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It is good to start any model with at least
some idea of what you want it to look like once the painting is
finished.
As I've said, this Avenger Battlecruiser has
spent a large part of the last 40,000 years mothballed in a distant
and unvisited artificial moon, orbiting somewhere hear Port Maw.
It has been brought back into service in anticipation of the 13th
Black Crusade, and partially refitted and then rushed into battle.
All well and good, but how to reflect all this
onto a figure that's about six inches long?
Stage One
I started by undercoating with black, and then stippling the figure
with a couple of browns: bestial brown and scorched brown, that I
hoped would help break up the overall complexion of the beast, and
reflect the age and weathering that this great battlecruiser has
suffered.
Stage Two
Obviously a great feature of BFG Imperial ships is that they scrub
up delightfully with a little bit of a drybrush. This is also
a bit of a limitation when trying to do something more creative on
the painting side. My retribution class battleship I decided
to hand highlight each ridge and panel: and the effect didn't really
seem worth all the effort in the end. For this first
highlight I used Shadow Grey.
For the second drybrush I used vallejo's
off-white.
This leaves you with a very smart looking ship. I then
went over this and started adding some details.
Stage 3
 Something
that seems to be missing from many BFG ships is any sign that
they've ever gone into combat. This craft, of course, has done
nothing but fight, and perhaps it was after some terrible engagement
to crush the Horus Heresy, that this Avenger Battlecruiser was
mothballed. To emphasise the power of the Avenger's broadsides
I drybrushed the batteries and the sides of the ship downwind (in
theory) of the guns scorched brown and then black to give the affect
of battle wear and tear.
 It
was a similar idea that led me to attack the Avenger with my drill
and clippers to impose some nice battle and space damage. I
concentrated on the armoured prow, and quite enjoyed gouging this
hunk out of the front of the prow, imagining it was the result of
some desperate ramming action into the flank of a traitor admiral.
Obviously this caused a vast fire,
which again has caused smoke damage all under the prow.
 The
front of the prow I drilled away at to mimic both enemy gunfire and
meteor and asteriod damage. I also attacked a few patched of
the ship's superstructure and acted as if these had been stripped of
paint, or damaged at some point. I originally painted these
gun metal, but the patches of damage blended into the base greyness
of the whole figure. In an attempt to remedy this, I used tin
bitz and then gold, but found this far too clean and shiny.
With a little bit of experimentation with paint and painting styles,
I found the one I liked best was tin bitz stippled up with gold and
then mithril silver. You can see this below.
At this point I wanted to emphasise the reclaimed
feel of this battlecruiser and picked out a few sections in a pale
grey (space wolf grey) to make them look like these have been
canabalised from another space hulk. (see below)
Overhead View:
Finished article: about 4 hours painting I ended
up with this, photographed next to a shiny new dauntless light
cruiser fresh from the Scarus Hives. I tried a new way of
painting the bridge - blue would be lost in the overall greyness -
so I used yellow as usual, but instead of highlighting up from red,
I went from golden yellow to a 50-50 mix of white and yellow.
Don't have varnish with me at the moment, but after a trip to Hong
Kong I'll varnish these up and see if they look 'right'.
NEXT: Naming, final details and basing |
