Blood Spirit Alpha - sepia attack

Pin washing

This section was going to be pretty much the same as in the previous ones: I made a thin wash with Abteilung's Sepia to enhance the panel lines and bring the tans and reds together a bit. I started with the Mediums in the back row, where it showed how my wash was a bit thinner there than the portion I applied on the front row's Light Omnis.

After the oil paint had flashed in the sauna overnight, I cleaned up the worst excesses. Then I returned them in the sauna for the thinner to evaporate. Now the key difference between the photo above and the one below was that they were taken under different lights, thanks to the other cat had reserved my usual table corner as her napping place.

After another night-day cycle inside the unheated sauna the minis were ready for the next step. I hadn't quite made up my mind on what that actually was, but my options were pretty much narrowed down to two paths.

Mist Lynx's Galaxy emblem might require a thin line of off-white along the bottom edge of the octagon, the red drop had gone too far low. In the same way the Clan emblem's droplet had too low contrast after drying, even if it stood out more while wet.

I properly liked the way the Shadow Cat's Gauss Rifle looked like now, nicely worn. While writing this I was thinking very hard if I should attempt to do the heat-distortion with the washes or not. The dark grey surface just didn't sound like a fruitful canvas.

Like I said earlier, Ice Ferret's oil wash had had a much subtler effect than most others.

Stormcrow's top torso lines would've benefited from some masking instead of pure freehanding. This was another thing that just didn't come to me while working on it.

My Kit Fox had a nicely worn look on it now, and the LB-5X had a neat aged effect, despite the mold line. This one had a bandlike window that worried me to no end. Maybe something could be saved by highlighting the sensor packet under the cap in the middle of the forehead, something like a yellowish lens that wouldn't get confused with the actual viewport.

Blood Spirit Alpha - detailing

Endo-steel

My default recipe got into use again. I painted all bits that I felt like they were unpainted steel, using dark grey (VMA 71055 Black Grey RLM66). This incomplete list of mine included things like the weapon barrels, all sorts of grilles, vents, nozzles, sensor pods, and various joints. Once again, all this was directed by my guts, I didn't believe in using "Part X always looks like Y" checklists.

Kit Fox

Mist Lynx

Stormcrow

Stormcrow

Shadow Cat

Drybrushing the steely highlights

As my drybrush-highlighter I used cold grey (VGA 72750). To make my process quicker, I wrote down the essential equipment like the weaponry and Jump Jets for each 'Mech on a sticky note. After the drybrushing I painted all of the viewport panels and orifices black.

Stormcrow

Here the reds felt good, as long as I cleaned up the right side's overpaintings. I could also add some steel into the ankles or knees.

 

Shadow Cat

On this one the biggest question mark was the Gauss Rifle. The previous one I painted on a metallic paint and I had attempted the heat-distortion effect with a number of washes (Citadel's paints, most likely dry in their bad pots after a couple of years) .

The shadow-loving kitty might benefit from a bit more pure metal in its lower legs for added variety.

Mist Lynx

Mist Lynx's right bicep needed metallifying. Also most of its upper torso surfaces needed some sandy touching up.

Ice Ferret

I noticed a pattern emerging: the legs/feet needed more steel on them. The Torso and Arms felt ok. As a funny detail I noticed from these photos was the round piece on the roof hatch. It was just like the vent cover on the turret of a Panther or Königstiger but in a smaller scale.

Kit Fox

I was pretty content with the Kit Fox, maybe it needed a bit of steel in its ankles.

 

This drybrushing result baffled me slightly. Before I started drybrushing I made sure practically nothing was left on the piece of paper towel when brushing on it. Still the effect was this strong on the mini.

Fixing and roundeling

I painted the Clan and Galaxy roundels badly, as my skillessness directed me. First I painted the octagonal whiteish shape for the Alpha, and a red droplet inside it. For the Clan roundel I painted dark grey circles, which I filled with a slightly orangeish circle, and made a red drop into that one. In this scale, especially on Kit Fox and Mist Lynx that was pretty difficult for someone as bad at drawing as I was.

 

While I was touching up here and there, I fixed especially the sands and the dark greys wherever my eyes caught something. I also added more dark grey in the legs and especially ankles. I doublechecked each five minis, so maybe nothing was forgotten.

 

Maybe I should've painted the hex bases at this point, but I simply ran out of time. Not that it made a difference for the end result, I just found the clean grounds much more eye-friendly.

Blood Spirit Alpha - trimming with red

Turning Red

I kept on adding more reds that I had started with the previous time. A good bunch of these minis had Hands, so I decided that red fists was going to be a thing. Beyond that the trims went on based on the gut feeling, as usual.

Stormcrow

Shadow Cat

Ice Ferret

Kit Fox

Mist Lynx

 

Next I was going to iterate through the bare Endo-steel parts, which would give me a pretty good view on how the overall style of this Star was going to be, and based on that I could add or just modify the red trims as needed. These photos also showed painfully clearly how some of the sandy yellows were a bit too thinly laid on. All of these I'd touch up before the pin wash.