Airbrush Project: Chaos Space Marine Chosen

This is second of my collaborations with Tony / Poot. He does a fancy airbrush basecoat, and I finish the models off by hand. In fact, I think that this is the model that started it all off . As soon as I saw the metallic blue basecoat on this model I was desperate to get my hands on it.

The basecoat for this model is another Minitaire Ghost Tint, similar to the one that we used for our Ork, but this time built up in layers working up towards the metallic blue for this model's power armour. This is how the basecoat works:

Firstly, some standard metallics are sprayed over a plain black undercoat. This one was from the Vallejo Model Air range. The model is sprayed from above so that the raised surfaces get the most coverage, and the recesses of the model are still pretty much black.

Now the tint goes on and the model comes to life! What I really like about this type of basecoat is that looks like nothing you could ever do by hand. It is a look that is totally unique to the airbrush, in my experience anyway.

The final airbrush step is to give it a coat of matt varnish. Although the gloss finish of the tints look amazing, they are very difficult to paint standard acrylics on top of, so the varnish makes it much easier to work with.

This is where I took over, and Poot said that he wanted a dark metallic trim for the model, so my first step was too mix GW Boltgun Metal and some VMC Black 1:1 to block out these metal areas.

This picture shows how I approached the rest of the model... In this case the power armour is done for me, so I don't need to touch that (If fact a big part of this sort of paint job is not getting paint on the power armour). I am still hopelessly obsessed with VGC Hexed Lichen, which is the purple base for the bolter case and his robe. It is probably time that I put it to the back of my desk before every model I ever paint ends up being purple.

I decided to make the gargoyle on the should pad green, and that it would be based on a bone colour with a heavy green wash. In the picture above, the gargoyle has had its first of two green washes, and the horns have been based with the bone colour.

The gargoyle's face is finished off with a highlight of GW Ogryn Camo and a few other details on the eyes and mouth. The sword is in GW Khorne Red, another of my standard go-to colours.

Photography is not my strong point, and I had to lie him down to get a decent picture of the robe. I started off aiming to use the standard base / wash / highlight with base colour / second highlight with lightened base technique... but I got was having a bit too much fun with the green wash and decided to try using that on the robe. It was subtly different to the results you'd expect with a blue or black wash so I stuck with it.

There's also a hint of red highlighting on the robe. This started as an accident when I was a bit sloppy when painting the base, but it really complemented the purple after I tidied it up so I left it on. Next time I do purple robes (which will not be long because of my current purple obsession) I am definitely going to put some red in the mix and see how it works out.

Last couple of pictures: