I have to say, I believe this model is one of the best paint jobs I've ever done and it looks great on the table along with the rest of my painted Adeptus Mechanicus army. I really like how the green came out on the armor plates and it really pops against the red of the Mars styled bases.
| To start things off, I began with the base. As I wanted to give a lot of character to the base, I first cut out a section of it and made a recess to add a bit of a valley on one side. The hole that was left behind was given a new floor thanks to some blister plastic, wooden sticks and super glue. To make the raised section of the base I added a bit of cork to the side opposite of the valley area. This would end up creating a small hill and really helps give the base some interest. Also, because of the way the Onager legs go together, I needed to have the raised section to make up for the elevation difference between the valley leg and the one opposite it. Once I had those pieces in place, it was time to get to work adding green stuff to the base. Green stuff was firstly used to fill in the height differences between the valley and the base and the cork and the base. Once I was pleased with them, I started adding mounds of it around the base to make it less even and added in a skeleton to the side of the hill. After the green stuff had dried, I primed it with Chaos Black spray and Dragon Red from Army Painter. The red spray is important, in that it allows red to show in the cracks after the Martian Ironearth paint crackles, instead of black. With the base all painted, I moved on to the legs. The legs acted as a testing ground for many things that I would later do for the rest of the tank. Namely the green and bone colors. Especially the bone colors. The legs were painted with the same colors that I paint the interior of my infantry, which is Rakarth Flesh, followed by a wash of Sepia and then highlighted with Ushabti Bone, Screaming Skull and White. On top of this, I washed the legs with a thin layer of Agrax Earthshade to try and dirty it up a little. The bone looked almost too pretty once I was done with it though and I knew I needed to dirty it up a bit more. Sometimes I can get carried away with weathering and I didn't want this to be too involved of a weathering process. With that in mind, I broke out the natural sea sponge and some Rhinox Hide. I wet the sponge down, dabbed it in Rhinox Hide and cleaned it off a little on a paper towel. Then I started blotting it around the legs to give them a little bit of a chipped paint look to them. The end effect turned out really nice and it really came together after everything else around it was painted. The green on the Onager was painted with Black, Caliban Green, Warpstone Glow and Moot Green. I tried something new with it and bought a can of Caliban Green colored primed and dual primed it over Black. The result was neat, but in the end I repainted most of the armor plates with a brush and didn't actually follow much of the highlighting that it gave off, except on the vertical sides. This is because of the shapes of the various parts. The green started as black and was highlighted up to Warpstone Glow. I first mixed Black and Caliban Green together to act as an in between to highlighting it up to Caliban Green. Once I was happy with the the coverage of the Caliban Green I washed the entire area with Nuln Oil. This was followed by more thin coats of Caliban Green and finally glazes of Warpstone Glow until the brightest sections had nice coverage. Once I was happy with the Warpstone Glow layers I then edge highlighted the model with Moot Green. This really helped the green pop and gives it a nice high contrast look, which makes the green seem shiny. The copper sections were painted with a mix of Rhinox Hide, Screaming Bell, Hashut Copper and Stormhost Silver, using the same principles that I go over in the How to Paint Metal tutorial and the How to Paint Copper tutorial. Interestingly enough, the green was painted with the same principles in mind, making it technically Non-Metallic Metal green. All the silver sections followed this same technique, except with Black, Leadbelcher, Ironbreaker and Stormhost Silver. That's pretty much it! Lets take a closer look. |     |
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