Vespid Stingwings commission - part 5

Click picture for a closer look

Blimey, it can sure be tough to find actual hobby time in today's hectic life. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to complain about my life per se. At the same time I'll be very happy when I'll graduate (again) in februari / march and I can get a normal job. Sounds silly I know, but I'll have a lot more free time when I start working full time.

But enough with the jibberjabber, time for a quick update on the Vespids I'm putting together for Marticus. Good progres is being made on the skin tones, which allows me to mess about a bit with one of my favorite color - Games Workshop's Shadow Grey:

For those interested, here are the steps so far (using GW paints and Pergamano Tinta inks):
- Undercoat of Chaos Black;
- Basecoat of Shadow Grey;
- Very thin wash/glaze with watered down Regal Blue, purely focused on adding just the slightest hint of darker blue to the recesses of the Vespid's segmented body armour;
- 3 successive overburshes and highlights of Shadow Grey with successively more Bleached Bone added into the mix;
- Touch-ups with blue ink in the few recesses that got covered up by accident;
- And, finally, an extremely subtle highlight on the sharpest areas with Kommando Khaki.

I know that the last step may seem a bit odd, but trust me on this, a hint of a light earth tone can really help add depth and a more organic feel to a mini. It may be a bit difficult to see, but below you can see just how subtle the highlight was kept:
I also got a question on how the purple crystals were made and painted. They're quite simple to do actually, as they're nothing more than some leftover sprue pieces (for a full tutorial check - here).

The painting is easy enough as well:
- Chaos Black undercoat, followed by a Liche Purple basecoat:
- The entire crystal gets a drybrush with Liche Purple with just a tiny, tiny bit of Bleached Bone mixed into it, try to keep your brush strokes going in the same direction on each of the flat surfaces as this will add to the effect in the final stages;
- Add a bit more Bleached Bone to the same mix and give the sharp edges a highlight;
- This is generally good enough, but I add a second purple highlight by adding a tiny bit more Bleached Bone in the previous mix and adding a lighter highlight closer towards where edges connect;
* Optional - add a bit of Fortress Grey to the mix to dull down the tone a tad and add small scratches and imperfections to the crystal;
- Give the crystal a wash with some watered down red ink and let this fully dry;
- Finally add a tiny, sharp highlight of Fiery Orange to the sharp points where surfaces meet and there you have it. Simple, yet rich in colour gemstones for your bases.

Still plenty of work left on these (armour, guns, pigment spots, spikes, tendrils & clean up), but I'm slowly getting there. At the moment the inner wings are getting some much needed attention with some, hopefully, cool looking dotting effects:

Once these are of my to do list, it will be time for some serious Dreadfleet tinkering as well as another update of the Alternative Companies list (link). So until next time, thanks for reading and have fun wargaming everybody!