Wednesday, May 31, 2017

GALLERY: Kharadron Overlords Arkanaut Frigate


The centerpieces of any Kharadron Overlords army are the Skyvessles. These models are awesome looking and something we haven't seen in Age of Sigmar before. To round out my first batch of Overlords I knew I had to paint one of these up, so the Frigate Death Breaker adds its might to my skyport of Barak-Mor.


I knew this would be a challenging model from the start. It has so much detail, and 3D depth to that detail too. I broke mine up into several subassemblies. I had the main hull, the gun, the crew, and all three endrins (the balloons) with their supports attached to them. This allowed me to get into all of areas that would otherwise have been blocked by the supports and the endrins. I primed mine black, but I wish I had used Leadbelcher and Retributor spray on the endrins, it would have saved me a bunch of time.


I painted it in my own colors of Barak-Mor, but deciding how to apply that color scheme took a little more thought. I ended up stealing patterns and ideas from both the 'Eavy Metal models and the studio army. To make things go a little quicker, and also make my boat look a little more rundown, I decided to paint the endrins and their supports entirely metallic. This was the first thing I painted since I planned on doing a lot of drybrushing. I base coated all of the brass with Skullcrusher Brass and the silver with Leadbelcher before doing any washes. This took several thin coats, especially for the brass. I painted these in pretty much the exact same manner as I did on my Arkanauts, whose tutorial you can find here. The only change I made was to do a drybrush of Skullcrusher Brass after washing it with Reikland Fleshshade and before drybrushing the Necron Compound. This was mostly because there were so many flat open areas, and I wanted it to look a little smoother. I then weathered these areas completely before moving onto the next color, the black.


I did the black next since it had the potential to be the second messiest color since there were interior areas of it that I thought I might have to just jam my brush into to paint. I painted this black differently from the black on the infantry. After base coating all of it with Abaddon Black I did a line highlight of Dark Reaper. This was followed by a more refined highlight of Thunderhawk Blue, and finally a little bit of Fenresian Grey. This was partially to test out these colors for a future project, but I also thought it might be cool to give the black areas that are hard metal a different look than the softer leather on the infantry. I did paint the few areas of black leather on here and on the crew in the same way as the Arkanauts. 


After this was the Incubi Darkness, which I painted in exactly the same manner as the Arkanauts, except for only painting the Nuln Oil into the areas it needed to go instead of all over. There wasn't too much to highlight and it was mostly just a few edges and lots of rivets.


To finish off the hull I painted the cream areas. I also painted the hoses on the endrins at the same time. They were all base coated with Zandri Dust, followed by a wash of Seraphim Sepia. On the hoses and cloth areas I just did an all over wash of this, but on the hull I just painted the wash around the rivets and any other detail that needed to be picked out. I wanted to make sure the color on the hull was super uniform, so that's why I didn't wash the entire thing. This was highlighted with Ushabti Bone, and then an extra highlight of Pallid Wych Flesh. Since this is a centerpiece model I wanted to do that extra step just to make it pop a bit more. With the entire hull done I went back and added rust stains around some of the rivets. I also added scratches and chipping with Rhinox Hide and highlighted it with either Fenresian Grey, Gauss Flayer Green, or Pallid Wych Flesh, depending on the area.


The ship's name, Death Breaker, was painted on the side of the prow with Zandri Dust. I looked up the khazalid alphabet for this, the language of the duardin, so I could make it look like the Overlords painted it on there themselves. The portholes were painted in the same way as the glowing bits on my Arkanauts. I base coated them white, washed with Nihlahk Oxide, and relayered them with white. This took several thin layers of white, and I concentrated it more and more towards the center of the portholes as I went. I also went back with the Oxide color around the edges when I felt like they were becoming too bright. 


I glued all of the crew to some spare square bases I had and painted them last. These were literally painted exactly like my Arkanauts. The only real difference is on the Navigator, since he has some rolled up parchment. I base coated those with Screaming Skull then washed them with Seraphim Sepia. This was highlighted with Screaming Skull and a bit of pure white.


With that the Frigate was done! It took me about a month to paint in total with an hour or two each day. I glued all of the subassemblies together, and painted the base up seperately to match my desert basing. The ship was sealed with matte varnish and then I stuck it on the flying stand. Unfortunately, I did not glue it to the stand at first since I wanted to be able to remove it for transport. This led to the ship falling off when I was holding it five feet above my carpet. After repairing the damage, mostly just the large endrin falling off and a few other broken bits, I glued it to the flying stand.


It took awhile to paint and was a little fiddly, but in the end I am really happy with how it turned out. I now have 500 points of Kharadron Overlords painted. I think I may hold off on expanding this anymore for the moment and just use this as an ally force in a Grand Alliance Order army. I plan on theming most of my Order armies in the Endless Deserts, so all of the basing will match. When I do expand these guys though I'll go up to 1,000 points and add in another unit of Arkanauts, a unit of Thunderers, a units of Endrinriggers, and a Khemist. I'll probably also gives these guys a spin in AoS Skirmish. Unfortunately, there is no video for this as it is just too large and awkwardly shaped for my usual method. I will try and do something a bit different soon and see if I can still get a video up for this.

Until next time,

Tyler M.

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