30 April 2013

Painting Step-By-Step: Sin Assyris part 1


This is Sin Assyris, a special character for the Alchemists of Dirz faction in Rackham's ill-fated flagship wargame, Confrontation. Luckily, this model is also usable in the Hybrid board game (hence I bought it) and it has sat in a figure case, in a constructed state, for nearly 10 years. I thought it was time to do another painting guide/demo/docu and wanted to look at another forgotten model.


As you can see, the Rackham models had an immense amount of detail for 28mm. They can be so delicate that pinning joints becomes a work of art that only keyhole surgeons should attempt. It has to be said that Sin Assyris is not so bad in the build – a head and two arms went on relatively easily (from what I recall).


So, I dusted off the model and gave the base some treatment. I went to file off the mould lines but the majority of these figures had mould lines so insignificant you really do struggle to see them. This was one such model. I did find a few and they were promptly dispatched and the model undercoated.


I gave the miniatures a quick, delicate blast with spray undercoat, then followed this up with a brush. I used very watered down black paint and gave the model a couple of coats to give it a solid black finish that didn't obscure any of the lovely details.

I airbrushed colour onto the 'skirt' of the model. I used my Cryx colour palette as it seemed appropriate for the Alchemists of Dirz (with its greenish hue) and will fit in with my other Hybrid models already painted. I started with a Black/Cryx Bane Base mix moving on to a pure Cryx Bane Base pass.


Once this was looking solid I started to add Cryx Bane Highlight to the mix until the colour was pure. At this point I switched spray angle to be more from above the model and had a final Cryx Bane Highlight/White pass with the airbrush.

As with my other airbrushed models, it's looking a touch highlight heavy but I'm looking forward to developing the tones with a brush. I did a trial using only a brush on a Cryx Warwitch model with great results so this should develop nicely.

The rest of the model caught a lot of overspray, which I'm regretting a little – my enthusiasm meant I jumped in and got spraying without thinking, doh! However, It's only the last highlight where the paint was a little thicker that may have left a slight texture (see his sword to the left), but not so much that it can't be pulled around. It's all a learning experience I guess (more water in my paint!).

Now things start to get interesting!

You will notice I've got several painting projects on the go, lots of irons in fires. I only get small pockets of time so my posts will switch between all these projects and ensure that I don't get bored painting the same thing and there's always something new to look at on the blog.

To be continued…



8 comments:

  1. Awaiting continument.......is that a word?

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    1. Continument continuing soon – I'm enjoying painting again!

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  2. Lovely looking model and neglected for so long! Looking forward to the next update.

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    1. Rackham did produce some stunning models – far too much detail for you historical types ;)

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  3. The work I'm seeing done with airbrush is phenomenal. I'd like to learn how to do it, but I believe I'd need to take a workshop to do it.

    Looking forward to seeing this as it progresses.

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    1. It's quite straightforward to use, there's just a lot of faff. The cleaning, masking, re-masking, re-masking the re-mask takes a lot of time and you end up spraying for 5 minutes. It's all in the planning (which I clearly don't do at present) – the hand control can be picked up quite easily.

      There's a Speed Painting video at Miniature Mentor by Thomas David that I found fantastic, though there must be similar stuff on youtube – search for zenithal highlighting

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  4. Nice wip. I'd have to echo Anne's comments though.

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    1. I don't think the airbrushing alone is enough for the models scale that we use, so I'm using it to lay down a base cover of shadow and highlights and then work into them with a brush. It definitely gives much better results as you feel you have a head start.

      Did some more painting on this guy this evening so another update before the week is out.

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