XV-88 Broadsides (Re-)Deployed!

After looking at my last post and noticing some areas of the Broadsides that needed clean-up, I spent tonight doing small touch-ups. Mostly, this involved breaking out the foundation paints and recoating all the areas that didn't quite match. I even found a few spots on the SMS arms that, despite priming and painting, still had small spots of bare metal showing through. The bases got some cleanup as well, with a liberal application of Gryphonne Sepia wash followed by some drybrushing with Vallejo Cobra Leather. With them finally looking a bit sharper, I decided to break out the portable studio and snap a good picture of them.

I also managed to finish up the shield drones that go with the team leader:

Somehow, I managed to have a minor catastrophe with one of the suits while I was working. As I was doing my touch-up work, one of the railguns started getting a bit... wiggly. I worked the gun back and forth to see what the damage was, and the entire gun came loose from the body. My biggest fear was that the tab at the bottom of the gun had broken loose, but fortunately that wasn't the case. The glue just gave up. Thankfully, getting the gun reglued was just a matter of cleaning up the area with my hobby knife and regluing it.

Now that these are complete (minus any decals I might apply), it's onto my third Hammerhead next, as it's already primed and basecoated, along with its Ion Cannon turret. After that, there's a couple of Devilfish that need some basecoating. I've also been giving my Kroot a closer look. I might not use them much, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve to be painted!

WIP: Fireknives – now with Badab Black!

Here's a cellphone photo of last night's painting progress. I did some final touch-up on the basecoat to take care of some spots where my coverage was a bit thin, and then it was on to cleanup and inking. I also touched up the accent colors, as my paint was a little too thin last time. In the past, I've mixed up a darker shade of Goblin Green by adding a touch of black (usually about 6:1 green to black), but this time I decided to go with a pre-mixed color: Vallejo Model Color's Reflective Green. The results are good, and it's close enough to Knarloc Green that I think I can use it as a touch-up color on my Broadsides as well.

When it came to inking, though, I had a bit of a dilemma - both my micron pens were drying out. In the past, I've used micron pens for doing all my armor lining, and I've been pretty pleased with how my minis turn out. However, they're sometimes hard to find, and the pen point is very delicate. Instead of fretting about finding replacements, I decided to try something new. One of the reasons I'd switched to micron pens was because I'd had poor luck with paint washes in the past, but that was before GW released their line of washes, so I decided to give washes another try.

With a pot of Badab Black, and a fine brush (I was using an Army Painter Hobby: Precise Detail brush, which is about a 10/0, I believe), I started washing the armor lines. The process and the results were nearly identical to using the micron pen, other than having to clean and reload my brush from time to time. Load brush, dab off excess, draw into line, wipe away overwash with thumb (or lightly with the corner of a paper towel, in tight spots), repeat. In fact, the coverage was a bit better than with the pen. With a micron pen, you only get ink precisely where the tip is, so if you want to get the walls of the groove you sometimes have to wiggle the pen a bit. The wash fills the groove and provides much smoother coverage.

There is a caveat to using the wash, though, and it has to do with your priming quality. If you've got a spot with rough priming, when you try to wipe off the overwash, it'll instead sink into the pits of the primed surface. I discovered this on a couple of spots on my Crisis Suits where high humidity left me with a less-than-ideal priming job. When I wiped away the excess, I ended up shading the entire antenna that I'd been inking. Fortunately, a little Goblin Green on the same fine brush allowed me to touch up the affected areas. On smoothly primed portions of the mini, though, there was no muss, no fuss.

I still like my micron pens, and I'll still use them for drawing on fine details, but I think wash is the way to go from now on for armor gaps. It's cheaper, is just as easy to work with, and delivers results that are just as good, if not better.