Smooth Riding

The next group is done, and I enjoyed painting these guys. Will I use them in an army? I don't know honestly, I may, but I'll need a whole lot more than 3 guys if I intend to do that. Maybe for my 500 point games, maybe, but I feel they're a little wasted. However, they're looking pretty sweet I think!There was a lot to paint, and as per most my marines, it was the same. Some kinda army green, followed by a sick green, then esponsa high lights [light green] followed by a wash of dark green to set it all in. Nothing to exciting or new from the other ones I've done. The "new shiney" things are probably the bags and the terrain I set them on.

I actually set these beast on tracks! That is to say, there are little dirt tracks under their tires in the base. It wasn't hard to do honestly. I molded some green stuff to the base and simply pushed the bike through it while it was still soft and made a few tracks. They're pretty sweet, but hard to notice. The touch is nice though I think.

The other thing worth mentioning are the bags on these bikes. They actually are some of the best leather bags I've made to date. I think I've finally figured out what it is I want to do with a bag to make them look good! What was that I did? Uh, umm, er.... I'm honestly having a hard time remembering, and I should write these things down more.

Basically, it's scorch brown, followed by leather, and then the highlights are a mix of leather and bone white. This works to get things looking right, but to give it that organic feel it really needs a wash of Devlan Mud mixed with a SMALL touch of leather. Not a lot, but enough to make sure the wash isn't incredibly transparent. I think this is what made it look that much more fantastic.

So, that's cool. The other impressively great thing I've learned now, and executed on two models wonderfully, are the eyes. My eyes have always been incredibly "2D," and not very "3D." Take a look at my terminators. They're incredibly 3D as well! So are these guys. So, I've confirmed my trick and it should now be a welcomed look for all my marine helmets from here on out. I simply put an ocre on first, followed by a bright yellow that shouldn't cover the entire eye but rather just the highest point, and then I lay down a pure Gryphonne Sepia wash, which is really just a dot of it in the eye. This is a very yellow/brown kind of wash, so it sits in the edges and makes them darker than the highest parts of the eye. Splendid!

Anyhow, nothing else truely amazing about these guys I think. Ask questions! Go for it! What could I improve you say?

I need to get better at keeping a calm hand. Some of the gold trim isn't spot on and looks a little sloppy, as does the armor of the bike that touches the gold. I swear when I look, I see a bit of black. It hurts, but, the wash is on so I don't want to go over it again. Secondly, I need to, and still can, add some scrawling on those honors waving in the winds. It's not that hard to do. Thirdly, I need to figure out a flag I can print out and stick on the polls. They're kind of naked now. =) I think I also need to stick with more "specific" high lights. I tried dry brushing a lot of these because I really like the effect of dry brushing at times, but for infantry it doesn't work well. Vehicles it's great. However, now that I'm staring at my terminators, and then looking at these guys... I think being very hands on for the high lights definitely makes things look FAR better than a dry brush. So I'll try the "wet" dry brush as I did with the terminators on the next set of bikes, and I'll keep the light direction in mind when I do it next time.

Last bit of neat stuff! I have to thank my mom, she got me this really nice little diffuser box. So these photo's were taken with that. It's really awesome, and I really think it helped my photos out a lot. I need to learn to utilize it a little better though, and probably set it up on my art table rather than the coffee table next time so I can get some help from my much larger lamps. Over all though, I'm happy with it!

So, until next time! I might take a break for a bit, but I know I have buildings and eldar to paint. As for things I might paint for myself? I'm considering switching back to tyranids for a bit. Not for long, but for a bit. Marines take a lot of work, and quite honestly, I can't figure out what else I want to paint in the marine army right now anyway. I could use a few more Rhino's I guess, which means I should probably grab some predator tanks as those can be used as Rhino's too. Hmm. Decisions.