Thousand Sons Rhino

So I had taken these few pictures before the games Friday but haven't had a chance to talk about them.  You might have seen that I did manage to paint one of the rhinos which took some time because it was basically a big 'test' model.  Most of it came out well, and I have since repainted a bit of the yellow on the hull.

On thing I'm pretty happy with was this was my first attempt at freehand.  I've seen some really amazing work on hulls, in particularly chaos hulls, and I wanted to give it a shot.  Of course I have no good idea what the hell I'm doing so I knew I needed to keep this simple.  I also needed to keep this simple as I have to duplicate this procedure on 2 more rhinos.

For as much my good as anyone elses here is what I did:

The first color I used is Tausept Ochre foundation paint.  I took a 25 mm base and used a pencil to make a very light trace.  I was concerned I wouldn't be able to make this look circular, and that seemed to help a lot.  I made a few strokes to make the dragons head.

I had to thicken the head up a little, and now I basically made 'spines' down the back.  I tried to keep them evenly spaced and curved, but that was a little tricky.  Thankfully later steps would help mask my inability to do this the way I envisioned! :)

The next thing I did was try to fill in a bit more of the spines.  This added a little depth to the main circles and helped round out some of the hard corners the spines had created.

I then basically repeated the same two steps for the other side.  I thought I might try to make an equal number, but with less room I fudged a little on the bottom.  I think it works though and the eye doesn't really notice the one missing 'spine' on the inside.

Now I used some Golden Yellow to outline most of the outer bits of the dragon.  This again added a little thickness and helps the dragon have depth.  I added the blue dab for the eye.

Here is the finished freehand, now with Sunburst yellow to just pull some highlights out and give more depths.  I'm not sure why this picture turned out not so well.  But it still gives you and idea of the final result.  I tried to add some depth to the eye as well, and in person with the whole vehicle done I think it looks pretty good.  Certainly better than just leaving the top hatch blue!

Now I just have to do it two more times!

This is where I currently am on the other two.  Each dragon is a little bit different, but I think taken as a whole they have come out pretty well.

Hopefully I'll wrap them up tomorrow, then I can move to the predators!