On the painting table ... Talons of the Emperor
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Warhammer 40,000 – There's gold in them thar .... Well something like that. I'm working on a large force of Sisters of Silence paired with Adeptus Custodes for a client. This is an army that is almost completely gold with some red highlights. It took me two solid nights to get all the models assembled (minus the magnets for the Dreadnoughts which are to come.) It's been a little while since I had a full army build from the ground up for a completely new army. The sprues for these two armies are identical to the ones that comes in the Burning of Properso box game, so the force really consists of 5 sculpts of each model with variations on weapons. With the Custodes you can swap around the arms to get some variation but the sisters are really just mono-pose with different weapons.
The force consists of:
2 – Landraiders
3 – Rhinos
4 – Contemptor Dreadnoughts
10 – Sisters with Bolters
15 – Sisters with Flamers
15 – Sisters with Swords
20 – Custodes with Spears
20 – Custodes with swords and sheilds
After assembling the all I applied sand to the base and primed everything with a rust red primer. Since these will be primarily gold and red, the rust color makes coverage easier and more consistent as well as giving the right tone in the recesses.
Step one is to apply a dark copper base coat to everything. I then follow that up with a dry brush of gold. After painting the bone and red details everything gets a wash of Agrax Earthshade. A little clean up and these are at a decent three color minimum.
Step two is to pick out the eyes, gems and swords with an accent color. For these I stuck with a teal and neon blue. A quick wash and glaze makes them pop.
Step three is painting the base and dry-brushing the sand. A dark grey really helps to make the gold pop. I opted for something a little different for these so that the gold and base don't fade into each other.
Basic level painting with the additions of some wash and gravel base is complete at this point. If my client wanted these to go to the next level I'd pick out more details and add some highlights. Typically with a 40K force my clients want something quick and reasonably priced when they're building armies of 100+ models. I imagine if he adds any characters from the Forgeworld range they'll be the higher level.
