Painting the Monastic Cell Tower for Trench Crusade
HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Welcome to the cooliest paint tutorial on the cooliest model ever sculpted (whoever sculpted it must have been the best and cooliest guy ever and probably totally handsome and modest too!............. spoiler alert: it was me!)
My name is Danny Samuels! I am one of the owners here at Terrainiacs as well as the Art Director at Trans Atlantis Games (makers of the best paints in the entire universe: Two Thin Coats!). Here is an accurate artist’s depiction of me drawn by illustrator James Crumbo.
Ok! So I got tasked with sculpting the Monastic Cell Tower for our friends over at Factory Fortress, who are the makers of Trench Crusade! This was in collaboration with our Dark Arts Paint Kickstarter. If you haven’t seen Trench Crusade before, do yourself a favor and treat your eyeballs to some Grimdark awesomeness! You can buy their stl files here! (including this awesome tower!) Maybe one day I will do an article on sculpting, but NOT TODAY NERDS!!! This is about painting! I have some peculiar methods of using our paints (probably acquired from my time in film) and really wanted to push them and try some interesting things with this paint job SO BUCKLE UP!!!
NOW TO THE PAINTING PROCESS!
Step 1 — PRIME TIME, BABY
After assembly (which went together perfectly…… OBVIOUSLY…… because I sculpted it…….) I primed this big thang with the blackest black primer I could find in my shed.
Step 2 — “CHEMICAL WARFARE TIME!!!” (BUT ACTUALLY DON’T)
Now here is where things get fun! CHEMICAL WARFARE TIME!!! Wait…. NOPE!! SHOULDN’T HAVE SAID THAT!!! Actually though, be safe with this part. Please wear a respirator at this stage. I filled a spray bottle with denatured alcohol (not isopropyl) and sprayed it all over the surface of the primed model. While it was still wet with alcohol, I went in with a few different colors of brown spray paint as well as the same black primer and mottled different colors of brown and black into the model. While the paint was still wet, I would spritz it heavily with more denatured alcohol. This would push the paint around in super strange and natural ways while adding some unique textures in an unpredictable and extremely fast way! You do need to give this stage some real time to dry though before moving on.
Step 3 — SALT THE EARTH (AND THE MODEL)
Now apply a liberal coat of hairspray over the model and sprinkle that good big grainy kosher salt all over it, making sure to add it heavily to crevices and areas where “water might build up in reality.” This is going to end up working as a mask for some natural paint chipping and rusting. This is a pretty common technique, but I love the taste of salt and put it on way too many things, so I figured why not make it a huge staple of how I paint mins……
Step 4 — AIRBRUSH SUPREMACY
I now bring out the handy DANdy airbrush (see what I did there? DAN….dy?! Because I am Danny?!! HaHAHAHAHAHA!) and bring up the big donut base and the cool arched window top bit with a basecoat of Griffon Claw followed by Ivory Tusk, then finished off with a highlight of Trooper White. The pipes, platform, and main middle portion were based out with Sir Coates Silver.
Step 5 — THE “IT’S NOT A WASH, IT’S A GLAZE” STAGE
Once all this has dried, I do some very subtle airbrushing in the shadows and toward the bottoms of larger forms using Oblivion Black Wash. Don’t think of this stage like you are doing a wash. You are actually treating this far more like a glaze (not meant to sink into the recesses) to homogenize areas (oooo look a fancy art word!) and add depth and grounding to your larger forms. I figured it would be easier to see this in an image once the salt was off so I didn’t take a photo for this stage to avoid confusion. You will see the result on the next step.
Step 6 — MAKE IT RAIN SALT FROM THE HEAVENS!!!
Look out slugs! Your day of reckoning is here!! Use a stiff nylon scrub brush or whatever you have on hand to flake off the salt to reveal the awesome under-rust!! Feel free to use a spritz bottle with some warm water to loosen up the salt on extra stubborn spots. At this point I needed to resist the primal urge to eat the salt and remind myself that it is covered in paint and I might die……..
Step 7 — FIX WHAT YOU WERE TOO LAZY TO MASK THEN ADD BLOOPY!
Since I was wayyyyy too lazy to mask parts of the model, it was time to go back to areas that needed more metal on them, like the small tubes etc. I used more of my trusty Sir Coates Silver for this.
This is one of my favorite stages! I call it “Adding Bloopy”…….. Let me explain. Metal needs a bit of color for it to not look like a snore fest. It also loves having a bit more matte sheen in the shadows. The highest areas of specularity (shiny shiny shimmer shimmer) should read as punchy metallics while the shadows should have a bit less sheen. This is how to make your metallics read more voluminous. Another thing to keep in mind is the COLOR so we don’t make our models look like a snore fest! Grimdark paint schemes are also super muted in value, so it is important to add subtle temperature changes where possible, or else your model will get stale. Since Grimdark tends to have warm light (look at any John Blanche art), that means, art-theory-wise, we need a cool shadow if our model wants to really pop in 3D space (ooo someone went to art school….. insert eye roll)….. So that is where BLOOPY comes in! Now what is BLOOPY you might ask?! Well BLOOPY stands for blue poopy! Mixing a muted blue with a muted brown will give you a lovely glaze color that can be modulated for different lighting scenarios. The more poop brown you add to your BLOOPY, the better it will be for cooler lighting scenarios; and vice versa with blue. Adding non-metallic paint in your shadows will also check that much-needed box of mattes in the shadows to add volume. So when in doubt BLOOPY it out! Much like Frank’s Red Hot……… “I put that sh$% on everything” from metallics, to rocks, to flesh tones, to foliage. BLOOPY is an extremely versatile paint mix! After years in the lab squeezing out BLOOPY I have arrived at the conclusion that the perfect two colors are Abyss Blue and Scorched Earth. I went around 60/40 blue to brown in this ratio and watered down the mix just a bit. I added it to the shadows and used a second clean wet brush to feather out the shadow.
Step 8 — DANNY’S SPECIAL TERRAIN SAUCE™
Now that we BLOOPED all over, we need to push the deeper shadows into the deeper recesses of our metal and panel lines. For this I used another one of my secret mixes called Danny’s Special Terrain Sauce. The goal of the sauce is for it to go really far (washes are expensive) while still flowing and pooling in the recesses. Another important key is that the color is punchy and it takes a long time to dry so we can wipe areas of it away, leaving paint in the recesses or creating interesting textures/streaks. To make Danny’s Special Terrain Sauce, take equal parts paint (in this case 50/50 of Oblivion Black Wash and Doom Death Black), quick-shine acrylic floor polish (yes this is actually for floors but it is a much cheaper solution for flow aid), retarder (to extend drying), and water. I actually end up bottling this stuff up separately so that I can add my sauce to whatever paint I feel like. I use this black mixture to push even more depth into the deepest portions of my shadows and panel lines. The added drying time allows you to create some interesting textures as well by applying a very watered-down mix to large areas like the main body, then wiping it away or sponging it off for interesting effects and to break up boring surfaces.
Step 9 — RETURN OF THE METAL HIGHLIGHTS
This is a pretty standard stage. We need to highlight our metals back up a bit, so I did this with a light drybrushing of Plate Armor, then a precise edge highlight of Mythril Blade.
Step 10 — WINDOW PIECE SHENANIGANS
On the top piece with all the cool windows, I added Doom Death Black to the window holes and shaded around the recesses with Archaic Sepia Wash. I also made a super thin version of the sepia wash and applied it in some random streaks to add some visual noise and subtle weathering to the surface. This was then finished off by highlighting the edges again very precisely with some Ivory Tusk. Be sure to add some subtle highlights on the edge under a scratch mark to really make those things POP!
Step 11 — BRASSSSSSSSS!!!
This model was getting a little bit too monochrome, so I added some brass details to break it up a bit. I used Spartan Bronze as a base followed by a wash of Battle Mud Wash in the shadows and a fine highlight of Dragon’s Gold.
Step 12 — GIVE IN TO THE INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS
At this stage I let the intrusive thoughts win and went out to my shed and made a mallet for some odd reason out of a log of what I believe is beech wood. I don’t really know why or what I will use it for, but it seemed like a thing I needed………
Step 13 — THE FINAL BOSS: WEATHERING
Ok, so we are back at it and it is time for the final cool stuff!!! WEATHERING! We really need to grime this thing up even further. The key to grime and rust at this stage is Danny’s Special Terrain Sauce. Rust tends to get more saturated in areas where the water can really build up over time, and my sauce is really good at helping our paints create the illusion. Again, none of these techniques are needed, but I figured I would show some fun recipes. I made many versions of rust colors to use for this to keep things natural and varied. I mixed my sauce with Flaming Orange, Rust Orange, Dry Rust Brown, Boar Hide, and a 50/50 mix of Rust Orange with Manticore Ochre. I used the Rust Orange + Manticore Ochre mix, as well as straight Rust Orange, the most. I used a blister sponge in some places to add a grimy chippy sort of texture in some areas. For the most part the key was pre-wetting the surface with a spritz bottle of water so the colors laid on very softly and natural drips would form. I did a lot of wet-into-wet streaking and also wiped away paint in many areas to leave saturated pigment in the crevices. One of the nice things about Danny’s Special Terrain Sauce is the added dry time, which really allows you to play. I also added verdigris to the brass using Ray Gun Glow and Danny’s Special Terrain Sauce (I will never get tired of saying that). I know this was a GIANT stage all at once, but it was kind of important to do it all in one go with this wet-into-wet spritz bottle technique, and also this paint job and these techniques were meant to be fast and easy. The key takeaways for weathering are to think about spaces where water would pool the most and add punchy, saturated color in those areas, which will really help sell the illusion of the oxidization process. Also look for areas to add drips and streaks to imply loose paneling or grungy paint chipping to add believability!
AND WALLAH!!!
CONCLUSION!!!
AND THAT’S IT!!!!!! This sculpt was a ton of fun! This paint job was a ton of fun!!!!!! Here is a photo of my cat Meatball inspecting my shoddy work and judging……. AND WITH THAT; SEE YOU NEXT TIME NERDS!!!!
PS if you liked this content and this sculpt please take a look at our webstore here on our home page and our files on our MyMiniFactory.
