I wrapped up the first chunk of my Crimson Fists, so I wanted to get them into the lightbox.

They’re weirdly very frustrating. The recipe is extremely simple and speedy; I’m painting them in what I would describe as the Citadel/Duncan style, which is to say I put down a bunch of base colors, wash it, tidy up the colors, and highlight.

• Step 1: Base
  • GW Night Lords Blue basecoat on pretty much everything
  • VMC Dark Grey on flex, tubes
  • GW Leadbelcher on emblems, bolter parts
  • VMC Black on bolter case, grenades
  • GW Night Lords Blue to cleanup edges
• Step 2: Wash
  • GW Nuln Oil
• Step 3: Clean up
  • GW Night Lords Blue on large surfaces
  • VMC Dark Grey on flex, tubes
• Step 4: Highlight
  • GW Thunderhawk Blue edge highlight on armor
  • Stop halfway through to do eyes:
    • P3 Inferno Orange
    • GW Gryph-Hound Orange
    • P3 Heartfire
  • GW Fenris Grey edge highlight over Thunderhawk Blue (on characters)
  • VMC Light Grey edge highlight on flex, tubes
• Step 5: Cleanup (again)
  • GW Night Lords Blue to de-chunk the Thunderhawk Blue highlights
• Step 6: Fist, Seals, Holsters
  • Pretty much the same as above but with GW Mephiston Red & GW Wild Rider Red, GW Zandri Dust & GW Ushabti Bone, and GW Mournfang Brown and GW XV-88 with GW Agrax Earthshade in the middle there.

Probably because it’s got like 12 steps that involve me applying Night Lords Blue it starts to feel old pretty quickly. Fortunately, I’m using NLB Air.

Here’s the thing, because I don’t know that I’ve advocated enough for the GW Air paints here: brush that stuff on. It’s fine in the airbrush (despite being in a damned pot and not a dropper), but their air paints tend to have great coverage w/r flow when just brushed on. When highlighting stuff, I would very much prefer their air paints over their non-air paints. The flow of the NLB, compared to the weird flow of the TB, makes it a lot easier for me to just not fight the Thunderhawk and then clean it up with the Night Lords.

Anyway, it’s so easy I expect progress to be faster than it is, which discourages me, which makes progress slower, etc. Vicious cirle.

First batch is done, anyway. These are Intercessors and characters from Dark Imperium & Know No Fear and the Phobos LT from the SC! Vanguard box.

I’m also particularly pleased with how the power swords came out.