Chapter 1 – Painting the Armour

The Armour of my Thousand sons is the most important aspect of their painting. It is the largest area on the model and the most
distinctive, it gives them “that look”.
It makes sense therefore to talk about that section of the model first, it also happens to be the fist thing I paint on my miniatures!

Stage 1. – Undercoat
Make no mistake; a good undercoat will make the difference between a mediocre attempt at painting and a great model.
The first stage to undercoating comes before you even spray the model, firstly clean the model of any mold lines, get the model as
smooth as you can. If you put effort into the pre paint clean up (I won’t go into details as to how here) you will be rewarded by an easier
model to paint.
a) Next, pick your desired undercoat colour. If you are following this tutorial to paint Thousand sons marines, use chaos black. I use
chaos black for almost all my models as I like the gritty realistic effect it gives. Others use white or even grey.
With your spray you want to coat the entire model without obscuring any details. A few light coats is best, don’t spray too much on at
once. After your first coat I’d expect you to still be able to see quite4 a bit of the metal or plastic underneath, even after you have
finished spraying, don’t expect to have all the small details in black.
b) Now go over the entire model with chaos black watered down using a large, soft bristled brush. The large brush size should
eliminate any brush strokes as well as making it a whole heap quicker. You can mix in a very small amount of dish washing liquid into
the black and water to act as a wetting agent. This should break the paint’s surface tension and allow it to coat better. Without this you
may find the paint beading a little.
Again, several thin coats is best, at this point anything more that 30/70 paint to water would be too thick.

Now we should have a nice black figure, with NO plastic or metal showing at all and no loss of detail.

Stage 2. – Base coat Helpful hint:

Almost as important as the undercoat, this first base coat makes all the rest look Airbrushes are expensive but are
good. great time/hassle savers, especially
Basically this is done in the same way as part b of the undercoat; you need to paint so if you plan on painting many
several layers of thinned paint onto the model. The first layer will be patchy, the models at once. I have just recently
second less so and the third should be perfect coverage. started to do the base coat step with
Painting models in a batch of 2-4 will improve these steps as while waiting for one to an airbrush, just like brushing it on
dry you can be applying paint to another and by the time that is done the first may be or spraying an undercoat a few thin
dry or close to it. As you are using thin layers of paint you should notice the dry times layers works best.
are not so slow.

In the case of the Thousand sons I paint, the base coat is nothing but GW Regal
Blue, watered down appropriately of course.

Stage 3. First highlight

Here is where you start to see dividends and is also where you really have to start working hard! Here we pick a lighter shade of your
base coat. With the technique we are using, wet blending, you don’t need to worry too much about the jump in colour. I use enchanted
blue for my first highlight on the Thousand sons which really is a big step from regal blue. You are spending time and effort making the
transition smooth using the technique and probably don’t want to do that 5-6 times, so generally fewer layers is more here (to a point).

Wet blending is a technique that once mastered (and I do not pretend for a minute that I have mastered it!) will give you fantastic
models very quickly when compared to other advanced techniques. The drawback of course is that is it’s rather difficult and takes
experience to use well. Please don’t let that stop you though, once you get it you will find it speeding up painting where you would have
previously layered down coats of paint for what seemed an eternity.
The basic principle is very simple. You paint using the paint’s variable translucency when mixed with water. Quite simply paint is
always a little transparent when applied thinly; it is why people paint multiple layers of thin paint to achieve smooth blends. Wet
blending simply aims to do in one or two coats, what layering would do in twenty.
Wet blending uses this to our advantage by teasing paint thinner and thinner across a previously painted surface of a different shade or
colour. Here are the steps to achieve a good “wet blend”:

a) Paint on your highlight colour over the base coat. You are looking for roughly 120% coverage of the area you actually want to
appear that shade once the blend is complete. We paint more area simple because we need excess paint to tease out and
make thinner in order to achieve the blend. Work on small areas at a time to make it easier, when paint starts to dry you end
up with tide marks along the edge which are very difficult to get rid of.
b) While the layer is still wet, immediately rinse brush (or pick up another). Keep the bristles damp, not dripping water, just damp
and work in along the edge of the paint edge which needs blending. You are basically mixing water into the edges at this point
and it serves two purposes. Firstly it supplies us with the water on the model with which we want to dilute the paint. Secondly,
the water should slow down the rate of drying with the paint.
c) Now we need to mix the water and edge of the paint together, this bit just takes practice, work the brush in sweeps parallel to
the line of paint, working backwards and forwards, from the paint side into the water side and back again. Always end in the
paint as lifting the brush will leave some paint that the brush was “dragging”. This should mix the paint and water together and
allow a smooth transition in itself. Work quickly, don’t do too much. If you don’t get it right away you can come back over once
dry. Tide marks are the hardest things to get rid of, so don’t let the paint slightly dry while you are still working it.
Don’t be afraid to add more water or paint or likewise take some out by washing the brush and drying it on some paper towel.
d) The final stage which can be used is to add some of the base coat colour into sections of the water side. This is really used to
darken sections that have too much paint. You want to be working this into the water and then into the paint quickly and while
the lighter colour is still wet.
That’s it! This is how I achieve those smooth blends. These 4 stages should not take longer than a few seconds; you are working
quickly against the clock and the paint dry time.
You can optionally add in paint drying retarder, I have never used this and would be hesitant to try simply as I find it works well for me
without added chemicals that I’d end up inducing (being a “paint licker” – Hey it works here, you need speed and the fastest way to
reduce the paint on your brush is to suck it out!).

Stage 4. More of the same…

Not much to tell here really, I use the same technique to get the same result only on less of the surface area and with lighter paint.
Make sure you paint the lighter colour only in areas where the first highlight colour is fully opaque or the transition will be too much and
will look grainy. The colour I use here is Ice blue.

A note on highlight area selection: If you want a similar effect to what my Thousand sons achieve, you will want to concentrate
mostly on the fully horizontal sections of armour and any sharply curved area (right angles really) which might reflect some light. This is
to get the overall appearance of light hitting the model from the top. Of course I break this rule when I apply it to the bottom of the shin
guard and individual fingers, but this is more of a aesthetic discission because it looks good. Don’t go overboard on the areas you
break the rule on, but it is a little flexible, call it artistic license.

Stage 5. – Optional bits, going back over it…

None of this is necessary but I feel it can add something extra to your models to do so. So for the thousand sons I have a very sharp
contrast between light and dark ice blue and regal blue. But sometimes I want MORE If you look at the faces of the Sorcerer’s in my
force, you might notice that they stand out from the rest of the model and this is because they all have a further small highlight of scull
white applied. Here I didn’t even try to pick out only the “lightest” areas but rather concentrated on the bits I wanted attention directed
towards, so around the eyes and the top on the nose or the “teeth/gill” areas or cheeks. This is just to make the viewer notice those
parts of the model more and is vert subtle.
Finally you can wet blend in reverse over any areas which are not quite smooth enough, using regal blue and enchanted blue you can
tone down any bits that went to bright. Just to it the same way but paint over the original transition. More often that not you just want to
tone a part of it down, and again is down to personal taste.

So how long does all this take?

I spend probably around 30mins to 1 hour per figure on each highlight layer on the armour. This varies based on which colour I am
using (some are easier to work with, namely any with smaller pigments) and the complexity of the figure. So all up you might expect to
spend two hours per figure on the armour. Not too bad considering it is the main bulk of a model (for space marines, especial loyalists).