Painting Thousand Sons

So I'm not the worlds greatest painter, but I do enjoy painting my miniatures and take some pride in the end result. I know I'm not going to win any golden demons, but the end force I put on the table usually gets the 'hey great looking army' comments and that is always nice.

So after painting my first two thousand sons I decided I would try to actually document how I'm painting them. This is as much for me to study as anybody else to learn from I suppose. :)

So I guess some basic things first. I'm using almost exclusively now the Raphael brushes. Yes they are good and yes they are worth it. I do use a airbrush for my first basecoat and a home made wet palette for mixing paints.

The paints I used for these guys are almost all GW paints: Foundation Paints Dheneb Stone, Solar Orange, Orkhide Shade, Mechrite Red and Tausept Ochre; Colour Paints Golden Yellow, Sunburst Yellow, Regal Blue, Enchanted Blue, Ice Blue, Goblin Green, Scorpion Green, Boltgun Metal, Mithril Silver, Burnished Gold, Shining Gold; Plus Black ink, the Asurmen Blue, Gryphonne Sepia and Badab Black washes.

The only non GW paint I use is a big tube of generic white I use for a little lightening and a Brown Ink from P3. At the very end I'll use Testor's Dullcoate.

So with that here is my 'Tutorial'!

I'm adding the bases later (which I've already painted) and keeping the guns off to make it easier to paint. In the future I think I may also leave the heads off of 1ksons, but more on that later.

-Airbrush the entire model with a thinned out Regal Blue.
-Cover the parts that are staying blue with a liberal amount of Asurmen Blue wash.
-Pick out all the trim with Burnished Gold

-Tausept Ochre the loin cloths and the stripes.
-I give a light highlight of Golden Yellow over the loin cloths. This help give a little definition before I apply a wash (and why I don't bother yet with the stripes).-I now take the Gryphone Sepia and wash the gold and yellow, aiming to darken up crevasses and ridges.
-Now again go over yellow with Golden Yellow including the stripes.
-And one more layer with the Sunburst Yellow for ridges and to make the stripes pop.
-Now take Shining Gold and pull up the highlights for the gold.
Now we get to work on the blue (and in reality I think I'll move this step up to earlier, perhaps before the Gryphone Wash step).
-First I go over the with Regal Blue
-Then a 50/50 Regal Blue/Enchanted Blue mix
-Then a 20/80 Regal Blue/Enchanted Blue mix

The guys in the pic below are laid out in the above steps, but oddly with the flash I think the guy in the middle looks 'lighter', but in reality the layers are very subtle but the right most guy is actually the brightest at this point.
-I then start mixing Enchanted blue and Ice Blue in the wet palette and pull up the blue highlights.

You can see the blue in the helmet strips is a bit of a mess, and trust me the back is worse. This is probably the bane of all 1ksons painting. I'm going to try to leave some heads off of models and see if this helps. For now I just move on and then touch up the model all at the end during the 'clean up' phase.
Time to work on the eyes.
-Apply Orhide Shade to eyes
-Apply Goblin Green to eyes
-Apply Scorpian Green to eyes

That takes care of the eyes, but I've also been playing with the 'glow' from the ghostly green eyes.
-Mix goblin green in with the early mix of Enchanted blue/Ice blue that is still on the wet pallets (you might need to add some more Enchanted blue). It is a little tricky to get the mix looking right and to apply just enough to get the glow out on the eyes.
-Now add in Scorpion green to that mix and do just a thin amount around the eye.

The goal should be to have it fading into the blue but also to keep that dark ring around the eye for definition. I had to do a little touch up with black ink in a few spots.
-Next is finally getting to our Boltgun metal which I use for the guns as well as the 'ribbing' between joints and some of the other 'metal' piping bits.
-Now go over all of that Boltgun with a healthy amount of Badab black wash.
-This is barely a step but you can see the guy on the right I've used the Stone on his rope on his loin cloth.
Now we're into what I call the 'details' phase. This consists of a number of small bits that require a little bit of mixing or dabbling but that all gets done pretty quickly.
-Apply Solar Orange to Gemstones (I use it on the 'Eyes' of the Tzeentch icons)
-Apply some of the Brown ink to the rope, and to the Gold 'pipes/vents' that are mostly on backpack
-Mix some of the Brown ink with Orange to shade the gems
-Take Mithril Silver to highlight all the Boltgun areas, as well as dab our 'bolts' around the model
-Mix some white with the Orange to create the highlight for the gems
-Mechrite Red for the few Wires you might have about
-Black Ink the lines in the helmet, specifically where blue or yellow have spilled in the lines

This completes the 'details' phase.
At this point I assembled the model, gluing the gun on and the guy to the bases I've already prepared.
Now we just clean up the model and give it a Dullcoate. The Dullcoate is great, I'm always surprised how much it helps soften up the highlighting.


Argh, I can see a few spots I've missed that I need to go back now and fix. I can see a few places where Mithril Silver dabs that need cleaning, and some more detail work needed on the damn helmets of doom. So maybe I'll replace that pic after a few more touch-ups. It seems I usually have a few nights of touching up as I look at the model and find the few blips that have accumulated.

But at the end of the day they look nice and go along with the two guys I've painted earlier.So that's it for now, five guys done, 22 more to go. :p