A familiar effect
I had done a number of these rounds lately, so maybe it made no sense to re-explain all of the stuff with my energy weapons this time. The canopies required some thinking as I wasn't entirely sure what would work nicely against yellowish and red. Being a limited-skilled internaut, I checked a colour wheel and felt that a green with a hint of blue would be the best option here.
The most observant readers may have already spotted that the hexes got painted with the black primer. This way the supremely annoying smudges weren't there to capture my eyes and attention while doing something completely different.
Lensing and glazing
Like I said, I wasn't going to bore you with the same explanation of the same operation yet again. Who was going to reread it anyway? Below I have the photos of the jeweled, canopied and jump-jetted elements where they were done, as well as a gloss coated final shot.
Mist Lynx
The primary config of the Mist Lynx had no energy weapons, so I only needed to work on the cockpit viewports on it. This canopy was split into five tiny pieces, so perfection was not achieved today. I still managed to get some kind of an shady effect here, so maybe that was also progress of some sort.
I was most concerned about these small Jump Jets on this bouncer, but they worked out pretty nicely!
Kit Fox
Yeah, this viewportset was narrower than Beggar's Canyon, which made it problematic even with my 5/0 paintbrush and my shading attempts. As the first photo showed, the greens overflowed over and under to the Head and Center Torso. Both colours had to be fixed up afterwards.
The tools of violence managed to confuse me totally this time, as you could see from the photo. I just followed my list and as I was doing energy weapons, paid attention to the ERLLas and SPLas rows and failed to doublecheck their locations (Right Arm for both) , while the Left Arm's barrel was an LB 5-X. Somehow I really failed my perception check and didn't recognize the two sticks in the LA as lasers.
These photos showed that I cleaned up the excess greens. The viewport didn't show much unless you really knew what to look for.
A repainting session was coming up, grumble grumble. As a tiny bonus that came with that was that I could ponder if I wanted to add a yellowish lens on the sensor packet above the center pane. If there was space, that could prove to be a fun detail.
Stormcrow
This prime config was familiar from the previous project: each Arm had a large one paired with a medium, with a third medium beamer on the nose.
Ice Ferret
Just about the most impressive bi ton the Ice Ferret was the Left Arm's ER PPC. The ERSLas housed just above it was somehow a bit funnily shaped, painting it didn't feel smooth. In the end, in the photos, it looked fine, so maybe I was worried for nothing again.
Shadow Cat
These MPLas tubes on the Shadow Cat were really funnily shaped. My only actual issue with them was how fixing any overflow was a bit annoying. To counter that sillines the viewports succeeded rather nicely.
On the rear side the Jump Jet nozzles didn't get as nice an effect as I had managed before. I thought to maybe apply a thin white or whiteish wash into them before declaring the project finished. I even thought of using an oil wash, but that might be a bit overkill for two tiny droplets.
Just using a thinned down white Vallejo paint made them look better:
Gauss rifle's heat distortion effect attempt over dark grey
Roighty. This was the starting point: a pretty nicely worn dark grey barrel for the Gauss Rifle. My hypothesis was that the brown, violet and blue washes were not going to have much of an impact on this canvas. The only way to find out for sure was to try it out, and that'd inform me of what to do with the next Gauss Rifle coming my way - or what not to bother with ever again.
First step. A brown wash (Citadel: Agrax Earthshade) on most of the barrel:
Second step. A violet wash (Citadel: Druchii Violet) on a smaller area:
Third step. A blue wash (Citadel: Drakenhof Nightshade) on the last ~quarter:
After flashing it looked like this. No strong and easily noticeable effect.
In most of the approaches I've read of and seen the painter had highlighted the barrel's tip with something brightly metallic, like steel or chrome, to emphasize the clean-burned part. For a moment I considered that, even though I intended to steer clear of metallics in these. Maybe a cold grey would do the trick?
Kit Fox's unexpected plumbing renovation
On one evening I spent a moment to repaint the Kit Fox's weaponry. My first step was to redo all the openings black to cover up my mistake. The LB 5-X was done that easily.
As you may have guessed, painting the incredibly tiny Small Pulse Laser worried me the most, like you could see the tininess of the surface in the photo. That ER Large wasn't in the same scale as in all the other minis lately (that may have been one of the key cues that threw me off-track). Here in the photo below they both looked pretty fine after all.
Hexagonal edges
That last photo revealed what I had done on all of them, the hex edges got painted while waiting on something else. Now I just had to come up with a surface for them.
Heat distortion effect round 2
Curses, I could not leave the Shadow Cat's Gauss Rifle as it was. One of these WFH mornings I took a couple of minutes between my morning meetings to take a new look at the gun. On the first minibreak I painted a narrow band of Drakenhoff blue to the front part of the barrel.
After the next meeing I added a new band towards the base of the gun, using the Drukhii violet. Then, after the third morning meeting I added a band of Agrax brown.
While brewing coffee with my moka pot in the afternoon I took a quick look at it, and it did show some effect. It was pretty subtle, but that wasn't a bad thing. So now, was it worth to spend this effort on an effect that was visible at some angles and light? Of course it was!
