WIP: Heresy Era Dark Angels Deredeo Pattern Dreadnought - Part 2

Progress!  I had less time this week than I planned for so I focused on painting the head and getting it attached, then worked on the key feature of the model - giant plasma guns!! :)

Glued temporarily to a pin, it was an easy matter to get the base colors painted in on the dreadnought's helmet.  Nothing fancy here, just a few brass accents to lend an air of special to this relic from the dark age of technology. In the end, the highlight on the center ridge of the helmet is a bit severe.  I'll add some layers of GW Nuln Oil to tone that down as I go, I think. For now, it's time to paint PLASMA.

I followed my usual recipe for painting plasma weapons.  Above the base coat of GW Sotek Green has been laid down.  As I was painting that, I though about all the silver on the weapons and decided I needed to tone that down.  So when I went over the armor panels with a GW Abaddon Black base coat, I also painted in portions of the plasma weapons.

Yes, that's looking much better.  Now there is a clearer view of what the overall model will look like. Next, I moved on to the plasma effects.  As I've written before, I prefer to infer a glow to the weapons without getting into a full on OSL effect. This helps the weapons stand out as plasma on the table without forcing me to get into light theory and what surfaces reflect what and where, etc.  OSL looks very cool when done well, but it's simply not something I want to devote time to at this stage in my painting hobby.

The coils are starting to glow! I used GW Temple Guard Blue as a lightly brushed on highlight across the top and partway down the sides of the coils. Then GW Baharroth Blue was applied similarly, only to a smaller area than the Temple guard Blue focusing on the center of the coils in a long oval pattern down the length of the coils. A 60:40 mix of GW Drakenhof Nightshade to Lahmian Medium was applied as a shade with any excess carefully wicked away.  I made sure to concentrate the shade to the frame of the weapon around the coils and didn't allow it to darken the coils too much, just enough to add some definition to the ribs. Regrettably, there was a lot of model slippage on the weapon arms that was going to be very hard to fully eradicate without completely screwing up the coils themselves. I'd likely have had to remodel them in green stuff or something.  This isn't a crystal brush entry, so I did the best I could with what I had. It's important to keep these types of things in perspective to avoid bogging one's hobby down and killing the overall fun, in my opinion.

After looking this over, I felt the muzzles too plain and decided to try out putting some of the plasma blue into the vents and muzzle of the weapons.  I used GW Temple Guard Blue for this so the plasma color would be clear, but not to bright/light in the vents.  I imagine this glow leaking down the muzzle of the barrels as they charge up to fire. I'll use some shades later to infer some heat damage as well, but haven't gotten to that yet.

Along the way, the head was glued in.  And I began painting the missiles in the launcher, but didn't get a picture.  I only have half the rack painted in any event.  I'm going with white missiles and thinking about whether or not to use red or black tips on them.  Hard to get that even across so many missiles so I'm not sure if I'll be able to pull of the look I envision. Check back next week to see what I decide.

For now there is the Fist Legion Deredeo getting ready to provide fire support to squads of it's brothers.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!