A bit of progress...

I've been away for a week, so I've been unable to do a whole lot. I obtained a destroyer squad and a deimos patter vindicator for the night lords and I've been working on my recon squad.

I also built myself a Moritat, pictured in the last frame. Slinging a pair of volkite serpenta, he is pre-shaded and ready for basecoating.

Seam lines on rhinos :/

This is how you remove them.

They are so ugly and really detract from the model. They had to go.

On the importance of preshading - an airbrush lesson.

If you're like me, you probably bought an airbrush because you don't want to waste time doing that most boring of tasks - undercoating and base coating!

An airbrush can be so damn helpful that it will revolutionise your painting workflow so that not only will you get more work done in a smaller period of time, you'll also probably start to enjoy those menial tasks.

If you're like me, you also got straight into airbrushing without a thought for the layering of paint and the slightly odd way in which you need to highlight using an airbrush.

This is called pre-shading.

Here is an example of models that have not been pre-shaded -

Note the flatness of the armour. I'm showing you this on my night lords because pre-shading is so much more important with darker colours. Lighter colours can easily be washed and a great effect can be achieved. Dark blue for example, however, is not a forgiving colour. 

My method for pre-shading with an airbrush is simple and effective, allowing for a dark colour of your choosing to go over it flat without too much hassle.

1. Start with a black undercoat.

2. Using a smaller nozzle (I recommend a 0.2mm or 0.3mm), carefully apply a light-medium grey to areas you want to highlight. 

In my case, it is from the top, down, as I like to achieve a semi zenithal highlight effect to my flat armour panels.

example

3. Being extremely careful, use your 0.2 nib to highlight those grey areas to white.

example

These models are now fully pre-shaded and ready to basecoat. For my Night Lords, I like to basecoat with a 2/1 mix of vallejo model air french blue and signal blue. I find those two together are probably my favourite colour for night lords. Add a drop or two of thinner with it to make sure that pre-shade comes through - signal blue is quite dark and I find its' pigments ro be quite overbearing if not kept in check with some light dilution.

Here are both of those squads fully basecoated.

I hope you enjoyed my lesson. Stay tuned for more midnight clad antics.