Heavy Metal Trukk

I started the metal work for my boyz trukk this week. Here’s the steps I use.

I sprayed the panels that are going to be mostly red with Testors Flat Red enamel in two very light coats, then go over all the details I want to be metal with Chaos Black.

The first photo is all of the metal areas blocked out. This is the longest part of the process, and the most tedious. A note on "doing a clean job" versus the "messiness of orks". I go through the piece and block it out carefully, making sure to do my edges as if I was doing a "clean" model. Then I go back over it and pick out the edges carefully with Chaos Black as the basis for my chipped metal edges. It’s a controlled randomness that takes some experimenting with to get it right and something that can easily be overdone, which in my book looks just messy rather than worn. I tend to err on the side of too little rather than too much.

I then mix up 50/50 Chaos Black and Boltgun Metal, thinned down quite a bit then applied to all areas that will be steel colors (next pic). Next I use straight Boltgun Metal to go over everything again, but this time I leave some space around things like nuts and bolts, places where metals overlap and where shadows will naturally fall (undersides of things). This adds an element of depth to the individual pieces of metal, a type of "blacklining" if you will.

Another note about painting metals. The idea here is for a rough, bashed, slightly textured metal. The orks did after all steal, break off, or use second hand, the steel that makes up this contraption. I induced random breaks in the last Boltgun Metal color across certain larger areas. At this point it’s not very noticeable but after a few washes, these subtle textures will come out and add some depth and realism to the steel bars and plates.

The last three photos show all red panels with the steel parts picked out. I’ve also gone through and painted a few parts to simulate brass to give a bit of variation to the metals. I started with Tin Bitz then went over that with Brazen Brass.

My next step is to darken the red parts a bit since Testors Flat Red is brighter than GW Scab Red. I’ll do this by applying a wash of 70/30 mix of Scab Red and Chaos Black. Then I can over the entire thing with my dirty washes, which I’ll elaborate on in my next post.

Later!