This guy was fun to paint. Seeing this concept come to life step by step was fascinating. This was primarily an experiment to see what the result of using Tamiya clear red paint over a metallic base would be. To be honest this proves to be a promising paint scheme for the Thousand Sons Legion, if not also the Word Bearers legion as well.
The Under-coat
I began by priming the model black. Using a black undercoat for metallic colors when airbrushing is important because they are sprayed on in very thin layers which allows the layer beneath to affect the the hue of the paint, which is basically just aluminum powder suspended in an acrylic medium in this case. For this project I decided to use the Vallejo Metal Color series this effect was achieved with two coats, the first was gunmetal and the highlight was done with chrome. Metallic paints can be notoriously susceptible to damage and at this stage I gave him a coat of varnish to protect the paint and highly recommend doing so.
Base-coat
The star of the show here is Tamiya clear red. This paint is pretty cool, it has a really deep red hue to it and it covers surprisingly well when sprayed from an airbrush and has a fairly quick dry time. After a single coat of clear red i sprayed the model with Army Painter Red Tone Ink to add more depth and to knock back the cherry red finish form the clear red. I allowed the ink to dry completely and gave a final spray of clear red to any open areas that I felt needed it.
Detailing
My method of detailing was actually to start by very carefully blocking in any parts that needed a solid color first. Very carefully, at this stage it would be an ordeal to fix any slips or smudges i painted the gold details with Vallejo Liquid Gold range Old Gold. This really tied the piece together and gave enough visual difference between the plates of the armor that I didn’t need to do a huge amount of shading or highlighting. Weapons were painted gunmetal and the Crozius was given a force effect to tie it to the plasma pistol visually so it wouldn’t look out of place in the color palette. The final detail was to add Tamiya clear green to the lenses of the helmet and that’s it it’s finished.
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