Diamond Shark jewels

Uniquenesses

This has been, for a good while, one of the most fun stages in my BT painting sessions. The bits that had been painted more or less the same way now got a bit of unique treatment and not everything was a conveyor belt anymore.

Cockpits and energy weapons

Again I decided to skip the deepest details in my descriptions, as we've gone through these many times. The most important choice was the cockpit viewport colour, which ended up being red, maybe unsurprisingly. I thought of using green, because it's been a nice and simple colour to shade, but I liked the contrast between red and blue more. I had used orange on the Ghost Bears, which also worked nicely, so red range was good for me.

Before getting further ahead of myself I wrote down a list of the weapon types and counts to support my foul memory. The queue contained a couple of red small lasers, a handful of green mediums, some lonely blue larges and PPCs. All remaining sensorlike things I decided to do in orange. I also decided to leave the gloss varnish in the very end.

 

This time I didn't do any kind of a glow effect on the ER PPC pair, but I was thinking if I ought to do that anyway. The effect had worked somehow nicely - or at least tolerably - in the earlier CGL Turkina and Warhawk.

 

My group photo would've been much more impressive had the Piranha with its mostly black hex base been more in line with its Starmates. 

Clearer silvering

I still wasn't too happy with the grey bits, the gentle lines were fine in a way but you couldnt' really see them anything but up close. So I spent almost an hour with my detail brush, adding greyish white lines and splotches. Maybe it was stronger an effect than what I absolutely needed, but it was my first go at this sort of stuff.

Shark teeth for them sharks

According to the specs a Warrior who had at least one confirmed kill, could have a shark mouth painted in an appropriate place. Implementing something like that by hand on these tiny pieces was suspicious to say the least, but I felt confident painting two of these. Cougar with its planelike CT was an easy choice.

I started by painting a disturbingly large black mouth. The nose cone was shaped so that two separate mouths would've looked a bit odd so I made one that wrapped around the hull.

To achieve a tongue I painted red blobs into both sides. This made the expression look quite goofy :D

 

Finally I painted tiny toothlike shapes all around the mouth, using the same greyish white as elsewhere. Maybe it looked like something from a decent distance.

The other 'Mech where I dared to add a set of teeth was Stormcrow C that had just a nice shape in the CT, for a tiny mouth. None of the others were large enough for me to try this trick. Unlike the Cougar, this one was going to have two separate mouths on either side of the CT.

Like earlier, I added tiny tongues into the small half-mouths.

Of the two the left one, in the second photo below, worked out much more nicely. It was a surprise, because the LBX-AutoCannon was constantly on the way with all the painting.

While looking at this last photo I was thinking that the AutoCannon might benefit from one more, brighter drybrushing. It wasn't bad now, but it could be kicked up a notch. Bam!

Diamond Shark paintjob

A black foundation for a new year

Piranha was a clear bit to prime with the base and all. And it was a tiny miniature.

The IWM minis I just brushed black again, I didn't poke the terrain other than by accident. Maybe they also should be primed and then recoated somehow later. At this point I concentrated on the 'Mechs.

Lambda Spina

I checked the Diamond Shark schemes in Camospecs and UCC, the Lambda Spina's blue with silver and optional shark mouths sounded neatest and the most doable. Something in the deep archives of my memory suggested that the only other Finn I know to own some BT minis also had painted his 'Mechs for Starstrike. This made me think I had to check if I found anything in old messages to verify this?

While pondering on that I checked what Sarna said about the Lambda Spina Galaxy so I could give them a more accurate unit. The 11th Strike ("Depth Charge") contained the convenient weight classes even if they were, technically, in different Trinaries.

Blue basecoat

There weren't that many blues in my selection of paints so I chose one that I expected to get nicely highlighted or otherwise mixed up. Even the name, UK Mediterranean Blue (VMA 71111) was properly sea-themed.

I used my familiar overbrushing method that left the lower shadows in place. Sometimes the shadows were left a bit large, but that was how life went. I concentrated on the armoured parts and ignored the bare metals as far as they were avoidable.

When the mediterranean blue was dry, I drybrushed again with the damp brush some highlighting with depressing soviet AMT-7 (VMA 71318 Greyish Blue). It looked different enough in the bottle to bring up the highlights and would also fit nicely with the base blue.

My metallic miniatures took the drybrushing more eagerly with their sharper edges than what the roundish plastic Piranha. This'd work just nicely.

Silvery fanciness

I didn't think of using actual metal pigment paint for the silvers because I didn't take the description literally. For the decorations I picked a few bits and painted them grey (VMA 71120 USAF Medium Grey) to begin with, and to find the best and most sensemaking areas.

Next I took a shot at drybrushing with a plain Stonewall Grey (VGA 72749) that really wasn't light enough for highlighting, so I mixed in some lighter tone (VMA 71119 White Grey). This mix stood out a bit more. I just had to be careful with the drybrushing to protect the blues, so I used my detail brush to paint some edges up (line highlighting that the warhammerers have been using pretty actively). My thought was that maybe this worked somehow decently in my quest for silver.

This next photo showed that I got excited with the drybrushing and worked on the LB-10X already instead of going through the dark grey route first. Hopefully my eagerness was forgivable.

My first run didn't give much of a silvery feeling. I also didn't think I would try to do any NMM witchcraft especially as I had never tried that, nor did I have skills. If I gave the edges a bit stronger highlight with just that greyish white without shading it down at all?

Unpainted metal

I pondered on the metallics after all, if I should do them with actual metals or not. Without using silver paint for the silver pieces, I ought to stick to using non-metals on the bare metals as well. On the Piranha I metallified the fists, the lasers, and all those machine guns. In addition I picked out the joints that were nicely doable.

 

Cougar B had a couple of weapons and the shoulder grilles I forgot until I saw this photo. Then there was a set of shoulder and hip joints as well.

The old sculpt of the Stormcrow had offensively tiny arms, as I complained before, but the shoulder-hip-ankles were much easier and clearer. The over-the-head grille or missile launcher slot was also a nice target for bareness.

I got further along with the Stormcrow C and its visible bits, but there was an amount of joints and tubes to decorate.

Ice Ferret E's ATM launcher got me thinking what to actually do with its facade. Perhaps the divided doors could be bicolored: another half in bare metal and the other silver? Or they could just remain bare. I had to think on that.

The infinite void of blackness

Before getting to the next actual stage I prepared the canopies and gun ports in black. There were no Jump Jets at all so I had no fusion nozzles to paint.

 

This was a nice moment to stop for a bit, I had to take a breather before just jumping into the next thing. If I wasn't any more sure on what I felt like, I most likely was going to do the jeweling out of the way. Doing that might bring up some ideas. We'd see that next year.