Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Wizardry in Progress 2/12/20

This week was fairly productive and saw some more work on the Beholder diorama and a bit of progress made on finishing up the Star Wars Legion Clone Wars core set. Not to mention, I picked up R2-D2 and C-3PO for Legion on Sunday and painted them that very same day.


R2-D2 and C-3PO


Sunday I picked up the Crashed Escape Pod expansion pack for Star Wars Legion. In this expansion are miniatures of R2-D2 and C-3PO as well as the crashed escape pod and a few new scenarios and deployment maps too. The scenarios all involve recovering the escape pod, while Artoo and Threepio have cards allowing them to be played in either Republic or Rebel armies.

When I got home, I couldn't resist painting them as soon as possible and got right to work assembling them.

While painting Artoo, I made sure to follow examples from the films as closely as possible to get the blue panels in just the right spots. Obviously, some places I had to be a little more lax than others since the model is way smaller than the real thing. I really like how grimy he turned out as well, thanks to some controlled washes of Agrax Earthshade and thinned basing paint.

To get Threepio's gold just right I had to dig out the Vallejo paints. I primed him with Rhinox Hide to get a nice brown base coat. Vallejo Old Gold was then thinned with Lahmian Medium, which was painted over the entire model. I let this paint be a bit splotchy as well to give the gold some variation.

Once the gold layer was dry, I washed the entire model with Druchii Violet to add a bit of contrast and shadow to him. He  was then drybrushed with Old Gold, Vallejo Gold and Stormhost Silver. As the highlights got brighter, I made sure to focus on just the upper 2/3 and 1/3 of the model, keeping his legs a bit darker. This was made more matte and darker thanks to the basing paint being used as a dirt layer on his legs as well.

I still haven't painted the escape pod yet. But will probably do that once the rest of the base game is painted.

Star Wars Legion - Republic Clone Troopers
While working on the models for Threepio and Artoo, I decided that it was time to finish off the clone troopers and get the bases finished on them as well.

For the most part, they are good to go, but they do need some touch ups on their weaponry. I've noticed some wear spots on them, due to handling without varnish on them.

That might be tonight's project.
Droideka

Tuesday night, I was able to build and paint the last of the two firing position Droideka models for the Seperatists faction. I really do enjoy painting the droid army, it's a drybrusher's dream come true.

For the most part, these dudes are all drybrushed with various silvers. I started them with a black primer coat followed by a heavy drybrush of Leadbelcher.

To give them an oily metal feel I wash the entire model with Agrax Earthshade and let it fully dry. This gives the model a bit of a brown tinge to it as well. Which in turn makes the model more interesting to look at.

After the wash is dry it's time to go through the spectrum of silver. I drybrush the entire model with Leadbelcher again, followed by Stormhost Silver and Vallejo Aluminum Air. Similar to Threepio earlier, each brighter highlight is focused higher on the model.

The armor plating is painted using Citadel Contrast paint. The plates are first painted with Gor Grunta Fur, followed by Flesh Tearers Red and then another layer of Gor Grunta. Letting each layer fully dry before the next is applied. After the final layer is dry, the plates are drybrushed with Stormhost Silver to add some wear and scrapes.

I still need to add some mud effects to the newer one, but he matches pretty well for being painted a month apart!

Beholder Diorama

More progress on the beholder diorama happened this week, as I started adding ground cover and vegetation to the model. There's a lot of work to be done yet before I can get to painting it though, as I need to add more rubble to the ground and perhaps some flowers to the vines.

But I'm loving how this is coming together so far.

That's it for now. There's a lot of things happening so far this year and I'll try my hardest to keep up the updates.

Until next time, you can catch me on Twitter and Instagram.

If you like what I do and want to support the site and my painting endeavors, you can do so over on Ko-fi. All it takes is $3 and it's much appreciated. Also, you can buy The Brush Wizard shirts and such over on my Teespring shop, where you'll find a growing selection of shirts and other goodies.

Thanks for reading!