Thursday, April 22, 2021

Reverberating Reptiles

Look, I wanted to stick to the alliteration theme I've had going on with my Terrasaurs titles, and "Reverberating Reptiles" was the best I could come up with. You know, 'cos the bellowers attack using sound or something. DON'T JUDGE ME! Again I mainly painted these guys with an airbrush, the Terrasaurs do seem to take quite well to it. The big question here was what colours to use. I wanted them in slightly different shades from all my previous Terrasaurs, and I felt these models would look better in red/browns rather than greens.

I'd recently purchased some new browns that I hadn't tried yet, so I used some of them for the Bellowers. One got a slightly different pose, and the bumps around his head and shoulders touched up in yellow, so he could stand out a bit to serve as the Elite.
Looking up images of pteradactyls online showed they tended to be portrayed in orange-browns, which I thought looked pretty good, so I that's what I tried to go for on the Pteradactix. He's a bit of a funny model because he's so flat and horizontal, which made him hard to photograph well.
I do think the Bellowers turned out too dark; they're just not really all that visually pleasing. The gradient on the Pteradactix's wing didn't quite work as well as I'd hoped, and he would have benefitted from some more hand painting to pick out the details (as would they all to be honest), but overall I think he looks OK. Even though they were quick lazy paintjobs, I think they were still useful as they helped me with my colour sense and airbrush skills. And it's just nice to get something table-worthy out every now and again. Plus with this my Terrasaurs units are done, and I finally get to start on the big guy!


Bellowers:
I started with a basecoat of Green Stuff World 1832 Acrylic Color Redwood Brown. I airbrushed Green Stuff World 1831 Acrylic Color Choco Brown down the large scales on the back, and Formula P3 Rucksack Tan onto the belly. The claws were picked out in Formula P3 Menoth White Highlight in keeping with all the other Terrasaurs I'd painted so far, although this might have been too bright; perhaps Menoth White Base would have made more sense? The insides of the mouths were painted in Formula P3 Ryn Flesh. The eyes were first filled in with Vallejo 70.950 Model Color Black, then a spot of Vallejo 72.005 Game Color Moon Yellow was applied, and finally a tiny dot of black painted on top for the pupils. One Bellower's spots were dabbed with a light touch of Moon Yellow. The models were then dipped in Army Painter Quickshade Strong Tone shade/varnish, and the excess removed with a brush. Once dry they were airbrushed with Vallejo 26.518 Matt Acrylic Varnish. Finally they were glued onto 25mm clear bases.

Pteradactix:
The basecoat this time was Citadel Layer Skrag Brown. I airbrushed Formula P3 Rucksack Tan onto the belly, then Vallejo 72.707 Game Air Gold Yellow onto the wing membranes, trying to maintain a gradient from the edges to the "arms". The eyes, mouth, and claws were painted in the same way as the Bellowers, then he was similarly dipped and varnished. Covering a much larger area than the Bellowers, the Pteradactix received a 30mm clear base.