I pretty much wrote everything I could write about these models already, so here’s some photos.
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ripperdactyls
Started with Secret Weapon Flesh Wash. I mixed this 1:1 with water. In the end, it went all over every part of the rippers, but it wasn’t slapped on randomly. I worked to pull the paint from the highlighted areas to the shaded areas. The hope is that when it dries this way, that there will be a semi-translucent gradient from highlight to shade. It won’t work out this way, and will require specific work to highlight, and then specific work to “mid tone”, but it’s a good start.
This dried slightly glossy (ugh) and occasionally in a little to much of a strong edge, where I wanted a smooth gradient.
Then I mixed the SW Flesh Wash with Snakebite Leather to make a slightly less translucent paint and again went over the parts with those strong edges to smooth them out, and to darken more.
(also did just a simple black wash:water 1:1 over the skinks, because it’s really messy and is part of the “simple” method of painting my skinks. Wasn’t going to highlight-up-glaze-down on them.)
The spots are Snakebite Leather, with less water than the glazes to make it slightly more opaque. Then I mixed that with Rhinox Hide to get an middle layer, then just Rhinox Hide. Still trying to paint the middle of each spot/layer so that it looks a little more blended than just “brown on orange”. I was trying to emulate this photo a bit, but I’m happy that the wings are a lot darker than that reference image.
I still have a little bit of shading to do on the undersides of them.
Next I’m going to do some highlighting – raise up the body/limbs a bit in tone, and the edges of the wings. Once that’s all done, it’s onto the skinks (who should be relatively easy compared to painting 24 of them…).
I’ve got one more painting project to get started on before OFCC, but I think that at worst he’ll just get a basecoat and then hidden in the ranks somewhere…>.>
I was in a rush and forgot to post the colours I used for the basecoat of these guys. I don’t really post this stuff for you to read, because I’m sure it’s the most boring thing. You come here for the photos, I know you do.
I actually write about colours for two reasons — because it helps me reason out what I did and what I should have done, and also so that I can remember in 2 years what on earth I was doing!
The ground is just drybrushed Codex Grey. It’ll be drybrushed Fortress Grey in a bit. The skink has a base of Codex Grey, with Mephiston Red feathers, shield and spots, Dwarf Bronze metal stuff and Snakebite Leather strap stuff.
The rippers started with white primer (I’m 90% white primer these days) and then a “glaze” of Blazing Orange. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t have “glazed” it…but when you have a dried up pot of paint and need that colour, you add water until it works. Which wasn’t as strong a pigment as I’d have preferred. It doesn’t matter, because the skin on these guys is going to have a lot more layers than the base-highlight-wash-highlight of the 24 skinks. I added some Snakebite Leather to the orange with still a good amount of water, and added that to the front of the wings, and the recesses. Then just plain Snakebite.
I forgot to do this next part before taking the photo, so it isn’t shown. The tops of muscles and back of the wings I did a coat of Blazing Orange mixed with Ushapti Bone — it turns out that this is a pink colour. That was a happy accident, because it turns out that this looks pretty good when done in small doses! I did another layer of just Sunburst Yellow with water, again on the highlighting areas.
I say that this is all “basecoat”, because it’s all pretty slapdash at this point. The shading and highlighting phase will clean up the colours and edges a lot.
No photos this time!
I’ve been working on these guys all day. I thought about going with a darker colour scheme, as with the rest of the non-humanoid lizards in my army, but I was just so drawn to the bright orange on all of the marketing material and I had to do it.
I love the little hats on the skinks! I hate the little collars on the rippers…
Also depicted here is the movement tray I built for them and will paint at the same time as their bases for efficiency. 🙂