Saturday, March 24, 2012

Salamander Contemptor Dreadnought - Complete!

Salamanders Contemptor - Front View
Burn, baby burn.


I stayed up too late last night finishing my Salamanders Contemptor. This makes for painted dreadnought number eight. I...I think I may have a problem...

This was a fun way to get back to my Salamanders for a bit. This article, courtesy Dark Future Games, was a big help in terms of modeling and posing my Salamander Contemptor. I don't think I necessarily did a great job with the dynamism, but I'm glad I forced myself to try. I'm super guilty of putting things in quite static poses. In addition, I tried out brass etch for the first time. I didn't go too crazy with the stuff, but I like the detail it adds. I particularly like the flame icon on the kneepad.



Painting this contemptor was fairly straightforward. It all started with black primer, followed by a basecoat of the Salamanders standby, Snot Green (using my airbrush). After that it was a matter of blocking out metallic or black areas, and painting on details. The 'silvery' areas are my usual Boltgun, Badab Wash, Boltgun drybrush, and finally a Mithril Silver edge highlight. Gold areas start with a 50/50 mix of Scorched Brown and Shining Gold. I then do a heavy-ish drybrush of Shining Gold. Wash Devlan Mud, then light drybrush and/or edge highlight with Shining Gold again. This also included all the rivets on this dude (ugh).

The multimelta and heavy flamer both show my standard scorching. After painting the metal, I drybrush Shining Gold, followed by drybrushing of Scorched Brown then Chaos Black.

Salamanders Contemptor - Right View

Like all my dreadnoughts lately, I weathered this model using sponged-on Chaos Black, followed by stippling of Boltgun Metal. I then went the extra step on this guy and highlighted the stippling with Mithril Silver. I also highlighted all the edges- green areas got a mix of Snot Green and Golden Yellow with a drop of Menoth White Highlight. I think I didn't make the mix as bright as usual, which means the highlights are harder to see. But they're on there, and basically there was no way I was doing a 2nd layer of edge highlights on this guy. I was reaching my limit with this model already. I prefer subtle edge highlights anyway.

Salamanders Contemptor - Rear View
My base is the usual for my 40k stuff- Adeptus Battlegrey drybrush followed by a lighter drybrush of Astronomican Grey. I went too heavy with the greys though, more painting a basecoat of Adeptus then drybrushing. It'd been too long since I based a 40k model I guess. Still, it shouldn't stick out too much from the rest of the army. Also featured on the base are the rusted, half-buried remains of a Killa Kan. I spent way too much time hacking up and painting something that wound up mostly covered in snow. Oh well!  A cool model deserves a special base.

So that's it for me. Looking forward to seeing the remainder of these contemptor dreadnoughts!

9 comments:

  1. Very nice. The battle damage is there, but not too overpowering.

    Ron, FTW

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  2. Thanks Ron! I really appreciate the kind words, especially as you're one of my favorite painters out there.

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  3. Well I think you've got a nice model there. The green is very smooth, the freehand on the knee makes for a good contrasting element and even though you can barely see it (which is good) the blue on the base is a nice spot color as well.

    Ron, FTW

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  4. What techniques do you use for taking photo's of your models? They always come out brilliant! Also, how much time did you invest in painting (only painting) this model?

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  5. Excellent job! Thank you for including the steps for the different effects with your paint - It gives me ides to go back of some of my Blood-Wolves!

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  6. Ron: Thanks again! Unfortunately I can't claim freehanding skill there- that's the relatively new Salamanders brass etch from FW you see there.

    Jeremy: Thanks man. The key with these pics was good old fashioned sunlight. I took the model out on my back porch with some white paper and set up the backdrop you see there. I took the pictures with my iPhone 4S and did some slight color/light balance correction in Picasa. I can't recall exactly how much time I spent painting it. I'd guess 12-14 hours? I paint really slowly though.

    Brian: Thanks. Glad to provide the tips. Shame I never take many WIP pics. I know Mike is always at me to do step by step WIP pics for the blog but I never remember to once I really start cranking out the paint.

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  7. Pretty sweet base! Nice to see Salamander dreads can still kill a Killa Kan.

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  8. The battle damage is an awesome touch, well done!

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