Salynne's Emperor's Children Vehicles: Part 1

I have been working on an Emperor's Children army for a couple years, and I've decided to take my vehicles seriously now after spending the first two years focusing on infantry for Zone Mortalis. I had previously did some airbrushing that I wasn't super happy with on a Spartan, a Storm Eagle, and a Sicaran Venator. Another road block was my lack of a transfer sheet; I've since sourced some of the old transfers as well as purchased some of the new ones.

Now I've come back and decided to start with some fresh vehicles and refine my scheme after a bit more experience behind the brush. So far this year, I've painted a Xiphon, a Vindicator Laser Destroyer, and a Cerberus.

Now that I've done a few, I have the details down and I'm ready to start documenting my process.

First up: black primer. Pretty basic stuff, I just drown the model in it really without much thought. When it's completely dry, I tape off my striped section first.

The first thing I do is take FW White Ink and get a good solid gradient base for that stripe. To spray it, I put a couple drops of flow improver to keep away dry tip, and then a decent drop of ink... and that's it. You don't need much. I run it at around 10 PSI. Why do I tape my models twice? Because I want that line for a crisp edge to the undercoat, even before I'm actually doing the white or the purple. It's an extra step, but it's well worth it when you are trying to carefully layer the purple on later. If your undercoat doesn't look pretty, your top coat won't, either.

Start in the middle whenever doing this kind of airbrush work. If you spray too much paint, you'll be OK, because it's the brightest spot in the middle. Work up the gradient you want, start with just the middle of the area.

Then saturate it further, still keeping from the edges.

And finally, carefully layer evenly across, so you retain some of the blend to the edges. After this, I pull the tape.

Then, I continue with the other spots that will be white on the final product. I didn't tape those, as it's easy enough to keep a nice gradient when working inside the lines of something. I taped this side stripe because there is no natural edge for me to follow.

With all the white areas done, it's time to work the pre-shading for the purple. Work your way around the model and just highlight middles of panels, sharp edges, doodads, whatever. Give your model some depth, and blend out those edges in the purple area from the tape.

At this point, if you need to fix anything, just go back to black (primer, or really whatever you like spraying) and low-PSI your way around the areas that need to be darkened up. I'm happy with this one, so I'm not going to bother.

Next, I go on to the Ulthuan grey. I used to use this for my pre-shade/airbrush it on, however I find it to be a huge pain in the ass to spray through the airbrush. No matter what, it wants to splatter on me, and big ugly white droplets all over your model show through to the next layer really bad. So, with the majority of the white done with ink on the airbrush, I layer on Ulthuan in the white areas using a cheap makeup brush. Additionally, I do some dry-brushing of sharp edges and corners with it - just to add a little more to the purple.

You can see the finished result of the Ulthuan step here. The white that is meant to be white in the final product is a different color from the pres-hade, with a little more yellow to it. The dry-brushing has picked out the edges, sharply, of the various corners and panels.

Next, I apply a healthy amount of gloss varnish. I use "Pledge Revive It - Floor Gloss" which is just the old Future Floor Polish that hobby people have used for years, re-branded. You can use whatever gloss varnish. I spray it at about 30 PSI un-thinned and it comes out basically rattle-can volume/consistency. I get a nice even coat everywhere. This step is really important; it's basically a save button. You really don't want to chip off any primer or paint, or otherwise mess up your white that you airbrushed. The next step involves more tape, so it's always best to put down varnish before you tape again, unless you want to carefully remove your paint along with your tape.

It's hard to tell if gloss varnish is dry, because it makes it look somewhat wet. I like to hit it with the hairdryer on low, from a foot and a half away, for a few minutes - then test a piece of the model, like the tread, or something where I don't really care about the texture, with the tip of my finger. If it's not tacky anymore, then I hair dry it AGAIN for a couple more minutes, just to be sure the whole model is dry and not just where I touched it. You could wait overnight, if you weren't trying to paint it all in one day. It'll be dry then.

Now comes tape madness. This took about an hour the first time I did it, but I've got it down to about 30 minutes now. If you have a scheme where you don't have to paint those inside corner panels something different, it would be super fast. As it is, I paint them white, and so they have to get taped inside, around those annoying corners.

I basically take a few lengths of tape and tape them to the edge of my desk, and get a fresh x-acto blade ready. You can stick tape to the knife and use that to get the tape aligned to inside corners; you can use the back of the knife to push the tape into a corner to seal, and you can, of course, use the blade to slice the tape off where you need to. If you're really careful, you will only lightly scratch the model at best, and usually in corners. I've never been able to find where I scratched it when I've finished painting the whole model. I'm using Tamiya 6mm masking tape.

Here, you can see some basic techniques I use to get this tape in this obnoxious corner. Sometimes, I slice the tape square instead of the jagged edge the tape dispenser leaves, and then I put the tape on the blade's point and use that to slide it into the corner. Other times, I start in the middle at the squarest edge to guide the ends of the tape, and then slice to trim with the tip of my blade into the corner.

Another technique you can use: if you have your edges clearly defined, just grab a blob of poster putty to apply over the area. Places like the top hatches and the middle of the side stripe are good candidates for this. Pushing putty into a curve is simpler than curving tape, and there is no reason to use 20 pieces of tape to cover a middle area. You can be sure there isn't a gap that way as well.

Once you've done all that, varnish the tape and putty areas with the gloss varnish again. It's an extra security measure to seal the tape from bleed through, especially anywhere you sliced with your knife, or at small gaps between the layers of tape.

When it's dry, you're ready for your color layering. I get my paint pretty thin, and just like the white pre-shading, I'm only running around 10 PSI. When painting this thin at this pressure, it's important to be gentle, and let the layer dry. It won't go straight to opaque - that's the point. I do circles around the model, and hit it with the hair dryer for a second to dry if need be. It will slowly layer up to the color you want. The paint I'm using here has been thinned some already during the process of transferring to a dropper bottle. I thin it further than that, until it's quite runny.

After that, let it dry and you're ready for peeling. This part is incredibly satisfying. Just peel it all away. I generally put my first piece of tape across the whole length and criss-cross them when applying it. In the end, it usually means peeling that first piece's corner will let you pull the whole thing in one go.

After that, varnish it again, as you don't want to mess up that beautiful paint job you just did. It will protect it while you handle it a lot to paint the details.

Stay tuned for part 2, where I block in the rest of the details, then finish the model with decals and oil weathering.

EDIT: Part 2 and the conclusion is now live here!