Diaskuri update II.

Just a quckie; I made a few photos before I airbrushed the twins (Diascuri as they are called in Mythology) with gloss varnish and used various washes on them. They look much better now, but as usual, documentation is a few steps behind the actual work.

Previously on this project:

Castor & Pollux update

Castor and Pollux basecoated (sort of)

Castor and Pollux - basecoated (sort of)

I had some time for the twins lately. I basecoated them dark gray as I usually do and basecoated them with VMC Ultramarine blue. Much to my surprise it turned to be really ultramarine whereas VGC and Citadel ultramarine is not...
Anyway, I continued with adding some shade and zenithal highlight with my airbrush. After this I drybrushed the predators with a mixture of VGC Ghost gray and VMC ultramarine blue.
Unfortunately the pictures with the early stages fell to the warp, but here what they looked like then:

As you see they looked OK, but there was much chalkiness in the details, especially on the metal parts:

I was kind of expecting this and decide to give it a glaze at this point I heavily diluted VMC transparent blue (vallejo's transparent range is excellent, I can only recommend them, they are like heavy glazes) with liquitex airbrush medium and Vallejo's airbrush cleaner (which I use to dilute acrylics with great success) and gave the tanks two thin coats. Here's how they look like:

As you see the chalkiness is practically gone, and most of the highlights are still there. The new colour is much better suited for the mainstream Ultramarines, and since this is a commercial project, I tend to favour the mainstream... :-)

I think, after retouching the most extreme highlights, the predators will be ready for the painting of the details. I can't wait!

Previously on this project:

Castor & Pollux update

Castor&Pollux update

My classic predator revamp project progresses steadily, I have just finished the rebuilding and detailing the twins.
Rebuilding the predators was quite time consuming as the models were in a very sorry state, the following pictures may give you some idea:

I guess most would view these wrecks as waste of time, but for me they are challenge, and I had the metal parts anyway :-) 

Sometimes I had to replace damaged sections with plasticard but finally they started to come together. I magnetized the turrets, used a large amount of GS/milliput mix to fill the holes and blemishes and finally, after a lot of sanding started the detailing part.

And this is the fun part of course, details make the model alive, they make the difference between the average and the interesting. 

I added extra rivets, and decided to use mark III parts and some imperial guard accessories as the original kit is quite low on details. I also made some tow cables and other appliances. Luckily I also found some old metal tank crew members in one of my bit boxes, that somehow survived the purges.

I'm quite happy with the outcome, and I hope that with proper paintjob the twins will find a nice spot in somebody's Ultramarines army - and help to finance some new projects besides.

So here we are now:

some details:

Update: after the pictures were taken I added some purity seals too - how could I have forgotten?

Update 2: News just in: My librarian Yorias has won me the first prize at the converting competition he was built for! I feel some terminators will soon join my forces...