up leaving it to last. After a bit of thought and inspiration from Google, I found exactly what I was looking for, courtesy of Rihanna...

So, now I knew the colour I wanted to paint the hair, it was just a case of doing it, but how do you paint red hair with the different tones like in the picture above? Time for me to check out my favourite hobby tips blog From The Warp to see if there was anything it the archives. I found lots of great tips on highlighting various things, but nothing about red hair. I know that Ron over at FTW is a very busy man, but I thought I would give him a quick email to see if he had any suggestions.

Ron kindly replied to my email and was extremely helpful, we ended up with many emails back and forth as Ron explained a few basic colour theories to me, and advised me on how to work out the best colours to highlight the hair with. Ron was amazing in helping me out and luckily for me, he has done a full article on the sort of stuff that we discussed in those emails. I am not going to attempt to explain it all here, but please check out Ron's post to see if you can learn anything from it like I did! So how did I end up painting my red hair? Well first here is a picture of the Farseer with the hair base coated white...

I then painted it a base of Vermin Brown...

I then hit it with a wash of Devlin Mud...

After it was dry, I then washed it with Baal Red...

The first highlight was done with Blood Red...

The final extreme highlight was done with a 50/50 mix of Blood Red and Bubonic Brown...

The pictures don't really do her justice, but overall, I was very pleased with the result, and thanks to Ron, the hair came out as well as I had hoped it would. I learnt a lot during the process as well, which hopefully will put me in good stead for future projects. Here are a few final pictures of my Farseer with her Warlocks, please click on the pictures for better views...

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Stripping Metal Models

Nick speaking,

I have had a couple of comments on my YouTube channel asking me what I use to strip my metal models. I know that Dettol is very good for this job, but in this video, using some old Warlocks I got from eBay, I demonstrate how to do it with a different substance...

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