Drop Assault Inbound

I told you I would be more consistent with my posts for a bit. Today I bring you my first vehicle for my Astral Claws, a drop pod.

Like I said this was really the first model I have painted for this army thats larger then a Terminator. I have never been a fan of painting vehicle models beside Dreadnoughts due to their size, time required to paint and large areas of repetition. This model was no different, it took me about 2 weeks of work on and off and really stretched my attention at times but I stuck with it and painted it in chunks.

I started with the interior which was a little easier for me, kind of like dipping my toes in the water. It is treated a bit more like an individual and has less repetition and more unique items. 

I tested out one of the doors next, painting it from start to finish to work out a design. I knew I wanted to stick with Forge World's use of simple geometric shapes as the accent color so kept it predominantly silver with just a little blue. Unfortunately Forge World did not have any painted examples or color plates in their books and I was only able to find one hobbyist example online which was almost more then 50% blue, so I was on my own. After many days of thinking on the problem I settled on a relatively thin horizontal stripe running behind the chapter symbol. I am really happy with it, especially with all the weathering. I copied the hazard stripes from the GW stock Ultramarine model since I really liked it and just added in some paint chips. 

After this I painted all the rest of the doors in a batch over a day or so. The fins were pretty straight forward and probably the most boring part. I did them in chunks of 1 or 2 at a time and used them as a break from normal life, kind of a zen painting therapy. They didn't take more then 30 to 40 minutes a fin. One they were all done though and I had the whole model together I realized that when the doors were open there was no blue on the model. Again I didn't want to paint any armor panels blue entirely and found a way to incorporate some blue stripes diagonally that did't make it look like a blue band going around the whole model.

The last step was to add weathering such as paint chips and scorching. I didn't want any rust since I imagine that they keep these in pristine condition onboard the ships and all the weathering comes from being launched out of a space ship like a torpedo, micro impacts in space, reentry through the atmosphere, defense blasts from weapons and impact with the ground. I used a combo of black weathering powder and paint for the scorching. I did the powder first and really like the subtlety near the trailing ends but decided it wasn't dark enough at the points where the burns were worst. The combo of paint and powder worked perfectly.

I have at least one more pod to paint for this army but think I will put some tanks and much more infantry in between the two before I work on it.  

While vehicles take a bit more for me to get interested in painting I am really happy with the end result.

Until next time,

Tyler M.