Age of Sigmar: Stormcast Eternals Army Painting WIP 3

Back for more on the AoS army.

After Natfka generously posted some screens on his "What's On Your Table" Feature over on natfka.blogspot.com, I got some great feedback on increasing the strength of the dark areas and highlight the top most edges more.

Sometimes it's great to take photos of your models, even if you aren't blogging or sharing. You can not only get great close up views and see details you normally miss, but they can give you an 'honest' perspective on the model. This was definitely one of those cases.

After adding some more washes and thin layers of blue to the shaded areas, I also went back with some extreme gold highlights to several edges. The key here was that using an airbrush for your highlights will only get you so far - for example, I needed to add more blue around the helmet, but using celestial highlighting with an airbrush couldn't achieve that effect easily - a brush could.

I also took some time to add some more layers and detail to the Lord Celestant. First was the base, as I needed to work on something other than armor for a bit.

Really, really simple concept above, using only 3 paints. I applied GW Gorthor Brown to all the dirt and mud areas heavily, then GW Dawnstone to the rocks as a thicker than normal dry brush - focusing on only 'dry brushing' the areas that would have shadows, i.e. the sides and bottoms of the rocks. The tops pretty much got smooth, normal paint as they should be more colored in direct light. I then gave a super heavy wash with GW Agrax Earthshade and let dry. I'll end up going back and dry brushing up two more colors on the rocks to get them to almost a white in feel, and the dirt and mud will be kept dark with hints of green put to mimic moss and also the colors caused by the brush and grass I'm putting on later. My Imperial Guard army really uses just the technique above though - super quick, and super easy to paint LOADS of guardmen's bases.

Oh, and because someone asked, the base is just two large pieces of garden mulch with some sparkling or green-stuff equivalent puddy to create the feel of dirt around and between them. Then some PVA glue and different size of rail road ballast for the rocks and sand. Start with the biggest rocks, carefully placing them, then work your way down keeping each size adjacent to the larger one. I've personally found this looks better than just a container with everything mixed together and dipping the base, but to each his own.

On to the LC, still lots of work to be done on him. I am painting him in pieces (unassembled), to help make sure I can get a good coat on the clock and also cleanly paint around his helmet and torso. This means that his mount is much farther along in the paint job than he is. 

Cutting off the base portion attached to his foot was way too tedious, I should have done it before I started painting. So for now it's staying on, and I'll have to paint it separate from the rest of the base. I'm not too happy about it, but it's solid plastic and the thickest part of the model, and cutting was just not going to happen for me today. 

I hope you enjoyed the update, comments and critiques always encouraged!