I'm really appreciating being able to switch from the eldar with the tight, precise lines - that hurt my wrist if I do it too long - to the more familiar Imperial painting with a variety of schemes to keep things fresh. Today's Ruperts (the generic name for all officers in elements of the British armed forces) are a Bromhead from Black Scorpion and the charmingly bonkers Colonel MacDonald from Spartan Games. We'll start with Mr Bromhead: First Rank Fiahhhh!
The brief for the Bromhead figure was to make him similar to Col Winterborne's Praetorians. I'm guessing he is representing them in the command staff! Most of him is Val Khaki shaded with Agrax Earthshade, rehighlighted with Khaki and then with Khaki and Bone mix. Creates a lovely colour. I can't recommend Vallejo's military range highly enough. Citadel just do not make these strong but desaturated shades. They make a lovely pairing in a painters arsenal, Citadel for the strong saturated tones, Vallejo for the muted militaries and sadly, now only Army Painter (small shudder, but their acrylics are not bad) for half decent metals. The grey/black cape was typical of the victorian look and giving it the pop of a red lining made him look wealthier.
The Spartan Games Colonel MacDonald is just lovely in it's insanity. A massive steam powered bath chair with an aging officer at it's centre. I made one modification, a new plasma gun rig replaces the very cartoony blunderbus of the original. I figured that utilitarian was the order of the day. As always, I thought about the narrative of the model as I painted so that I could inform colour choices. I figured that he had been grievously wounded in battle and his troops had jury rigged this thing out of an old grav accelleration couch and a solid wood burner along with some cylinders from his wrecked command salamander or something. This implied that the paint job should be heavy, industrial steel and old, cared for leather. As yet another example of previous painting facilitating future projects, the leather tone I figured out for Sister of Biggles got used again here. Really captures that armchair-from-a-gentleman's-club look I was going for.
The tartan blanket just felt right! The trick with tartan is half and half shades. Start with your base layer - in this case Karak Stone - then the "Big Grid" of a 50:50 mix of the base layer and the grid colour (Castellan Green). Then the intersecting squares get painted pure Castellan Green. The red gets treated the same way, will look pink and weird until you get the red intersections sorted. I added some Val German Cammo Black-Brown thin grids too and then washed the lot with Athonian Camoshade to provide some definition.
The business end of the bath chair needed more weathering and wear than the grav couch. Thin washes of black ink mixed with Lahmian Medium and then AK-Interactive Rust Streaks gave a nice, dark, heavy, untreated iron look. The cogs and axles all got coated with AK-Interactive Fresh Engine Oil. Makes a lovely greasy look.
There you have it folks: Two Ruperts and a Kick-Ass Wheelchair! The next bit of Corsair lovliness is almost finished and will likely be the next thing on the blog. Until then,
TTFN
Kool. Nice to the plasma gun plumbed in. One can imagine the gouts of steam and smog coughed out of those funnels every time it fires.
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