I've had a friend's Dreamer crew for quite some time. He gave me this a while back, and I think I may have posted when I assembled them earlier on this blog. I've procrastinated on painting them up for a very long time for reasons unworthy and started working on them a few weeks back. My first attempt was terrible as I decided to try using only the traditional brush and was thoroughly ashamed lol. After even more time pondering how to salvage it I decided to repaint it using my airbrush. Here's what I've done so far:
I am very much happier with these results, I didn't even take a picture of my previous attempt. I'm happy with the monochrome effect I've produced so far, although I plan on painting much more on the alps as they have a lot more different textures and articles of clothing. The pink Daydreams, however, are pretty much mostly done short of details like eyes and teeth/horns. The bases will have to painted, although I am very much intrigued by the OSL glow given off them onto the rocks. I won't be leaving them there, as cool as they are, since that's just a happy accident and leaving that as it is seems lazy.
In case you are interested here are the recipes:
- Alps
- Basecoat black
- Airbrush Vallejo Stone Grey at a 45 degree angle on most of the model, leaving black in the areas in shade to create a strong contrast and deep shadow
- Airbrush white at a 90 degree angle only catching the strongest highlights
- Airbrush Badger Minitaire Ghost Tint Plasma Fluid on the whole model, taking care to do light coats. This stuff dries terribly and can create splatter if the air is pushing pools of it, experience with this stuff goes a long way so test it on a model you don't care about to see how it reacts. People suggest letting it dry overnight, but I have no patience for such caution and just let it dry while I paint the rest :)
- Airbrush white carefully in spot highlights, preferably in areas that catch the light best or where I want attention to be drawn, such as the shoulders or face. Keep the contrast strong, so leave the areas of the lower face alone and concentrate on places like the forehead. This gives a great "spotlight" effect and keeps sunken in characteristics like below the cheekbones in darkness
- Finish with a light airbrush over the white areas with your Plasma Fluid to blend in the highlights, With the Ghost Tint line you can build up your colors to create more shading without compromising the black areas effectively knocking down any contrasts too strong, but too much build up can obscure your blends and make one tone throughout, so a light touch goes a long way
- Matt varnish the whole model with the airbrush - Ghost tints finish extremely glossy and don't look good at all before you matt varnish, you'll have to trust that it will look good once this step is done so don't overwork your blends too much as they don't show up well due to the gloss
- Daydreams
- Basecoat black
- Airbrush Stone Grey exactly as the Alps
- Airbrush White exactly as the Alps - see how these steps are similar but the results come out with different colors? That's what's awesome about the flexibility of the Ghost Tint line
- Airbrush Ghost Tint Magenta over the whole model in light layers
- Airbrush small spot white highlights
- Lightly airbrush Magenta over the whole model again
- Matt varnish the whole model with the airbrush
Not a single standard brush stroke was used so far, it's a fairly effective technique if I say so myself. I may add in some shading and highlighting in the end, but the downside to using the ghost tints is finding the right colors in standard paints to fit in. Luckily these are colors I frequently use, so the right turquoise and pinks/purples should do the trick. The scary part is finishing with brushes, as I don't want to ruin what I've done so far with a sloppy brushstroke.
If you have an airbrush and haven't tried Minitaire's Ghost Tint line, you need to! It's a very unique "candy coat" line for minis that makes painting a breeze. I've only discovered a few issues, one being that it dries funky if not used lightly. Another is the undercoat colors needed for a few of their colors are hard to figure out, particularly for brown. I've tried the same technique using grey and white zenithal highlighting with the brown tint and it does not look good at all. Maybe if I try yellow or red it will turn out different, I'll have to see. The same with purple, but maybe that's because grey isn't a good choice for those. I've yet to try a metallic undercoat with these colors, but that's usually for stuff like car models.
Once these are done, I've got the Dreamer, Coppelius and the epic Lord Chompy Bits. It's insane how these 6 models are the easy ones while the other three can be insane projects themselves. Now you see why I held off for so long?
If I ever plan on being a commission painter I need to get my act together!
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