SPACE HULK: ISS BeVier
(another speed painting contract job)

DAY ONE: SHIPMENT LOGGED IN
25 Genestealers, 13 Hybrids, 2 Magus, Patriarch.
Deadline: Two weeks-- sounds like plenty of time except that work is pretty hectic so my painting time is pretty much reserved to just the two weekends I have available. 'Ere we go!

DAY TWO: GENESTEALER PAINT SCHEME SELECTION
We start this day by looking for the paint scheme for the genestealers. Looks pretty good.

Primer: Black
Basecoat: Liche Purple
Drybrush: Mindflayer Mauve (Ral Partha)
Fleshtones: Warlock Purple
Inking: Purple Ink
Claws: Bestial Brown + Bleached Bone drybrush
Teeth: Skull White
Eyes: Blood Red
Tongue: Tentacle Pink

primer

basecoat

drybrush/fleshtones

inking

claws/teeth/tongue

DAY THREE: GENESTEALER ASSEMBLY LINE
Now that we have the paint scheme down I can put them out in an assembly line and get cranking. This picture here illustrates a number of Speed Painting DONT'S:

• Don't ever leave your brush soaking in your water.
• If you must paint out of the paint lid, cover the bottle. Long stretches of assembly line painting with the same paint-pot leaves it prone to evaporation.
• Keeping an ice cold alcoholic beverage on hand only invites you to forget what you are doing and absent- mindedly take a big swig of your dirty paint water.

The assembly line method is a great way to crank through plastic models. I worked in batches of 5-10 models at a time, taking each one through the five steps above: primer, basecoat, drybrush/fleshtones, inking, and detailing.

DAY FOUR: HYBRIDS
Here's the hybrid paint scheme. This one is tough because these old models are pretty light on detail. It's hard to make them look good.

primer/basecoat

inking

drybrushing

Start with black primer, then paint on a basecoat of Mind Flayer Mauve for the flesh. This is a great color-- it's pink enough to look like skin, but just purple enough to have a disturbing alien look to it. After that we hit it with a very watered down purple ink to get into the shadows, then hit the highlights with a thick drybrush of Tentacle Pink to build back up the fleshtones. The jumpsuits are basecoated with Nauseating Blue then drybrushed heavily with a bluish-grey to bring out the details.

If I had to do these models again, I'd prefer to do them unassembled. In general anytime you have a model that has two distinct feature types (skin vs. clothing) you are better off painting them seperately. Termagants, stealers, and space marines have uniform detail across the whole miniature, so they can be assembled first and painted all at once.

I discovered this painting up my Ork army-- paint most of the bitz seperately then assemble them once they are all painted. This method works great because I can paint the ork-skin parts (arms/heads) and drybrush them as necessary without worrying about messing up the detailing on the clothing. The bodies and legs can also be painted just as quickly without worrying about messing up the skin.

DAY FIVE: DETAILS
The last day was spent putting finishing touches on all the models-- guns, eyes, teeth, etc. I also gave a little extra attention to the character models. Bases were covered in a coarse grey ballast and the whole army was hit with GW's nasty smelling Matte Sealer.

The whole project was basically finished up in 5 days. Mind you, this wasn't five straight days-- really it took two entire weekends plus a little extra time one weeknight.

CLIENT FEEDBACK!
Benjamin,
I am back from my camping trip, so I will take a moment to let you know how pleased I am with the job you did for me. Everything looks great, especially the two Magus and the Patriarch. You did a superb job, and I would be happy to recommend you in the future. I was particularly pleased with the way you handled the business issues, correspondence, etc. Very professional, yet friendly.

--Peter BeVier