Quarmy Project Log

[Mattias!]

[Mattias!]

Another update here with the finished hover tank!

We last left off after having re-primed, masked, and primed again for a candy-colored camo scheme, which came out looking like this:

After that, there wasn't that much to do really. First I mixed up a thick black/red wash:

...and applied it all over the tank in an oily mess:

Which I then wiped away from the large, flat surfaces using a makeup sponge:

This had the effect of making the orange a bit pinker and (because red is complimentary to green) neutralizing some of the green tint to the tank and making it a bit bluer (thanks color theory!)

After that, I did some experiments of doing some more detailed painting with the oils, but ultimately they didn't look as good as this stage, so I wiped them away and instead just mixed up two off-white colors--one blueish and one pinkish--and used those to make some painterly highlights along the raised surfaces and edges. A couple dabs and flicks with the blending brush and it was all done! Here are the glamour shots:

Tank done!

Next time, I'll show how I painted the MMG team, sniper team, and officer teams I needed to bring the Quarmy to a solid 1000pt platoon.

Bye 'til then!

[Mattias!]

Back as promised with an update on my speedpainting workflow on the first couple of special weapons and officer teams.

This really isn't very groundbreaking, it's just wash and drybrush but using oils, so slightly more forgiving in some ways.

As ever we start by hitting the models with heavy washes to establish the dark shadow colors, then cleaning the raised areas to create an underpainting/grisaille. However this time, rather than putting in different shadows for different areas of the model, I just used a red/black wash all over as a shortcut.

Then it was on to the 'spot colors' portion of the workflow, but this time instead of applying a wash, midtones, and highlights then blending with a clean brush as I did with the cavalry models, I just went with a dilute wash. This way the wash would settle into the recesses and create the darkest shadows, but would also stain the raised areas with translucent color. This translucent layer then interacts with the value information of the underpainting to create the midtones. Here's a step by step of how that looked on each area of the model:

The final step is to re-establish the lights, but instead of using the painterly 'dots and lines' approach on each model, I took the shortcut of simply drybrushing the models with a big, soft makeup brush and some off-white paint. I did this after the mineral spirit in the spot color washes had evaporated, but before the paints were fully dry, so the paint on the drybrush would mix slightly with each spot color area on the surface of the model.

Here's what the final result looks like:

Granted, the result is not nearly as polished or dynamic as with the cavalry models, but these also took a bare fraction of the time. Where the five cavalry models took me perhaps 6-8 hours split across 4 days (so about 1.5 hours per model), these 10* took only 3 or 4 hours split across 2 days (or about 24 minutes per model)--and that's counting finishing the bases!

(*if you're wondering where model number 10 is, it's the little guy I made to sit in the tank hatch from the previous post)

So sure, they're not the most stunning paintjobs ever, but they are easily on par with what I used to be able to do using W&N ink washes, and are much faster even than that approach. This is the fastest I have EVER been able to paint. I'll take that trade all day XD

Perhaps the best part is that both approaches are available to me using the exact same paints on the exact same palette--the difference is just a matter of technique, and you could easily mix the two techniques to tackle different parts of the same model. It's a small thing perhaps, but as a painter it makes me feel incredibly powerful

Here's the gang all together, everything I need for a pretty beefy 1000pt reinforced platoon for K47:

I still have 30 models left to paint in my Quar collection, with which I can make two more platoons of 500pts each if I use my kitbashed VOTOMs walkers. I plan to use this speedpainting method to karate chop through the rest of them this month, and if I succeed, I will have completely painted an entire wargaming army for the first time since my adolescence. It's quite a feeling, tbh...this time last year I regarded my primed but unpainted quar collection with something like dread, and now I can't wait to see them all on the table.

'Til next time, may your hobby bring you similar elation!

[Eilif]

That's a great looking army.

When you finish the rest of the troops, you'll have enough to field a respectable Imperial Guard army for Grimdark Future also.

[Mattias!]

[Mattias!]

[Eilif]

Dang, you're almost done!

[Mattias!]

[Mattias!]

Overdue project update here!

When I last checked in, all that remained in the whole army project was the banners.

Well, while I was working on those gradually, I also took a look at my old pin markers and thought they looked a bit rubbish. I had tried to use clump foliage to model plumes of dust kicked up by bullets hitting the ground, so use as sort of 'diegetic' tokens to mark pins on units for games of K47, but the result wasn't very convincing. Luckily, poking around youtube I found this tutorial for modeling explosions with foam:

So I decided to make a set of bigger, more dramatic pin markers with this method. I happened to find some upholstery foam in the back alley and I set to work.

It's a very simple build. I started with a bit of putty on washers for the bases and then stuck a few pieces of wire in each to form the basis of each shrapnel trail. I modeled several each with one, two, three, four, and 5 shrapnel trails so that the number of trails could represent the number of pin markers on the unit. I then ripped up a bunch of foam into chunks and skewered them on the wire. I then plucked away at each plume to get them into their final shape and remove any visible hard edges from the foam shapes

To cover any exposed areas, I mixed a quick DIY texture paste using the smallest pieces of foam from the shaping step, mixed with wood glue and black paint. Once blobbed on and dried, it forms a really solid and durable foam texture. Good enough, in fact, to potentially use for foliage projects in the future.

Then it was painting time. A couple of heavy coats of black paint...

...and some reds toward the middle of each explosion...

Then drybrush white to finish it off

Looks great to me! I have mixed feelings about tokens generally; they can enable really cool mechanics (like the movement tokens in Space Weirdos) but they can detract from the immersion of the tabletop scene. I love that these are both functional as tokens, but also serve to enhance the scene by representing a battlefield effect that matches the in-game mechanical effect.

I carried this all out during the (considerable) drying time on the banners.

The banners themselves, as usual, started with a sketching step for brainstorming, then I inked my favorites. Here you can see me flipping the inked flags over on my light table so that I could then ink the reverse side and have matching designs mirrored on both sides of the flag (without having to resort to computer trickery).

Then it was time to go wild with inks (liquitex and fountain pen inks this time) and spraybottles to lay in the colors. I started with the general washes first...

...then specific colors more carefully applied to each area of color.

I used a lot of gold ink on these.

Once that was all done on one side, I had to repeat it all on the other. Then, with the flags fully dried, I cut them out and went back in for the final penwork. Extra details with black ink and a fine nib, some highlights and definition with a white gel pen, as well as a lightning bolt and fill-in for any all-white areas.

Then it was just a matter of cutting them out, blacking the edges, and attaching them!

That basically wraps it up for this army! I'll make sure to post some group shots and final thoughts soon. Till then, may your hobby projects advance steadily toward completion!