Speed Painting: Part Two, the finished product

Another image heavy post. Over the weekend, I was able to finish up my speed painting project. Here's a shot of the guy totally basecoated. I'm not sure if I mentioned Reaper Golden Blond in my color run down but I decided to base the little parchment bits using that paint.

Here's the back. All the brown is the Reaper Earth brown, the skull motif has been shaded with Agrax Earthshade (in case I hadn't mentioned that before). All the metal bits have been undercoated either black (for the silver bits) or brown (for the gold bits).

Unfortunately, I got carried away and painted a whole bunch between the basic basecoat and when I remembered to take a picture next. In this next picture, I've finished the cloak and the armor and put down a basecoat on the metals. I used GW's gold base (balthazar?) and silver base (ironbelcher?).

I did the cloak first since it was going to be the easiest. Working with a wet palette, I mixed Snow Shadow with VGC White. I thinned the white 1:1 with water (kind of annoying to corral it all on the palette paper, but ultimately worth it imo) and mixed as I went using the red number 1 brush. I was pretty pleased with the results tho' the highlights get washed out by my crappy camera setup.

Similarly, I took the VGC Red Gore and highlighted up with the Reaper Phoenix Red. The Phoenix Red is pretty orange and I was hoping it would match the Blood Angel Red well enough. I had to add a little yellow into the mix to get the edge highlights to stand out.  But, again, I was pleased with the results.

Once finished, I poured a small puddle of the Reaper Brown into the wet palette and did the leather parts (holsters, axe grip, ammo bag) and the shoulder skull motif. The leather was done using Reaper Burnt Orange as the highlight, while the bones were done by mixing pure white into the brown. The skin was just Reaper Bronzed Skin and Bronzed Skin Highlight. The rope on the back of the cloak was drybrushed from the Reaper Brown to Golden Blond. Looks like I put some GW Fleshshade on the devotional parchments he has hanging on the armor.

At this point, I tried doing a little freehand of the blood angel tear on the left shoulder pad. It turned out like crap so I painted over it with some thinned down Red Gore and Phoenix Red. It doesn't look as good as the original but luckily the lighting hide the flaws from the camera.

I went ahead and did the metal. I drybrushed two shades of silver on all the steel bits, the highest being Runefang Silver. I'm not a big fan of the "dry" paints that GW makes so I didn't add any of their highest highlight. I did not drybrush the gold because it would have messed up everything around it. The highlight on there is Auric Gold. I'm a big fan of the GW metals and inks but dislike everything else about their paint line. I used the GW inks, orange and blue, to put some heat damage on to the barrel of the melta gun attachment.

So here's the finished product. From head to foot, this took me about four hours and I'm happy with how he came out. A little slower than perhaps I could have done, but I'm kinda rusty in terms of painting fast. I cut a lot of corners and it shows. The blending isn't very smooth and I forgot a few things. The belt that's holding on the cool winged buckle was supposed to be black. Instead it's whatever colors bled on to the area while painting. The smooth wires, like the one between the skulls on the axe, were supposed to be a bright green but I forgot to paint them. The model also needs a backpack, I never found one, and needs to be sealed, especially if it's going on to the gaming table. Unfortunately for me/the figure, it's in the gentle hands of the USPS now and I'll never see it again, so these errors will live on forever. :)