Project Hereticus

[Snowflake]

In an effort to keep up my painting motivation (and because I liked the project threads some of the other guys have made), this project is to paint my Witch Hunters army. It's half-painted from when I played back in college, but I am unhappy both with the job I did and with the choice of color scheme, so that's got to go.

I noted in the other thread here that most people use Simple Green to strip models, so I'm going to give that a whirl and see how it goes. They're all solid metal anyway, so I couldn't hurt them if I wanted to.

Starting out here, I've broken out the army, am considering color schemes, and have all the supplies I need. I think. My goal for this week is to paint one of the core sisters squads (the only one that doesn't need some amount of stripping), while I strip the rest of the army. I think I shall define a "week" in this case as Wednesday to Wednesday, so this week will be 9 days long as a bonus.

Down the road, I'll need some advice or help on converting. One of the last models I will do is my Canoness. When I was playing, she repeatedly went toe-to-toe with Greater Demons, and either won or held them down for most of the game. She deserves wings, and she shall get them. I have the wings from a set of Bretonnian Pegasus Knights that I think will work nicely, but I don't really have any converting experience, so designing and executing it is currently beyond me.

I'll break out the camera for project update photos later on.

[Snowflake]

Ahh. Should this be one forum down? I'm not sure of the usage for each one.

[Kinne]

Moved it for ya. You're all set!

[Dez]

Hey Snowflake,

I won't be in this Wednesday, but the one after. I'd be happy to sit down with you and your bitz box and see what we can do. It should be fairly simple

By the way, Simple Green works to strip paint, but it also weakens the bond on Superglue. Just fyi

[Snowflake]

No rush at all, the Canoness will probably the one of the final models I do in the army, so we're talking a couple months at least.

My Wednesday attendance will be sporadic, anyway. I work rotating day/night shift, so I'll probably only be able to make it half the time.

[thade]

Simple Green is magic. I use full strength and soak models in it; and sometimes I'll soak them in SG in an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner. It will get nearly all of the paint off with an easy toothbrush scrub. It also weakens super glue, which helps get models apart when they are otherwise uncooperative.

[Dez]

I think what thade thaid is that you can get the Simple Green spray and that works fine, but they also have a gallon concentrate bottle that's like TURBO Simple Green. That's what I use as well, no water mixed in just straight green goodness

[Snowflake]

I got a gallon concentrate SG at Home Despot, and am soaking 50 models or so. Been in there for about a day. I'll check them after this coming night shift ends.

As for the painting, due to the work schedule, it's coming along more slowly than I had hoped. Got that first squad maybe 2/3 done, though a lot of that has been experimenting with color schemes. I think I finally settled on a good one, just have to redo a couple of failed experiments. Hoping to have the squad complete before the 27th.

[Snowflake]

Since I'm on the night shift, and this is part of how I fill 12 hours, I figured I may as well expand on the project update. Wish I had the models here to take pictures. Ahh well.

As I said above, I have 4 squads of Sisters in the green bucket of doom, along with a few of a friend's Dire Avengers. They were painted in my old-style blood red armor and black capes, which I was unhappy with. Didn't really look realistic, to me.

After playing around with some colors, I've settled on a much darker red armor this time, which I got by using the Mechrite Red foundation with a Devlan Mud wash on it. Gave me a good dark shaded look that I like. For the cloaks, I went with Astronomican Grey foundation as the base, and washed it with Asurmen Blue, which shaded it and gave it a slight bluish tinge that I think goes well with the armor. Now for both the cloaks and the armor I've been trying to decide how to highlight them. From the responses in the other thread, I think I'm going to high the high areas with the original paint, maybe lighten it a little bit to set it apart, though it would be a very slight lightening. Speaking of, is there any reason I would need to switch paints here? I feel odd using the foundation for everything on these parts, but it seems to be working out well so far.

For the adornments and symbols, I'm torn on how to do them. On one hand I'd like to do silver for the normal sisters, and gold for the leaders. However, with the cloaks being grey and the bolters being.... bolters, I think that might well end with too much grey/silver on the model. Decisions decisions.

I am also dreading the faces and hair. 8 of the 10 models in this unit have no helmets, and I have zero experience doing skin (Tomb Kings have no skins, skins are for mortals). Gonna really have to plan out how I want to layer the colors there. As for the hair, I'm torn again because I don't really want them all to have the same hair, or only be able to vary between grey, black, and blonde. On the other hand, if I do them each a different color, it's going to come off more like a drunken sorority party than a squad of warriors. Not really the effect I'm going for.

I've got the night shift these next 3 nights, though I was able to do some work on the cloaks today before I left for work, so I may be able to get more done and/or post some pictures. We shall see.