Night Lords Tyberos Painting

Mid-week painting is a very welcome change of pace for me at the moment, and a happy respite from what is going on in the wider world. I have finally tackled my Tyberos model that I bought from Forge World a while ago. The plan that I had all along was to paint this particular model up in the colours of the Night Lords.

The reason behind this (seemingly peculiar) choice was to see how he looked in these colours due to the fact that the Carcharodons might be descended from this traitorous chapter. For a more in-depth crawl through the possible successor chapters of traitor legions, I wrote a popular article on the topic in April. The Carcharodons are noted as having possible Night Lords elements within them, or even inside their gene seed in a chimeric fashion. Hence this was a strong motivator for the choice of colour scheme for Tyberos, coupled with a potentially new opponent for some of my smaller games. To be clear, I won't be collecting Night Lords as they simply don't appeal to me greatly beyond their paint scheme (I'm not a fan of their background, although I can readily appreciate the work gone into this legion over many decades of background fluff. Nor do I relish playing against this legion and their fear inducing ways of fighting!). 

Painting followed a home brew approach to the Night Lords colours. A black undercoat was applied to give the model depth, before using a base colour of Caledor Sky for most of the model's bluer parts. This was washed down with contrast paints plus a touch of Nightshade to give the model some depth. Edge highlights were applied to the bluer parts in Teclis Blue followed by Lothern Blue. Some of these edges could have been neater, but I've not managed to purchase new paint brushes in a while (will be getting out more soon, hopefully! And yes: I like to purchase my brushes in person rather than online, before anyone says that). I attempted a lightning effect on the model's left leg which I am pleased with overall. It is almost impressionistic in nature, but seems to work a treat on this model. 

I decided to use reds on the fists and helmet, inspired by Sevatar. This battle brother's life is therefore held in the balance by the Primarch (or potentially was, until he was assassinated). Two tones of red were used here, including a wash of contrast paints and darker tones to blend in. Eye lenses were picked out in white before getting a sampling of green to offset the red helmet, and a careful pin prick of reflection inserted at the back edge of the lens. 

Cables, recessed metal, and other metallic parts were picked out in lead belcher before receiving a cost of Guilliman Flesh (yep: really). On the upper parts and edging of the shoulder pads, I was quite liberal with this and it has created almost a semi-bronze trim which I am very happy with the blend of. More edging in whiter colours picks out the edge highlights for the uppermost parts of the pads.

Finally, like many people, I only have the older Night Lords transfers that used to come with the older chaos space marine boxed sets. They're aged and don't look terrific these days. So I decided to live a little dangerously and do a free hand icon on the right shoulder pad. The basic shape is done in Mephiston red, with a fanged skull placed in the middle, over the top of this. Black then gives the outer edge of the freehand a good outline that is more than sufficient to round of the basic shapes required here.

Overall, this has been a very interesting experiment to undertake, and one that I hope will be appreciated by readers -- changing the status of a miniature and its in-game loyalty purely by its paint scheme is an adventure, and one that I would fully encourage anyone to try out! 

Tyberos Part 2

And here is Tyberos, the Red Wake, all glued together and awaiting the primer. I like the pose and sculpt of the miniature overall. Although I was sorely tempted to do some conversion work on this miniature, I am glad that I haven't. In particular, I was sorely tempted to do something with the lightning claws and replace the blades with something a touch longer and more menacing. However, the hooked nature of the claws is nice and I'm sticking with them. Onward with the painting, as time allows!

Tyberos

I have a number of projects going on all at once on the worktop. This particular one may be a little surprising to my long term readers, but non the less, here is Tyberos. Also known as The Red Wake. 

The image shows how Tyberos arrives, fresh out of the blister pack. This is clearly a mould that is now aging. With that said, the lines and details are crisp enough and I'm glad to have got hold of the model now, rather than allow it to go out of sale or availability. 

As for the plans: this miniature will be used in 30k, rather than 40k. And the legion might just be a novel one. More later on these dubious plans. 

Carcharodons - The First of Many

Hi everyone, Eldrad Vect here, crazy Christmas has passed and I thought it had been a tad too long since I last posted on the blog, anyhow I have been busy re-painting my Dark Eldar lately and to break up the monotony of painting thin glowing lines on segmented armour plates and pale flesh (well that one not so much) I began work on my Carcharodons Chapter.
It is by far one of my best paint jobs I've done, I'm not sure how it stacks up to other peoples works since I quite often think other peoples are way better but this is the standard I'm going to paint my Carcharodons from lowly Scouts to mighty Centurions.

The Carcharodon's iconography is by far one of my favourites as it incorporates my favourite animal in it, the shark, don't know what that says about my personality but all I can say is painting this free hand was extremely fun and very rewarding to see it play off. It also stands out, on the dark grey of the armour and black of the shoulder and knee pads it works well, catching the eye and adding a spark of brightness on an otherwise dark colour scheme.

I chose to use silver as the predominant metal colour on my Carcharodons, not sure if it is canon, but I always change colour schemes slightly to make my models a little different and stand out in their own unique way. I also used the Blood for the Blood God technical paint, it works so well and I think we can all agree, a blood spattered shield is pretty wicked looking.

I use glow effects quite a bit and on a dull scheme like this it was imperative that I have bursts of colour to break up the sea of grey. The eyes, wires and sensors on the model were done up with glow effects and came up quite well.

There are tribal markings on his knee pad as Carcharodons have shunned the Adeptus Astartes squad marking for their own, this also looks good when allied with my Space Wolves as they both use different squad markings. This is a first attempt so it does look a bit rough, I'm sure they will get better as I go. The Purity Seal is not blank because I'm lazy but left blank so that when this marine performs a heroic act or the likes of which, I will write it down, it adds more character to the model which I find is quite nice like naming models too. The base is done snowy, not only does it look cool but it contrasts the dark model on top making both the model and base stand out that little bit more. The snow effect (for anyone wanting to try it) was achieved by applying PVA glue to the base then adding Bi-Carb Soda to it, this also was a first attempt, so I did screw up a little and don't really know the exact way to pull of the technique, I'm still working on it, I apologise for that, but still it looks great and you just have to work out the best way for you to do it.

Once again, Blood for the Blood God works incredibly well and gives the Thunder Hammer that 'I've just pulverized so poor xeno/heretic' look. I usually paint weapons clean, as if ready for battle or hasn't yet reached the fray, but with the Carcharodons I wanted all their weapons to look worn out and blood soaked as if the were in the thick of it and hadn't bothered to clean their ancient (yet very effective) weapons.

Well that's it, my first fully painted Carcharodons Assault Terminator. Tell me what you think of it, I'm always open to some good constructive criticism.