New fear unlocked! White Scars vehicles
The Ordu is going strong and if you've been following my past updates From the Desk, that the Heresy bug is lodged in there deep with a drive to get this army on the tabletop. Yesterday I decided to finally tackle a vehicle kit with the humble workhorse of the legion, the Rhino transport. Vehicles have actually been one of the stress points of painting the White Scars. In the earlier days of the scheme, presenting the green atmosphere was most challenging in the conceptual phase of vehicles partly due to it not being on a base. The green grass wouldn't be present to have the remaining parts to work well, the old idea of doing the army in NMM where painting a lot of box models with no real curves was going to be tricky and honestly not a lot of fun. As well as the wethering, something that I find gives vehicles the most character, as these models don't have any human anatomy or facing to guide a principle angle of interest. But that all changes now with my revised scheme and set of parameters for the army. What better way to get over my fear of painting tanks for the Ordu than to just dive in and tackle it head on. Be it with some experiments to which I'm going to share with you here.
1. Painting the white: I've made one more slight alteration to the white and that is the base green of the scheme. Moving from Dark Green Grey and switching to Citadel Sons of Horus Green with a touch of black and all of this over a Black undercoat. I find Citadel paints thinned down with Tamiya X20a lays down such a smoother and even finish with the airbrush compared to the Dark Green Grey.
2. No need to heavy modulation in the white values. With such a light colour of green and ivory across a large surface, panel modulation was too harsh in values. Rather just controlling the opacity of the highlights by gathering them more on the raised armour panels and directing them into the centre of each. With such a light armour colour combined with the darker green undershading, the model itself assists in providing more tone variation with the room light as is.
3. The red half and the sawtooth pattern is where things get tricky! First is to mask off the half I want to protect white. Using thin strips of Tamiya masking tape and carefully contouring the tape into the various folds and joints of the armour. Using cling wrap to save tape and make it easier to wrap the half of the tank. I am simply making a block and not putting in the sawtooth pattern yet! You will see why shortly.
4. With the half airbrushed red, and also with a paint swap from AK Burnt Red to Citadel Khorn red with a touch of black. Against smoother base coverage with Tamiya X20a and also help with better converage with the Khorn Red.
5. With our cut sencil of the sawtooth pattern (Measuring 3mm width between each point, and 3mm in height) I carefully put it down and take a soft hp pencil and trace the pattern onto the model in preparation for the brush.
6. And finally get in there with a brush and start filling the traced lines. Now why not just leave that tape down and airbrush with the sawtooth pattern? Across the whole surface their are sharp changes in elevation and details to which the taping doesn't fold well and those panel lines are hard to fill completely. Because anything short of a perfect flush seal with leave burs and feather overspray which drive me crazy! I can use my brush to get around these areas easily, and tracing a line which is already laid down makes the hand painting 3 times as fast.
Conclusion is to add some ivory chipping around the red and use it to hide mistakes! Weathering is wonderful for that hehe. The tank so far isn't perfect and again this is just one experiment. Painting white is honestly difficult and any small imperfections are easily spotted including dirty hands! I highly recommend wearing gloves and changing them often as to avoid light stains on the white which I've had to clean up. Matt varnishing the tank right after the White Airbrush stage is also handy to help give your fresh paint a bit of durability when handling also. Once I go through this whole process, I'll be making a tutorial for another White Scars armoured vehicle and give you a more refined process.
Bb