Night Lords Rhino, painting experiment and Rhino

This has taken forever, as test models usually do.  This has been multiplied by the fact that it is a vehicle with a lot of surface space and some ForgeWorld additions.  I knew I wanted to do something different, to be a little more creative and "painterly" rather than sticking to my old formulas.  The muse had struck, art was a must.


I wanted to finish it up so I could post all the pictures in one post, but rather than make you wait any long I decided to toss these up.  This is the stage I am at.  The ForgeWorld additions are done, basic hull coloring is done.  Weathering and touch-ups are on the to-do list.

And here's how we got there.  After building it and priming it in the last blog entry, the first thing I did was to give it a wash of watered down black paint.  Then I went crazy with  a brush and some blue paint.  Stage one:

Stage two.  Fading in a brighter blue from the edges.  Interestingly this works like camouflage.  Up close you can see the pattern, but take a step back and it looks like a perfectly smooth blending from light to dark.

From the side it shows the highlighting process better since there is more variation.

Which brings us back to the current stage.  I went for a bleached look, thinking that once the wings were bright red and the stone circle a noble yellow, but that had faded in time.  Adding grey to red is an interesting experience.  It felt like I was slowly losing my color perception, since all I was really doing by adding grey was taking the red out of the, well red.

Man do the ForgeWorld kits have a lot of detail on them!  I had no idea until I started painting these.  Each individual tooth, the skull edges are undercut, the eye sockets are nice and deep, the wings.. you get the idea.

You may have seen the start of the weathering on the tracks.  Here is more on the tech bits.  Look for patina on the bronze piping and a great deal of paint chipping all over the hull.  I will then experiment with ground pastels as weathering powders!