The ordu prepares for war!
Before we jump into this weeks tutorial on Belial's Cape and his red carpet appearance, I've been staring at my mass collection of unbuilt and unpainted models of the Heresy which are supposed to be dedicated to the Ordu of Jaghatai - the White Scars. As the ongoing demand of commission painting, Warhammer Community pre-relese articles and my love of expanding my painting skills. There has been an ever looming desire to see myself back on the gaming table to enjoy an evening of chucking dice and conducting campaigns set in the Horus Heresy. And that requires a fully painted army to which I don't often have the luxury of having much time to paint. Irony that a career of being a full-time professional painter leaves me little to do such a task. Pair that with my passion for the 5th legion that just happens to be a legion that demands a lot of attention on the brush; and you can see it leaves me with a very challenging battle ahead.
Through the years, my White Scars scheme has gone through small changes. Whether it's a new set of reds to try out, shades of green in various saturations, basing styles, NMM and metallics. All in the goals to finding the most optimal way to paint them, alongside with what feels right at the time. It may not have produced any consistency to the army painting itself, but it's at the expense of getting better. Sometimes I tell myself it's more of the characteristics of the Scars themselves, being warriors that value expression, style, and fighting for what the heart desires. If there is one thing I've always wanted to show in my collection, is that each warrior should be unique with no two adorning the same patterns, names, iconography etc in mirrored placement. Again, not the ideal way to set yourself up to painting an army!
So my latest strategy that I will try and implement with this next set of Jetbikes is to create a stencil out of plastic card to which I can quickly trace out onto a small strip of Tamiya masking tape. From there I can overlay this on the hull and take a fine HP pencil to lightly trace this in order to then paint with a brush. Painting over a the pencil line has very much sped up the time it takes to draw it from scratch, it's much more like tracing. This way I don't need to think about spacing and eyeball the distances etc. I still may try this stencil to airbrush more of the larger patterns, but I've still run into problems in the past with getting the cleanest edge especially located in the inward angle. Little bits of bleed are common in those tricky angles, but I may have to try that again. But for now this is a good motivating step in hopes to bringing my Ordu up to speed.
Till then I hope to feed you all small snippets of progress and hopefully get a functioning playable army to roll some dice in the name of the Khan! Catch you all soon and of course Happy Painting!-
-Bb