Painting a Helldrake x2

Let me start off by saying I know I am not a great painter.  There are tons of great painters out there and I am thankful for the fact that they produce great tutorials that are helping me to get better.  I'll include a couple at the end of this post.

I wanted to take a moment to put up some pictures of couple of figures that I am pretty proud of and explain a little bit about how I did it in case there are other non super painters out there that would like to have a nice looking army.

I watched OrcPainterNerd's tutorial on weathering using AK interactive heavy chipping solution and just couldn't wait to try it and that lead me to this helldrake project.

I started by magnetizing the wings and neck with 1/4 inch cylinder magnets.

I then primed the whole thing black.

Here is where it was supposed to get interesting.  I painted splotchy colors that was supposed to resemble rust and weathering all over the model and then covered it in Satin Varnish and once that was dried I covered it in the chipping solution.

Well... Nothing happened and I couldn't get the chipping solution to do its thing and I didn't get the effect I was going for. So I rallied and did the weathering the old fashioned way - with a sponge.  I started with a base coat of burnt umber and then brought it up to Vermin Brown and then finished it off with blazing orange.  Then I slathered the whole thing in a ton of Devlan Mud

Here they are with a basecoat of Dark Angels green before I painted the crap ton of gold trim using vallejo old gold.

This is after the first coat of wash had dried and I went back into the wells of the wing with a sponge.  The bottom layer is Light Camo Green and the top layer of the well paint is Necrotic Flesh.

Here is a little more work in progress with one of the wings is in place and weathering has been done to the main body of the drake.

During this process someone suggested I try to do a 'sick glowing effect' on the head and engine.  This was my first attempt and ended up being the best I could do.  Bottom layer is lich purple, top is warlock purple and then warlock purple mixed with white.  You can't tell here but I do eventually go back and put a dot of white in the eye well and then do more highlights with the airbrush.

I started to work on the base here.  In stead of the dorky flight stand that comes with the model I mounted it on a spoke.

Heckle and Jeckle taking shape here.

Finished drake number 1

Finished drake number 2

I realize this nurgle style is pretty forgiving but I am very happy with how they turned out and they are getting work done for me on the table top.

As promised check out these actual tutorials below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw5bCNnDiXE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RckNMlvyjKo