If you've followed my Genestealer Cult army progress, you'll be aware of my joke regarding "50 shades of Soviet green" referring to the various shades of green used by Soviet and later Russian armed forces for their military vehicles from World War II through to the present. Now that I'm working on Necrons, the "shades of green" reference takes on a whole new meaning! If you read my first "New Year, New Army" post back in January, you know I'm working a Szarekhan Dynasty force largely because I really loved the new paints and color schemes. At that time I'd only really finished painting up one warrior, and he wasn't based. I also concluded the entry with these words:
"So that's the next challenge - to start learning how to do those glazes and edge highlighting well enough to generate some decent energy blades... Provided I'm not crying in a corner in the fetal position after that, I should have the basic paint schemes down for the whole force."
So, guess what I've been fighting with for the past several weeks? However, it's a fight I think I'm finally starting to get the upper hand in!
The first of the two Necron Overlords is the one from the Indomitus boxed set. I've said it before and I'll likely say it again - the Indomitus set is a heck of a deal for the money. Some of the individual models are coming out now in pre-packaged sets and it remains to be seen what the total retail value of the box will be, but I think it's a safe bet that its going to be far more when totaled than what you paid for the box itself. This was a fun model to get together, in retrospect I would have painted a few parts as sub assemblies, but overall I'm happy with the final result.
As expected, much of the time was spent on learning how to glaze, shade, and edge highlight the energy blade. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I did it a total of four times, including one final time where I took the blade off and started over (once again). On the final miniature, the blade is pinned to the haft, but the join is very clean.
To get the technique right I spent a lot of time watching various Youtube videos on how others had gotten their glazing to come out right. In the end I went with the following recipe (note: all glazes were thinned with a mixture of water and Lahmian Medium):
- Base - 50/50 Castellan Green and Warpstone Glow airbrushed (you absolutely need a dead smooth base coat to get this to work)
- Light Glaze 1: Warpstone Glow
- Dark Glaze 1: Castellan Green
- Dark Glaze 2: Vallejo Black mixed with a little Army Painter Purple Tone
- Light Glaze 2: Moot Green
- Light Glaze 3: Dorn Yellow
The edge highlighting was pretty much as much a pain in the butt as expected, but I managed to get it to come out with a mix of Moot Green and Dorn yellow (along with a little shading of the two along the way). I also found that the Tesseract Glow goes on much better if you mix it with a little Contrast Medium.
The metallic portions of both of these overlords were painted just like the original Necron Warrior I posted at the beginning of the year. Needless to say, I've been working on a bunch of little friends for him, but they're not quite ready to post.
For the glowing green spheres on the second overlord, I decided to go ahead and use I technique I understand - airbrush shading! Once again I started with my 50/50 mix of Castellan Green and Warpstone Glow but then just worked my way up through Warpstone Glow, Moot Green, and then Moot Green mixed with yellows until I was happy with the result!
Since this overlord had some blue elements, I went ahead and used the Contrast Terradon Turquoise on them. The result was quick and looks really decent, especially on small details. The Orb was a bit trickier as I tried several Vallejo and other paints to get something that looked like I wanted it to after freehand painting the swirls.
The basing this time is a bit different. I'm sort of going with an "autumn" theme with the basing, so I've got some dried foliage on top of the autumn static grass. I'm working on creating some of my own tufts for future project, but the first time around I couldn't get them to release from the backing. The earth tones are all Ammo of Mig acrylic mud with the enamel mud spashes effects used to actually create the dirt.
So, there you have it. I've finally managed to get two Necrons with energy blades successfully painted! Now, I have about 30-40 more to go, no biggie! Keep watching this space for updates!
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