Sonic Dreadnought

Hello to one and all. Today we have probably the loudest vehicle in all the multiverse:

An Emperor's Children Sonic Dreadnought! This badass lump of resin is a complete kit from Forgeworld (and haven't we seen a lot of them lately?) that I've painted for the same client that commisioned the purple chaos marines we've been seeing on the blog lately. For those who might be unfamiliar with the lore concerning these things, some of Slaanesh's chaos marines are so plumbed in to sensation that they modify their senses to perceive everything in terms of art and music. To them a sunset and the screams of the dying are the same. To further enhance this experiance they use musical weapons that use harmonics and resonant frequencies to burst and shatter their victims while adding to the music of battle that they are addicted to. This thing is a Noise Marine champion interred in the walking life support mechanism of a dreadnought but still attacking with his favourite weapon:

from the excellent Order of the Stick.

Following some painful painting experiances recently I decided to paint the gold first. Normally "inside out" sums up most of my proceedure decisions but the liquid gold is easier to apply in broad strokes. I then washed the Liquid Old Gold with Agrax Earthshade and got to cutting in the purple.

Just like the others gloss black weapons give a classy contrast to the rich purple and golds and the green gem spot colours provide a bit of visual interest. I resisted painting the Twiddly Bits that have featured on the other models in this commission because it is already a very, very busy figure. The clean purple plates are some of the only relief that the eye gets!

To try and reduce the "toy-like" appearance of such a bold model I rusted up the exhaust pipes (always cheap metal) and added plenty of oil around the joints and pistons. This created a really nice contrast between the grungy workings and the gleaming armour plates. The rusting was done with a new product for me: AK Interactives Rust Streaks. This is an enamel paint that means that you can mess about with it using white spirit that won't hurt the acrylics. In this case I just thinned it down and glazed it over the pipes and exhaust vents. It is translucent and created a lovely rusty not rusted look.

For the base I just used lumps of cork rubble, modelling sand and a few Secret Weapon bricks (I won some Secret Weapon stuff in a contest recently so picked up some of the bricks and the snow I used on santa). To my mind the bricks are a little thin but they help make the dreadnought look bigger so that works. The heap of tanks that I showed you in an earlier post are underway and will be finished over the next couple of weeks. Not next week though because Pirate Viking Painting is going TO WAR!

You might remember last year that I went off to the Beard Bunker in Oxford for a paintathon? Well, I'm going back for the campaign week this time! I'm just 21 half painted Dwarfs from a 3000 point horde of the little dudes and I intend to do some grudge filled harm. To top it off, the week of awesome begins tomorrow with our - sort of - annual pilgrimage up to GW HQ in Nottingham for the mad apocalypse events that we call Nerd Thunder! This time it is four 1st founding Space Marine armies facing off against a huge Ork horde in Nerd Thunder IV: Guns of Nuvverork! Pictures will, of course, be up here and on the Beard Bunker for all to enjoy. As this is one of my holiday weeks there will of course be not a whole bunch of progress on current projects but come March we will see the second titan stride forth and a host of purple tanks try to avoid his feet! See you soon folks.

TTFN