Painting an Army in 24 hours

[dragonlady]

Continuing my coverage of GW Washes:

I participated in a local GW Battle Bunker’s Iron Painting Competition in celebration of their release of 5th edtion of 40k.



The event which provided an opportunity to paint a Battleforce sized army of 40k models within 24 hours. We had to show up at the store at 5pm on Friday with our Battleforce, which could be be assembled and primed already.



I showed up with a Sisters of Battle force. Firstly, the SOB (Sisters of Battle) were my first force when I started playing Warhammer 40k back in 3rd edition. We were relegated to a simple Chapter Approved list to play our force as there had been no army codex since 2nd edition for the army. But the idea of women in powered armor and Faith based feats is something too big for me to ever give up on.

So for this contest I brought 2 large units of SOB troopers (12 women each), 1 unit of Retributors (6 strong), a unit of Seriphim (12 – which included 2 alternate troopers either 2 hand flamers or 2 inferno pistols), a Immolator/Rhino and a Canoness.
I also brought along 21 bases from Jeff at Dragon Forge (http://www.dragonforge.com) that I had purchased for my sisters last year.
For paints I used a mixture of Privateer Press P3, Citadel, Vajello, and Coate d’armes.
List:
P3 Menoth White Base (Bone White)
P3 Menoth White Highlight
P3 Menoth Sanquine Base
P3 Menoth Sanquine Highlight
P3 Rhulic Gold
P3 Solid Gold
Citadel Boltgun Metal
Citadel Gryphonne Sepia Wash
Citadel Thraca Green Wash
Citadel Baal Red Wash
Citadel Blue Wash
Citadel Royal Blue
Citadel Devlin Mud Wash
Citadel Ogrin Flesh Wash
Citadel Foundation Mechrite Red
Vajallo Black
Vajallo Silver
Vajello Scorpian Green
Vajello Flaming Orange
Vajello Bronze
Coat d’arms White


I primed all the models in basic white first, with a spray white primer.
I first painted the sisters’ bottom robes in in the Menoth Red base color. I then applied the Citadel Gryphon Sepia wash to the entire model., this made each model a bone white (brown/white).

[dragonlady]

It took a while for the models to dry and there was some pooling on the bottom edges of many of the girls robes and feet. The final drying took close to an hour.

During this time, I painted the bases I picked up from Jeff with Citadel Blood Red Spray paint (which you can no longer get) and washed them with the Citadel Mud Wash.

[Dragonforge Brick bases]

I next applied by dry brushing the Menoth White Base color, which tended to be a bone white, the effect was not very noticeable, except where my brush wiped over red areas of the model.

The next dry brush layer was Menoth White Highlight to the models. This really brightened the models providing for a sort of “White Deathwatch bone color” that I was looking for.

[First Highlights applied]

[VSS Front]

[VSS Back]

[dragonlady]

I now broke out the Menoth Red Highlight, and went over the red robes again., completely covering all the red areas, including any areas that might have been nicked or drybrushed by the white dry brushing from previous steps, this provided for some great shading of the red robe areas (between the red base coast, Sepia wash and the white dry brush overstrokes). Plus I used this same red now to pick out any fleur de leis icons throughout the helmets, backpacks and armor.

[Details and Basecoats fixed]

I now picked out details of various guns and barrels with black, and bronze, also base coated holy symbols with P3 Rhulic Gold and highlighted the symbols with the P3 Solid Gold.

I had to decide how to show some effect with Plasma guns, flamers and melta guns. I thought I would color code the various guns: Red for flame throwers, green for Melta weapons, and Blue for Plasma weapons. I first tried some orange on the barrel of the flamers, and wash them in red, and that sucked, so I went over them again with simple boltgun metal and washed them in red. That worked. For Melta guns, I painted the power element with the Citadel blue wash and that provided a healthy glow of the Bone white (now blue). I washed the Melta Gun power chambers with the Citadel Green wash for an earie glow, again perfect.


I painted the end of the plasma pistols with bronze. Nice effect. I also painted the jewels of the power swords blue and the conduit of the power sword a Green.

[dragonlady]

Now I was ready for bases again. I painted the rubble piles of Jeff’s Dragonforge bases with a Light brown, and again washed the entire base with the Citadel Devlin Mud wash. I also washed the handmade bases with the Ogre Mud to match the general tone of the custom bases by Jeff. I then painted the edging of the all the models with Citadel Foundation Mecha Red to tie all the model together base wize.




[Detailed Army]

[dragonlady]

As I said this was for a Ironman painting contest, and I began my painting at 6pm, giving my self a handicap of 1 hour, because I was busy getting all my stuff together at home. Over the course of the evening we had over 10 people join in to participate. We had everything from Space Orcs, to Necrons, Eldar, Chaos Space Marines, Dark Angels, and Tau.


Face and hair was washed with Citadel Ogrin Flesh wash.


I finished my basic painting of my Sisters at 1 pm the next day, and spent the next 4 hours, cleaning up little details, sprucing up my bases with static grass, painting eye and black lip stick on their faces. And highlighting their hair again with Coat d’armes white. I kept thinking of Children of the corn as I was doing this last step.

[Almost there - Based]
I added a banner to one of the Sister unit Signet bearer.

[Banner shown off]

[dragonlady]

I applied Witch Hunter/Inquisitional decals to the Immolator and the Banner!

[Immolator and Retributor Squad]
I sealed the entire group with spray on Polyurethane that I had purchased from Home Depot.

Of the other contestants, only the Dark Angel painter besides myself, finished his battleforce, though there were some very great models coming out of the none finishers.

[Chaos Dark Age Unforgiven]
The judges were the Managers and workers at Games-workshop and I was sweating my chances as the DA painter’s style was very clean and he had been working up the last minute with some elegant details. He even made for dirt marks on the bottom of his Rhino.

[Dark Angels Competitor]

[dragonlady]

In the end?? I actually won!! This is the first major speed painting contest that I won, and for a 24 hour sprint, I was elated!

[Sisters Battle Battleforce]

I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial and monologue as much as I loved getting my SOB force completed!!

Dragonlady

[Chaos Lord Horus]

NUNS WIT GUNS!

yep pretty cool! considering i hate sisters of battle usually youve done a really good job!

[Brother Warchild]

Looking pretty darn cool, i like the ease of your method and it worked out really nice, Great job and Congrats!!!

[GrandMaster Raziel]

That was really cool. Got a lock in at our local GW in Aberdeen in a couple weeks that I have to get a 1500 pt army ready for. It will be a deathwing list and I'll try your method since the colors are very similar

Cheers

[dragonlady]

That is where I got the schema from in the first place. I've always loved the Deathwing bone white armor, but have always been afraid to try it with good effect (actually tried back in the day and it wasn't pretty:



These all went into the stripping tank to be reborn with this project!

[DuskRaider]

Very nice color scheme, quite fitting for SoB if I do say so.

[Warmaster Romulas]

you are my idol
that is awesome!!!!!!!
there is no way i could get that many fig painted in one night
my wife and my son would eat me alive if i tried

+rep for you

[Colonel Marbi Chora]

By the gods, that's amazing! Really well painted, I might actually have a use for the washes now!

[Rellik]

Thats a great looking army. The armour is pretty cool as well.

[Spartan-11755]

I've always like the sisters Army but never could bring myself to do a whole Metal Army.....

[lord marcus]

Originally Posted by dragonlady

In the end?? I actually won!! This is the first major speed painting contest that I won, and for a 24 hour sprint, I was elated!

[Sisters Battle Battleforce]

I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial and monologue as much as I loved getting my SOB force completed!!

Dragonlady

great to see that you own, but why are all of the helmeted sisters helmets bone colored, seems like you need to fix that, otherwise great job!

what were the refreshments? and was it loud, did the shop close for the comp?

[Spartan-11755]

Originally Posted by lord marcus

great to see that you own, but why are all of the helmeted sisters helmets bone colored, seems like you need to fix that, otherwise great job!

what were the refreshments? and was it loud, did the shop close for the comp?

Cause Dragon Chose that color and it looks good. She doesn't need to fix that Marcus. She chose Bone colored armour there is nothing wrong with it Marcus.

[lord marcus]

no there isn't, i just asked a simple question born of speculation.

[Prince of the Night]

Well, I am not a fan of speed painting, but I must say, you did a wonderful job on this task and well deserved 1st place finish. Great work DL and +rep for you.

[dragonlady]

Marcus,
Having the helmets match the armor was on purpose. I suppose you would have done the contrast color instead?

I did purposely choose white hair for the girls also. I was not impressed by the choice of other colored hair. But I found that I needed to contrast it from the armor a little more. This is the reason that I used Bone White for the last highlight on it. It doesn't come out as well in the photos, but in person, it is enough of a difference to stand out on the girls.

Thanks for all the comments guys. I think one thing it shows is that as we all progress and get more experience, our painting slowly creeps forward and is better!

Or maybe we are just more patient with ourselves, but I still admit that I'm an impatient painter. I want to get it done! This is why I actually like speed events. I feel productive.

I will never be as good as several of my friends (they do some wonderfull jobs) or even if you look at the Unforgiven Chaos DA painter, he was doing wonderfull jobs on a couple of miniatures, but at the end of 24 hours, he only had 2 done, and he still wasn't really satisfied with them.

We all have our goals in painting and modeling. Mine is to field a sizable, but decently painted army that I've done myself.

Dragonlady