I’m a finisher. I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just a thing, but it’s always been my thing. I don’t like to have things unfinished – it stresses me out. I’ve been collecting an EC army ever since Betrayal at Calth came out (late 2015) and have a fairly decent sized army now. The one thing it was missing for most of that time was some special characters. I don’t usually use SC’s in my armies (I never understood why a Primarch of tens of thousands of troops would turn up at a 2,000 point game) but I do love the Horus Heresy Character series so with ~7,000 points finished and painted a couple of those (Fulgrim and Eidolon) felt like a good place to finish.
So, what were my hobby goals when I built this army?
- I wanted a metallic armour finish (at the time I had a bit of a hard on for the MKA style, I’m over that now (although I still think it looks good))
- I want to get my decal game on
- I wanted to learn how to paint white
- I wanted to learn how to weather
Did I succeed? Largely yes I think so. Here’s an example of a model from the army (btw the bases have improved since this):
Metallic finish? Yes there is one. The process I used for painting the metallic was very long to be honest and I’d change it now. I undercoated black, basecoated silver, washed with a blue ink, drybrushed chrome then painted on a layer of purple ink then 3:1 thinner to ink then a final layer 5:1 thinner to ink. It actually looks pretty good but I think a better finish comes from an airbrush and more layers of thinner paint. I’ve been messing about with a Space Hulk set and have got this finish going at it that way:
One thing I still really haven’t cracked is chipping and worn edges. They look ok but I’m really clumsy with it. I’ve used a chipping medium on the base of Eidolon but I used too much and scraped so much of the colour away that the effect isn’t really there.
How was my decal game? On point thanks. I’ve learned how to use micro sol and micro set (if you want a decal game and don’t have these products, look them up – the internet is full of videos on how to use them). I also went out of my way to get some interesting and fresh kinds of decals to add to my models and it took me to a very dark part of the internet; fingernail art.
Take a look again at the dreadnought above. All the hatching and flowers are fingernail art decals. I used them extensively all across my army. And the best thing about them? They’re very, very inexpensive. I think I spent <GBP15 on all the decals for the army. You can get some really cool ones as well – it’s easy to add freehand over the top for some different effects and, overall, this has been a big, constructive learning for me. Just put ‘fingernail decals,’ into Amazon if you don’t believe me. Yes there are a lot of emojis and butterflies, but there’s some useful stuff if you use your imagination.
Did the white come out well? No, not really if I’m honest. It’s alright but I vastly over complicated the process for the army as a whole (purple filters and lots of grey scale etc). For the last model I painted for the army I looked up Vince Venturella’s excellent ‘How to Paint White Linen and Cloth,’ video. It came out much better but definitely isn’t an army painting technique (again, very long).
A good friend of mine has a really good World Eaters army and his secret is that there’s almost no white on them but I think as it’s an accent colour in my army it’s been difficult to get it right.
And finally, the weathering. If any of my gaming group read this, this is where the jokes would start. I’ve reach a point where I’m pleased with the weathering now (for example the dreadnought above) but when I first started the army the weathering was far too heavy. That’s ok, I’ve learned, but my weathering is now a meme in my gaming group!
So, still some stuff to work on from the army painting side (chipping, mass producing white, getting the right degree of weathering) and some skills to take on to future projects (decals, a unified aesthetic).
But what about those two characters? Ok, so to finish the army I wanted a couple of special characters and, hopefully, something I’d be happy to put in the cabinets at WHW events fishing for a gong. There were some specific hobby goals, very different to the army ones, for the characters:
- Wet blending
- NMM
- Freehand
- Patience
How was wet blending for the first time? Not easy. I made a wet pallette (which I recommend to anyone trying this) and really invested some time into research and a LOT of time (see ‘patience,’ below) into the execution. I was pleased with the blending on Fulgrim overall but still have this annoying chalky finish on some of the bigger areas.
It turns out that this was because I added white to my purple. Following Vince’s advice I used grey to lighten my purple on Eidolon and am much happier with the smoothness of the blends:
Ultimately, wet blending is moderately complex and there are many much better painters than me that have taken time to demonstrate it on the internet. I’m pleased with where I’ve got to by following them.
NMM is basically wet blending on steroids (the steroids being the added complexity of light direction etc). Now, my NMM is nowhere near great but I am actually fairly chuffed with it. Here’s Fulgrim’s shoulder pad:
I was scared to try NMM at first and, I’m not going to lie, it takes me an AGE to do but I really like the effect. That’s a tick for me.
The freehands were a bit more hit and miss. I did two styles across the two models. On Fulgrim the only freehands were some simple creeping vines on his cloak to break up an otherwise big flat expanse of cloak and some peacock feathers:
Pretty pleased with that. For Eidolon I wanted to stretch the techniques and paint some full colour freehands. I think I’d been watching too many Richard Gray videos but I gave it a shot at least. I’m ok with this one:
And I’m actually really pleased with this one:
But I’m less happy with the cloak. The draftsmanship is ok (usually my weak point):
But from this stage I should have painted the design NMM but I wanted to be a bit more adventurous so went full colour. Only I didn’t. The colours aren’t strong enough (esp against the stark white) so this doesn’t work as well as I wanted but I know why and I’m ok with making mistakes as long as I learn from them:
And what about the patience? Neil from The Imperial Truth said something on one of the episodes that really resonated with me and, probably, sparked my interest in trying to paint these two models as well as I can. I’m paraphrasing because I can’t find the episode but what he said was ‘If you’re only interested in painted models you’ll never paint well; you need to really enjoy the process of actually putting paint on the model. To really enjoy painting’
I struck me that I’ve never done that before. I always rushed painting so I could get things on the table and grow my collection of painted models. This time I took my time and really got satisfaction out of the execution of the paint job. Of making a blend smooth, of making something look like metal using brown paint, of free hand.
These models took me about four months each to paint. That’s a long time to spend on a single model for me but I am really proud of how they came out and I think they’re a good place to leave the EC as a project – now I just need to get as much table time out of them as I can
Let me know what you think!
