The Weekly Review: Birthday Edition!

Hi folks,

This week I celebrated my Birthday in style: hanging out with the kids and painting in my free time (if you have kids, you will know roughly how much I got!). My hand has almost completely healed now, so I have been testing it out on a Primaris Captain that Sgt Waz gave me that was 99.9% completed on arrival. It had a bit of touching up that could be done on the base and one purity seal that he missed (If you are reading this Waz: I LOLsed when I saw it, but didn't tell you). As I have often done in the past, I used this opportunity to go nuts with detail work. I am really enjoying letting someone else do the drudgery of undercoats, layers and highlights! Now it is 200% complete :o)

The first step was to remove the head ornament thingy and the sword, which were both very Ultramarine/Ancient Roman looking. Nerve-wracking does not even begin to describe the feeling of snapping off a sword from a miniature someone just painted for you as a Birthday present. I cut and filed down the head armour, then drilled pilot holes in the hand and backpack. Note: I don't usually pin plastic, these bits were just going to be sensitive to knocks and need the support.

The sword and Dark Angels symbol were both pinned into place. I also added a Dark Angels censer under the billowing robe; I had some sneaky plans for some OSL. Already he was looking a lot less Smurftastic and a little bit more... loyal but unconscionable.

I undercoated the bare parts in grey and then went about restoring any of the green armour that got chipped. I introduced some bronze to the scheme on the bolt weapon, leg armour, backpack, robes and censer, followed by some blue OSL on the legs, backpack and robes.

I painted the sword in a dark red with sharp white highlights, like the old school Deathwing powerswords of 2nd Ed. I then added a small amount of weathering to the armour and mud on the robe (even in those hard to reach places!).

I drilled out the bolt weapon barrel, because that kind of thing is important to some folks ;-)

Lastly, I painted the Dark Angels icon in the same scheme as the captain. And I painted the missed purity seal!

The base got a few lumps of Astrogranite debris, which I painted with Rhinox Hide brown and highlighted. I also added some rust effects using a mixture of Lich Purple (!),  Rhinox Hide and Solar Macharius Orange, which was stippled on using a big old drybrush. The brass and verdigris fan blades added a bit of contrast to the base. Brass is a great material for reducing friction in moving parts... unless it's all oxidised to hell, of course.

And... he's finished! As this guy is a Dark Angels character, I even get to break out the big purple stamp:

Thanks a million for doing all the ground-work Howie, if I could commission you to paint everything I had to that level, so I could just mess around with the interesting stuff, I surely would. Let me know when I can return the favour :-)

See you across the table,

Marc