Gray Death paintjob

Nomen est omen even in camouflage patterns

Both Sarna and UCC referred to Field Manual: Mercenaries when talking about the camo pattern and the markings:

The Gray Death Legion employs a gray-on-gray camo pattern. The Legion’s trademark gray skull insignia is set over a red crest and emblazoned on the left shoulder of unit ‘Mechs. A colored circle on the right leg tells what battalion they belong to. Yellow for first, Green for second, Blue for third and Red for Headquarters and Command. 

Sounded simple enough for a simple person like me. Grey on grey, a green dot on a leg and a red smudge with a skull on the left shoulder. Clear as day. Someone may have noticed how I have been grumbling against doing grey schemes and that's why I haven't done Smoke Jaguars, for example. My failure with the Hummel's crew uniforms gave me an idea as I mentioned in the last post.

Chilly grey basecoat

To get the party started I overbrushed Cold Grey (VGA 71750) all over the 'Mechs. The Cold Grey also defined my workin order so that as my next step I would paint the bare metals because they'd then get drybrushed with Cold Grey and that wouldn't ruin a thing on the bodies. I left some obviously bare bits unpainted but didn't care about a bit of spillage.

After this I gave the 'Mechs another coat of Cold Grey as the first layer was thin, which made especially the Phoenix Hawk look worse than necessary. Had I used an airbrush this'd been so quick and simple, but then I'd also covered the plain metals. Not that it'd been a problem, but I felt like brush painting.

Bare metals

I applied a layer of Black Grey (VMA 71056) over the joints and key parts of different weapons, and when that layer had dried, I drybrushed them with Cold Grey. Looking at these photos I had been perhaps a bit overexcited with the drybrushingn and I would need to wash especially the gun barrels darker. Nothing catastrophic had happened so I didn't stop to lament.

With the grey drybrushing out of the way, I then drybrushed all the hull parts with Stonewall Grey (VGA 72749) with the idea of getting the edges brightened conveniently before doing a darker grey wash for the upcoming stripes. There wasn't a huge change with the previous step but it was there and that was what counted.

Striping with a wash-y black grey

As advertised, this idea came from the uniform failure or more accurately my last attempt at salvaging them with a dark grey over green. I tried the exact same recipe but with a very different goal: I diluted my black grey to be very thin but still dark enough. My first paint:thinner ratio was so offset that the paint was way too light. With the better one I painted a bunch of stripes to break the shapes and forms with the idea of returning to this step if I deemed it necessary.

Warhammer's missile launcher and the arm pod's insides probably needed some more camouflage.

The theme of undercamouflaged arms was repeated on the Ostsol.

Shadow Hawk's left arm was also undercamouflaged and I was thinking if the shoulder-mounted AutoCannon's long upper bits ought to be painted as hull instead. That required more pondering and model-spinning.

Phoenix Hawk IIC had ended as the most completely patterned. Maybe it was because of the 'Mech had so little else to play with. Looking at these photos I noticed that I had ignored that one laser or sensor bit over the cockpit. According to the IIC specs it wasn't a beam weapon so forgetting it wasn't critical. Making it more visible wasn't harmful either so I added it to my //FIXME list.

Black gaps

Before taking a second look at the camo stripes I painted all the weapon ports and cockpit glass panes black. Ostsol was the only one with any weapons in the back, the two laser lenses were small so I could've easily mixed them in my mind with some exhausts or cooling ports...

Black grey fine-tuning

With other prepwork done I diluted more black grey and started by applying it over the overlightened bare metals. Next I spun the miniatures in my hands and painted more tiger stripes here and there to break some more shapes in places I had skipped or most likely simply overlooked the previous time. The changes were not enormous and that was good.

Now I also darkened the bit on Phoenix Hawk's forehead. While looking at the fists I thought that these called for some chipping, considering that the freebirths were much more likely to engage in melee combat than Trueborns.

A beginning of an idea

While the previous changes were drying I was thinking of the novels where the Gray Death Legion had the habit of being heavily mangled in long battles, that would give a handy justifications to try showing some armour panels being replaced with fresh and unpainted ones. The idea came to me long ago and I thought that I could use some very boring grey for it to make them stand out from everything else. When I thought of boring grey I was definitely talking about Vallejo's "USAF Light Grey" that I had used at least in the F-22's nose cone. I didn't really know what annoyed me in that colour but I didn't like to use it in anything important or clearly visible.

The idea here was that I'd paint and weather the 'Mechs pretty much as usual until they were done. After that I'd choose some bits here and there and I'd repaint those with this paint without a care in the world for ruining camouflage or anything else, the goal was to show that the machines had been shot through in places and the Techs had bolted on new, fresh armour plates before the 'Mech marched back to the fight.

I was quite amused by this idea, and it had held my interest for a good while but I hadn't gotten a good grasp of it until now. Just this rambling here was the most refined version of this so far, and I'd let it stew for a bit while I worked on the normal paintjob.

A Jump Jet plume

The Shadow Hawk, as mentioned, came with an optional jumping effect. The last time I painted these I started with a red basecoat, but now I felt like building things over black. I started by painting red brow (VMA 71105 Red Brown RLM26) parts, concentrating mostly on the tail end of the actual blast above the billowing clouds, but I also added it to a number of deep crevices in the clouds as well. My limited understanding of explosion fireballs was that the core was the hottest and whitest, while the expanding gases got gradually colder and redder via yellow and orange until they turned black. That was the gist of it, as far as I had understood it.

After the red browns I used the RLM-red (VMA 71003) that I then kept mixing with yellow (VMC 70952 Lemon Yellow) to get the gradient painted in a few different shades, and painted the effect based on my gut feeling.

 

To the top end of the jet I drybrushed some white (VGA 72701 Dead White) but that needed more tweaking. Onto the gradually cooling parts I drybrushed gradually lighter greys to add dirtiness to the show. It may very well be that I started this the wrong way and I should've done the cloudy gradient exactly the opposite way, as this ended looking like a bit more like a volcano than a fireball.

Dry-fitting this on the Shadow Hawk looked pretty nice, it didn't reveal anything absolutely horrendous. What I didn't realize was the attachment bits: I had to paint them white to the end, as they depicted the tight fusion blast. I'd paint them white and maybe give them a hint of blue with a bit of drybrushing to make them fit with my blue Jump Jet approach. The billowing clouds needed a bit touching up, maybe adding some thin lighter gray to the deeper bits of them, and drybrushing later with black. Just a tiny course-fixing instead of a complete repaint, as long as I didn't ruin my red-oranges at this point.

Another evening I then painted the tips of the effects in white, drybrushed the clouds with black and pokes some RLM23 red into some deeper cracks that caught my attention. A gentle blue drybrushing was going to have to wait until I was painting the JJs and jewelings. Maybe this was the most I should even poke at this point.

  

Batallion identifiers

The Right Leg of each 'Mech needed a circle to denote the Battallion the belonged to, and remembered watching a Camospecs video for the Gray Death Legion some ages ago and checked it yesterday. The idea was to also add a coloured stripe around the forearm, in the video B1BFlyer used red for Command but I was working on a Second Battallion or Hassan's Assassins' Lance. The Second Battallion meant a green marking, I used Light Green (VMC 70942)

Of course I could've used a darker shade but I quite liked that the stripes stood out from the greyness as more than just hints of colour. The little blobs on the right knees also didn't show up from many viewing angles, which made the arm stripes more fun to me.

Unit markings

Now I had to get a red field with a grinning skull on each left shoulder. That ought to be achievable even for me. In some artwork the sign was visible from the front, in some it was like an armband. I decided that the infamous artistic license allowed me to do whatever I pleased.

For the bases of the red fields I painted irregular splotches of RLM26 (VMA 71105) and when it was set, I stippled the insides with RLM23 red.

The skulls I painted with white straight away as far as I could paint anything skull-like in this scale. My original idea was to paint them in layers of greys but I came to my senses. A white grinner was going to stand out better than a grey one, on a grey BattleMech.

Inside the skulls I painted the eyes and a couple of tooth lines. I wasted absolutely no time on the nose holes, those would've just made these look confusing.

The Shadow Hawk's insignia ended up working the best of the lot so I used that as my example. Next I'd finally get to tweaking, which meant chipping, cockpits, and lenses \o/