TUTORIAL: Rusted Sector Mechanicus and Necromunda ruins with real Rust Effect paint

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The air was thick and oppressive. The acrid taste of iron permeated her helmet’s respirator, heavy with a millennium of entropy. What could have befallen this place, wondered Shas’la Shu’to? A whole Gue’la sector deserted and left to rust like some long-sunken vessel. To the T’au, mankind’s primitive architecture always seemed blunt and overbearing, but this was worse. It minded her of the desiccated cadaver of a hulking and impossibly vast leviathan; a rib-like maze of collapsing gantries and stanchions.

Here’s how to get a genuine rust effect for your Warhammer 40,000 and Necromunda terrain.

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T’au Cadre Fireblade D’yini 2

SHOWCASE: T’au Cadre Fireblade

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The abandoned depot was a welcome shelter from the abrasive ruststorm that howled outside. The T’au vanguard had made camp amongst ancient manufactorum crates and now huddled together around the blue glow of their fusion-heaters. Hovering drones hummed and whirred around the perimeter, motes of dust dancing in their infrared beams. Shas’nel D’yini’s jaw was set sternly as she listened to the latest reports from her scouts.

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tau tetra yellow technasma 1

SHOWCASE: T’au Tetra (and tips for transfers)

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Grit hissed and clattered off the hood of the small skimmer as it ploughed through billowing red clouds of oxide dust. The tandem craft buffeted like a leaf in a storm, jinking and swerving through a mangled sprawl of skeletal buildings and ducts.

Gales keened through the sector’s broken spires, stoking the rust clouds that threatened to choke the Tetra’s engine intakes. The spotter’s grip tightened on the craft’s side, scanning his holoscreen as his comrade doggedly steered towards the faint blip of the basecamp homing beacon. They had to tell the others what they’d seen…

Welcome back reader. This week we have a miniature I started in 2015 but only finished recently (some of our long-standing Instagram follower may even recognise it!). It is, of course, the beautiful T’au Pathfinder Tetra.

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Project Log: The Shining Path – T’au Empire

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Here we stand on the brink of a golden dawn. In a universe of ancient tyrants, the destiny of our birthright burns unstoppably like a newborn sun. Illuminated by the Greater Good we shall blaze a shining path through the darkness.

In stark contrast to the grim darkness of the far future I love the naive optimism of the Tau. Having coveted them for a while, when the new releases came out I couldn’t help but jump on the band wagon and pick up some kits for a new project! Continue reading →

SHOWCASE: Canoptek Scarabs of the Derelict Planet

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Mindlessly driven by deconstruction protocols, the chittering swarm of Canoptek Scarabs decends on its prey in a horrific multitude of monomolecular razor-claws and particle cutters. Rendered down to its very elements and its atomic energy harvested, no trace of their prey is left behind when the swarm ascends.

The third installment of our Necrons of the Derelict Planet arrives today, ready to atomically flense your pathetic organ-bodies and short-circuit your primitive computer-comms arrays!

Our Canoptek Scarabs hover above an oxidised wasteland, illuminating the debris of the battlefield with the blue glow of their anti-grav repulsion fields. Amongst the debris are the radiation-blasted remnants of Necrontyr structures and warmachines.

The derelict exoskeleton of a Necron Warrior languishes on one of the bases. Its ocular circuits flicker as reanimation protocols are rebooted by the galvanising energy fields of the nearby Scarabs. We wanted to add some dioramic elements to these miniatures. As part of the rather venerable Necron Warrior kit, Scarabs can look a bit plain and boring compared to newer miniatures if just clumped together on a round base.

If you’re interested you can see the Necron Warriors and Catacomb Command Barge for this army and some info on how we came up with the colour scheme.

Your cognition-signals and bioelectromagnetic stimuli sustain us! If you have a point of view on our Necrons then please leave a comment below to be harvested for our mechanical overlords…

Let There Be Blood! Blanchitsu Daemon

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Enticed from the empyrean by the tang of sacrificial blood, a lesser daemon of Khorne manifests into the material realm.

Khorne has been getting a lot of love recently, so to honour the Blood God today we present one of his minions. This is a bit of a throw back to a mini that was painted a few years ago. This guy is the first of many models painted in a ‘Blanchitsu’ style, and ultimately spawned an entire army of Vampire Counts painted in this way!

In the same way as the Cairn Wraith that we featured a few weeks ago, the colours on the Bloodletter were built up from a dark crimson basecoat. Highlights were added with drybrushing and glazes of off-white and bone to emulate the style of John Blanche’s concept art. The scales were picked out in Vallejo Model Scrofulous Brown .

The hellblade was dulled down with several glazes of brown and sepia paints and some Devlan Mud wash. I then went back to pick out the sharp edges with Mithril Silver.

It was good fun to tackle a Khorne model that isn’t just blood red! They have a really creepy, almost alien feel to them, that I just love. At some point we’d like to work on a Khorne Goretide army for Age of Sigmar – the new models are simply fantastic.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

SHOWCASE: Necron Catacomb Command Barge

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Manical from an eternity of stasis-slumber, the Phaeron of a long-forgotten dynasty rides to war. Behind him, vast and implacable hordes of machine-vassals march in unison. Once again the galaxy will face the wrath of the Necrontyr!

Time for the second installment of our collaborative project – The Necrons of the Derelict Planet – inspired by the fantastic artwork of Pascal Blanché! It’s back to 40K this week as we present the superb Necron Catacomb Command Barge. If you’re into vehicles then this is a real joy to paint. It has organic curves – perfect for fades and blends – as well as crisp edges for sharp highlighting.


As with the Necron Warriors we painted the Command Barge together over a few sittings. The colours are intense and vibrant, built up in successive layers initially using sponge and drybrush, with more controlled glazes and edge highlights deployed towards the end.

The underside of the Command Barge is left the dark teal green colours of the basecoat and picked out with Sotek Green. The style is inspired by the bold colours of Pascal Blanché’s Derelict Planet art, but we hypothesise that the underglow is from the craft’s grav-repulsor force-field. (That or it’s just a pimped out ride, fitting of an insane Terminator Space-Pharaoh!)

The Necron Phaeron was a perfect opportunity to try out some advanced painting techniques. His War-Scythe and Ressurection Orb were embellished with glowing blue non-metallic metal effects. We’re pretty happy with how they turned out. We used the iPhone app Snapseed to work out how to light the War-Scythe before painting it, to ensure the lighting looked correct. We’ll feature this in a future blog, but here are some close ups.

 

As ever we’d love to know what you think of our work, your feedback sustains us! 

Also, we’d like to thank Pascal for tweeting our blog last time – great to have some engagement from such an inspirational guy! We highly recommend you check out Pascal Blanché’s art on his blog or excellent art book Derelict Planet. 

SHOWCASE: Necrons of the Derelict Planet!

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Under the glare of a blood red sun a legion of immortal warriors march through the remnants of a derelict planet…

Sometimes all it takes to inspire a project is one idea. In the case of our Necrons, that seed of inspiration came from stumbling across the beautiful art of Pascal Blanché – art director at Ubisoft. His blend of post-apocalyptic and mythological themes, vibrant use of colour and techniques that span CG and digital artforms are beautiful to behold.

“Danu” ©Pascal Blanché. Used without permission. See more at http://derelictplanet.blogspot.co.uk/

“Sanctuary” © Pascal Blanché. Used without permission. See more at http://pascalblanche.deviantart.com/

Struck by bold, three-dimensionality of his work an the transition of contrasting colours we realised that this had to be applied to miniatures. And what better faction than Necrons to capture the alien marriage of corroded machine and organic shapes!

These Necron Warriors were painted surprisingly quickly. Keen to emulate the transition from dark teal green to oxide red we sketched the colours in with drybrush and sponging techniques. We began with a blue basecoat of Necron Abyss, working up through Stegadon Scale Green to Sotek Green. Successive red layers were then applied from above to simulate a vibrant red light-source. The final layers of orange were applied using thin glazes instead, and edge highlights picked out to give definition. We picked a cold blue as a contrasting splash colour for the glowing eyes and energy canals on their Gauss Rifles.

We’d love to know what you think of our Necrons. Have you been inspired by the art or ideas of another in the same way? Tell us in the comments below.

Also, we highly recommend you check out Pascal Blanché’s art on his blog or excellent art book Derelict Planet. Maybe you’ll find your next inspiration there!