I really like this process. This part of building and painting an army (ie. the bit before I’ve actually done any of it) is maybe my favourite bit. I just sit back and close my eyes and I’ve got a beautifully painted army, I’m really thrilled with it, all my mates love it and it wins heaps of awards. Then I actually get down to the nuts and bolts and it kind of slides downhill from there. NOT THIS TIME! This time I am going to follow the aesthetic through and really nail my most beautiful army; My Adeptus Titanicus force.
So what’s this section all about? Well, I have a lot of ideas swirling around in my head about elements I’d like to use and there are some extra bits that I also want to model. This post is about thinking through the aesthetic elements I want and ordering how I make sure they are all represented on the table top. I don’t know where this post is going as I write this section (and it’s likely to be long) but this is my blog, where I work stuff out so I don’t make any apologies.
Firstly, what do I want to include in my AT force?
- Titans. Duh. Well yes, but I only have two of those currently and two banners of three Imperial Knights. So I want to get the aesthetic across these models before I buy more
- Terrain. Everything I’ve heard says that terrain is super important to this game. I’ve got tonnes of the stuff GW launched with but they’ve launched new kits on top and I want a varied battlefield. Terrain is often the last thing anyone wants to build and paint and it’s very rarely done to the standard of an army so I want to change that.
- Objective and death markers. When titans die, the area their base occupied becomes difficult terrain. I’d like to model a base for every titan I have that represents this. Also, I don’t know if objective markers are a thing but if they are, I want to make some of those too.
- Display board / tray. Yeah, tricky one this. People that have display boards are called Display Board Wankers at my gaming group. It’s hard to argue against that. But, if I can make one, get my terrain and my army based into it and looking great, it might help me snag some painting noms. Also, if I can fabricate something that makes it easy to carry my army around on, even better.
So I want an aesthetic that I can carry across all of these elements. But what specific painting and modelling elements am I really after?
- Good bases. Generally bases are something I do after I’ve painted an army. I generally use some texture paint, give them a wash, maybe do a dry brush then add some flock / gravel and rocks to them (a throwback to my railway modelling days) and black the rims. If I can tie a basing scheme in from the beginning I think I can do it better than that.
- Freehand. I’ve done some freehand that I’m pretty pleased with over time, from Fulgrim’s cloak to Eidolon’s jump pack to the banners on my competition piece. I want to include this
- Weathering. I don’t mean covering everything in weathering powder like I did with my EC’s (much to my gaming group’s ongoing amusement). I mean more, rust from scratches and chipping etc. I’ve done a bit on various things but I want to take it to the next level
- Oil washes. I used oils on my 40K objective markers and they gave them a really cool ‘grimdustrial,’ look. I don’t think I’d use an all over wash for armour panels but Vince Venturella has a great video on his Hobby Cheating feed where he really makes some metallics look superb with an oil wash. Talking of that…
- TMM. I’ve really enjoyed painting NMM and I think it’s levelled up some of my skills (blending, glazing etc) but I just think my TMM game is better at the moment and I want this army to be the best I can do right now. I want the metals on the armour plates to be like the arm shield thingy on my competition entry:
- Conversions. I’ve done a few conversions (poses and head swaps mainly) in the past but I think I can use this to level up too. I have a friend whose Dark Eldar army is a conversion in every model and another friend whose well painted but, ultimately, three coloured army won a best army gong at Throne of Skulls because of his conversions. So conversions are a thing for me right now. One immediate area is actually influenced directly by my ToS BA winning friend who has used strips of tin can to create purity seals with real dynamism to them (rather than the very static GW ones). I think swapping out the ‘dick cloths,’ (I don’t know what the real term is (clearly)) on the titans for this material would look much better and I’m also really up for making banners for the carapace of my titans using the same method.
Ok so there’s a lot of stuff there about what needs to covered and elements I want to include but what about the point to all this?
What’s the aesthetic I’m after? I definitely don’t want to follow an existing Legio colour scheme – creating my own house will give me much more flexibility over what legion rules I can use. But what should it look like? I’ve got heaps of stuff in my head around this. One model that I’ve never been able to get out of my head is Richard Gray’s Lancer. If you’re a painter and you’re not a patron of Richard Gray’s, you should be so go and do that now then come back.
This just about knocks it out of the park for me. That blue is beautifully desaturated so it’s not invasive and makes a good canvas for that next level freehand. It’s converted (the shield isn’t off the shelf), the weathering is perfect. I just love everything about it and it’s just about as close to a heartbreaking work of staggering genius that I think a toy soldier could be. So I want an army of these. But I don’t want to copy this directly. I never could and that would just be weird anyway. I want to find my own desaturated colour and free hand schemes and really refer back to this for the weathering.
But what? Just pick a colour and desaturate it right? Well, no I don’t think so. If I just pick a colour, why that colour? Why not Richard Gray’s colour? I want something that I can really indulge in, unify the titans without them all looking exactly the same and have some story with. Two things have been buzzing round my head and, just so we’re clear, they’re quite nerdy and arty farty. My apologies in advance.
Picasso’s rose period.
I know, right? No one came here for this I’m sure but for me these pictures are something I can’t shake. I think the colours are beautiful, really destaurated (so would be great for freehand over etc) and the figures are really striking.
If I could have any of these hanging above the mantle piece it would be the family with their monkey. But I’m not going to copy these images on a titan panel (I don’t think so anyway) but the beautiful pinky grey of the landscapes is something I really do want to replicate – I think that will contrast nicely with some really sharp TMM steel colour.
Commedia Dell Arte.
WTF is this? Who let the nerd in the room? Well, my academic background is in theatre actually so I think you’ll have to give me this one. There are a few ideas here mixed up in my head. One is Commedia masks (Commedia is an early form of Italian street pantomime)
Whether it’s as head swaps (I think Harlequin stuff might be good for that) or on banners (I think masks are cooler when they’re not being worn) I want to use mask imagery on my titans. I think they (masks) can be very confronting (they are a main stay of horror movies for example) and that just feels cool for my big robots. The other thing that’s really stuck in my head at the moment and, actually, ties Commedia, Picasso’s acrobats and desaturated colours together nicely is the art of my favourite artist, James Ensor
Right, I knew it would take a while but by just writing it all down, I think I now know where I want to go.
At least with the miniatures themselves (not the bases or terrain, I’ll come to them in a different post):
- TMM for the chassis with a dirty, oily (oil wash finish) as per VV’s video
- Brighter TMM (no oil wash) for the armour trim (as per my competition entry)
- Grey pink desaturated armour panels with skulls (I can paint those as per my competition piece) wearing masks.
- For the smaller models (the knights) I’ll probably simplify some mask designs or use Pierrot imagery
- I’ll do the same kind of designs on some banners and mix in some flower imagery (I’ve painted those before and live flowers looks really cool with skulls and ties in the with the Picasso painting above (‘boy with a pipe’)
Just to break things up so it’s not a repeated Flowers > Skull wearing a mask > Flowers pattern I’ll also look at any other motifs from 17th century Italian art (to keep with the commedia theme). A cursory internet search has already thrown up a bunch.
EXCELLENT. Well, I don’t actually have any paints with me right now and I’m a few weeks away from getting them so I still have time to flesh out what images are going where on what titans but it does mean I can build them now knowing, approximately, how I want them to turn out. ONWARDS! Comments always welcome.