So on my recent Ork Mega Dread paint up I wasn’t all that impressed with the paint chipping technique of simply sponging on colours. I found that to get a good blotchiness the paint had to be left relatively thick and thus caused the chipped areas to be raised, when in fact they should be sunken.

I want to add some fuel drums and stuff to a simple diorama base for the Mega Dread and decided it would be a good chance to try out the hairspray paint chipping technique, as described in many places online and in Imperial Armour Model Masterclass Vol I.

I was very annoyed to discover that I must have disposed of any 40k fuel drums I had when I sold off a heap of terrain a year or so ago. Idiot! Fortunately a pack of Tamiya 1:35 German fuel drums/jerry cans can be bought for $10.00 at the local hobby shop so I grabbed that pack and assembled one to use as a guinea pig.

The process I used was as follows:

1. Prime with Tamiya Surface Primer
2. Paint the entire drum dark brown
3. Stipple on some lighter brown over the entire drum, giving a patchy, rusty effect
4. Give it a coat of cheap hairspray. I borrowed a can from my grandmother
5. Airbrush on Tamiya flat white (thinned with isopropyl alcohol)
6. Airbrush on Vallejo Model Colour Deep Yellow (thinned with Windex)
7. 10 minutes after airbrushing use an old, stiff brush loaded with water to chip off the paint

Here’s how it turned out:

I’m quite pleased with the result! Obviously it still needs some further weathering (rust weathering powder will make a big difference) but the chipped paint effect is great. I especially love how the white coat under the yellow is visible around the chips, giving the effect of primer. You do have to be careful with the water as if you get too much on the model you can end up removing large chunks of paint (this may not be as bad if you leave the paint longer to dry before chipping).

Since this has been so successful the next step is to assemble the rest of the drums and paint them all up batch style!

I’ve recently received a few emails from people alerting me to some eBay auctions for some of my resin Battlefleet Gothic style kits (as seen here). From what I can tell there’s nothing sinister going on here: none of them look to be recasts, but rather people just onselling kits of mine that they have acquired.

Now since I don’t advertise my BFG kits for sale you might be wondering how the have come to be on the secondhand market. I wanted to take this opportunity to explain that there have been a few avenues:

1. Prizes: For the last few years I have sponsored the Gothicomp BFG painting competition by offering a few copies of my kits as prizes.
2. Gifts: I’ve given copies of my kits to good hobby friends (both local and international).
3. Paulson Games: In 2010 Paulson Games and I teamed up to sell the Zeus Light Cruisers in their online store. The feedback we received was that people felt that it was too similar to Games Workshop products so after only a couple of weeks we decided to stop selling them. A handful of lucky people managed to pick up some kits that way.
4. Trading: A big part of the modelling hobby is bartering and trading bits with other people. I have traded many copies of my kits for other model bits I’ve been interested in.

While I’m a little upset that people are selling some of my kits on eBay, they are entirely within their rights to do so and thus I really shouldn’t complain. I can’t believe the prices they’re fetching though!

Yes I am aware that this is the first project I’ve completed in the best part of a year! I’ve been busy!

Since I have a soft spot for mecha models when I first saw the FW Ork Mega Dread I instantly fell in love – the ramshackle design is marvellous in its chaos. Unfortunately like all FW resin-crack it’s pretty expensive, so I could never justify purchasing one. But then earlier this year I managed to acquire one for cheap because it was missing a couple of bits. Through my contacts I was able to source a couple of replacements and thus began my journey into painting a rusty, ramshackle mecha.

Phil Stutcinskas has done a fantastic job of the model – the level of detail is just insane. I particularly loved all of the gears and the way that many of them mesh together. I applaud the variety of cables and hoses he has employed also.

Now I have to say up front that this was my first time using pretty much all of the techniques I used to paint this. In the past the bulk of my painting was of Tau models for tabletop use, which had very clean lines and no metallics. I decided that other than the primary metal colour of the model I wanted to have a highlight colour of blue. I have a blue car, a blue hobby desk and I’m wearing a blue shirt as I type this. Maybe I’m a Bowerbird? In Ork mythology blue is supposed to be lucky and I can’t say I do too badly!

Here’s a rundown of the technique I used (in ideal order – I did things is a screwed up order):

1. Prime (Tamiya Surface Primer which is grey)
2. Airbrush all but the areas I wanted to be blue in Tamiya black
3. Paint a few random bits in very dark brown (probably should have done it a little lighter)
4. Airbrush on a light coat of Vallejo Game Colour Gunmetal
5. Black and brown washes (GW and Secret Weapon)
6. Paint blue panels
7. Paint all of the pistons, hoses and springs (some in metallic, some red, some yellow)
8. Dark blue wash the blue panels
9. Sponge chip the blue panels with a black and gunmetal mix
10. Stipple brown and then orange onto the blue panel chips for rust
11. Drybrush metallic silver on all of the upper metal edges
12. Paint the exhausts with a mix of brown paint and Secret Weapon Orange Rust pigments. I followed up with some stippled on Brown Rust pigment to give some variation.
13. Dust the whole model with Orange Rust pigment.

I procrastinated a bit on that last step before I did it, but I’m so glad I did. The rust powder took the model from looking OK to looking great and really pulled everything together to give a uniform neglected appearance. The blue panels and orange rust really work well together.

Now I realise that in the scheme of things this is far from award winning painting – like I said this was my first time trying out a lot of these techniques so there was a lot of trial and error involved. I did a few steps in the wrong order. From a technical point of view my rusty paint chips are all the wrong way around. But IMO the net result looks quite nice and I’m very pleased with the result.

I’m still deciding whether to make a display base for it or not. I do feel that bases complete the model so I would prefer it. I’m envisioning the edge of some highway asphalt with the Mega Dread standing there at idle.

Thanks for looking!