The Ordo Pigmentum: Decals and Dunecrawlers

This month, I have been furiously working on completing two Onager Dunecrawlers. I only managed to finish one, but the other is about 2/3 of the way there. The one that has been completed is designation Epsilon-Fermi-alpha (and the other is the beta).

Like the robots, I decided to leave these mostly Khorne Red with Ushabti Bone as the other main color. The metal highlights are done in Brass Scorpion and Leadbelcher.

Agrax Earthshade was used for most of the washing. I made sure to spread the wash only into areas that needed it. Each exposed bolt got a wash, and lots of the Ushabti Bone areas got lines of wash to make them stand out. This ended up giving the legs an almost dirty look that I am quite pleased with.

As I am doing throughout the army, glowing details are first done with Caledor Sky, then highlighted in Lothern Blue. I ended up trying something a little different with the glow this time. Since it was hard to paint only the rims of the Neutron Laser wells with a light color, I painted a strong coat of Lothern Blue first and then watered down some Caledor Sky and brushed it into the wells. The effect didn't turn out quite as good as I'd hoped, so next time I'll have to actually use a blue wash instead of trying to make one.

I used the same blues with the addition of White Scar to paint up the lenses. I learned the technique from one of the Warhammer TV painting clips (https://youtu.be/7_PqPVfUmW8?t=1329), and I think the result looks great. I did it a little differently since I just left the base color black. Very easy to do, too. I always used to paint the white dot on the area with the color of the lens, but painting it into the opposite corner looks much better. I may go over these with 'Ardcoat to actually make them shiny, but I think leaving the center black instead of blue with a couple Nuln Oil shades over it achieves a very similar look.

The super-special detail I am adding to my models that I wrote about last week are custom decals in the form of the radiation trefoil! These were made by Company B (http://companyb.biz/), who were easy to work with and turned out some excellent work! I used microset to apply the decals to the models to make them stick.

I have applied the decals to my Kastelan Robots, datasmiths, and Tech-Priest Dominus so far. The robots get two small ones, one on their left shoulder and one on their right knee, and one big one on the left side of their chest plate.

Since the datasmith models are so detailed and there are so few flat surfaces on which to apply a decay, they get just one small one on the left side of their robes.

Tech-priest Dominus Nu-Bohr gets three small ones: one on his hood, one of the right front side of his robes, and one on the left side of his robes. Though I didn't intend it at first, I think I have come to like the idea that a gradual slide into the worship of Nurgle is implied: the radiation trefoil is very similar to the three-circle symbol of Nurgle, the Dominus has three radiation marks, and radioactivity is a form of decay. The worship of Nurgle by a member of the mechanicum is something less often seen in terms of sliding into heresy, so I'm glad to have stumbled onto one way that might happen!