Painting Salynne's Legio Vulpa Armor

I've been working on painting a 28mm Warbringer Nemesis Titan in the Legio Vulpa scheme for some time now. People have asked me how I paint the armor paneling in the Vulpa marble scheme. There are a number of ways to accomplish this but the one I chose was using brushes rather than airbrushing. In this guide I'll go over all the paints and techniques I use to accomplish my exact scheme.

To start with I use a Leadbelcher spray. I like to use a rattle can primer here because it's more durable and I will be doing a lot of heavy handling on this big model. It also adds a metallic base coat to the backs of the armor panels which would be painted metal anyway. On Titanicus scale models I will usually just airbrush black primer instead, and quickly paint the back with a brush.

Before I paint the armor and trim I also paint any extra metallic details needed. This is parts like the back, the piston, etc. In this case I actually forgot and went back and did it very carefully when I was finished instead.

For the armor panel the first thing I do is block in the entire armor panel with my choice of black. I have been a big fan of Vallejo German Grey lately as it isn't quite all the way black. It has a nice tone to it that sits well underneath the reds and purples of Vulpa as well. As per usual thin your paint and two thin coats will get the job done.

I don't worry about neatness at all here. The trim will get lots of extra colors on it from this process anyway. Next up I use Naggaroth Night which is a nice dark purple. For this guide my photos are primarily from the purple armor plates but the red armor plates follow the same process. To do the red armor panel here, I start with Khorne Red instead.

I take a nice big fluffy brush that I load up with a lot of pigment and then I remove most of the paint using a towel. A lot of the brushes I use for this type of thing are makeup brushes but you can use any brush roughly in this kind of shape.

After that I start off by mashing the brush into a few spots on the armor. From there I move to more of a mix of stippling and dry brushing until I have a decent pattern that covers most of the armor with my dark color. It may not seem that different from just painting it all normally, but trust me it makes a difference having the black underneath show through in a patchy manner. It's all about slowly building up the color and patterns.

You may need to do two coats of this as well after it dries. The heavier the effect here early on in your pattern, the more paint, the more you might need to give it a couple minutes to stick. You don't want to smear this color around when you start the next one. If you need more paint start by trying to get it off the towel. If the towel isn't transferring pigment to the brush anymore put a little more on and try to reuse the same spot in the towel. This will keep your paint waste down and keep the amount on the brush even.

From there I move on to Xereus Purple. For the red scheme, this step is Mephiston Red. You can do a similar process to this with really any color but these were the closest matches I had for Legio Vulpa. This time I use the same brush, and almost the same technique. Just maybe about 20-30% less coverage than I did with the dark color. I still want a fair amount of the black and dark color to show through in the end product.

With that complete I move on to the next step. This is where I start to add detail work. From here on the colors are actually the same between the purple and red. I want my "meat" colors to be the tie between the purple and the red armor. So with that, I start on Screamer Pink. The goal isn't to cover most of the armor panel anymore. It changes to covering only about 20-30% instead of the other way around. I want splashes of this fleshy pink color to barely be visible in a bunch of spots, and more visible in a couple starker splashes of color.

Throughout this whole process I'm using the same brush without cleaning it. Just wipe the brush off on the towel more until most of the pigment is gone. This is for a couple different reasons. Cleaning a big fat brush like that with water is going to mean you add a ton of moisture to your brush that you have to get out. It also helps blend the colors together since all the colors are coming together a little bit in your brush. Just make sure you never try to paint white later with that brush while partially color blind. People will be quick to tell you that you left purple pigments in your paint.

Once that's finished I do the same thing with Rhinox Hide. A little brown helps add to that bruising effect. I am much more selective at this point, I don't really want to be able to see that I put brown on it when taking a step back.

Next two steps are final detailing to really make the marble effect pop out of the model. Here is where I change brushes. I want a fresh brush that is smaller with a more varied pattern. It should be fresh or at least cleaned so that it doesn't have those dark pigments in it any longer. I created this brush by using it for the above process on Titanicus scaled models and not cleaning it well. Also just smashing it into stuff. To start with I use Emperor's Children because I don't want the marble effect to go straight to white.

The nice part about a "destroyed" brush like this is with the crazy end, you can turn it around, use it on the side, use it straight up and down, etc. If you hit your model with it at different angles it will result in different effects. Similar to above I work most of the pigments off the bristles. A good tip is if you ever accidentally apply too much paint, just wipe it off with your finger. There will be a nice smudge instead. Great, smudges look good here.

I try to get a varying pattern of some streaks, some splotches, some gentle brushing. There is no real rules here, just play with it and then stop playing with it.

For the final step of the armor panel I use Screaming Skull. Notably, this is the same color I end up using on my trim. This is an intentional choice to tie the whole color scheme together. For this color, I am the most careful. It's the strongest and needs to be in the least amount of areas. You do want some strong streaks but mostly just hints of it smeared and streaked and splattered around.

And there you have it. That's the color. It still might not look like the finished product yet. That's because two things happen at the end that cause a final blend. The first is a coat of gloss varnish, before oils get applied primarily to and around the bone trim. The second is a coat of matte varnish at the end. These two steps cause the completed finish.

Before I get to the trim, a quick detour. Legio Vulpa has this razor pattern on their armor in some places. I made a quick model of the razor pattern in CAD and 3d printed a stencil. You could do it by hand with masking tape, and I did in my original 28mm Legio Vulpa Warhound Titan.

One of the mistakes I made with my Warhound was painting the first color (purple or red) and then masking off and then doing the entire pattern on top. What happens when you do this is the overall effect is far too bright and the color is off. That's because the other color is showing through. I found the best way to do this pattern was to first do the 2 main dark colors (dark purple and regular purple, or dark red and regular red). Then, affix the stencil. Inside the area of the stencil, re-paint your black under coat to reset back to black. Then follow the steps for the other dark colors (dark purple and regular purple, dark red and regular red). This gets the pattern more evenly spread and color accurate to the rest of the model.

Once you've finished that you can remove the stencil and neaten up any edges with the appropriate darkest colors. (dark purple or dark red) This allows you to finalize the shape and outline while retaining that built up pattern. After that you follow the steps as normal to apply the Screamer Pink, Rhinox Hide, Emperor's Children, and Screaming Skull. This gives it the appearance of the marbling running through it even though the colors are separated by the razor pattern.

For the trim, I took less photos as it's a less interesting process. I use three colors. Rakarth Flesh, Ushabti Bone, and Screaming Skull as mentioned earlier. For Titanicus scale I go use a coat of Rakarth Flesh and then a coat or two of Screaming Skull. On the big 28mm models I need a total of 5 coats.

The first coat of Rakarth Flesh is cut in to the edges neatly. When that's dry I do a second coat covering the surfaces but not getting too close to the armor panel. A much faster coat. At this point it should look pretty solidly Rakarth Flesh colored. It might have a couple small streaks visible but don't worry about that. I do a third coat in the same manner of Ushabti Bone. This coat will look very streaky.

The fourth and fifth coats are Screaming Skull. The fourth coat is cut in very neatly to the edges of the armor panels again. This coat will also look very streaky. Finally, the fifth coat should get you there. If you have incredibly large surface areas like the bottoms of the piston armor you may need to use a sixth coat to eliminate final streaks just in that area.

It's important that as much as possible, each coat be painted perpendicular to the last with your brush strokes. This eliminates streaking. The final product may have some small amount of streaking but this will blend in after you use varnish, oil, and varnish again as above.

The final steps are the varnish and oil washes. If you visit my previous guide I go into detail about using oil. The short summary is I put down a coat of gloss varnish, and then make a Burnt Umber oil wash to run over the rivets and inside corners of the armor. In that guide, I go all over. For this model I try to pin wash it as much as possible. I use a smudge makeup brush and another small brush to make some streaks or patterns around until it looks dirty and beat up.

That's the finished product and at this point the legs are complete. Now to paint the rest of it... Stay tuned for other guides on how I built some of this, how I paint the metallics, how I did the banner, and other aspects of 28mm titan life.