Thousand Sons Repaint

I've talked a little bit about the magazine 28 in the Tonks post, and continue to find it a source of inspiration. They are really fascinated painting in a John Blanche style (Dubbed "Blanchitsu", a term I find odd and don't really use) and I have long wanted to try it out. After a game of Kill Team with my half-painted Thousand Sons models - in which I lost handily, curse of the unpainted mini for sure - I decided to just go for it. So here's Miss Captain Bear's official guide to painting Blanche-style!

 As always, I collected a couple of John Blanche's works as reference material, pulling out colors to give me a sense of his palette. Just from reading about the style, I'm aware he strictly uses warm colors, favoring sepia and reds. However, I'm still glad I grabbed some concepts of his, since I was surprised how much contrast he was able to get out of the hard black colors as well. The upper-left especially was a guiding reference image, but I also wasn't seeking to replicate any of these precisely.

Then, I began the paint with a Zenithal highlight with my airbrush on all the models. First I primed entirely black, then sprayed white from above to get a gradient look.You can achieve a similar look without and airbrush by spraying black primes and heavily drybrushing white from above, or priming while and doing thick black washes from below. 

From there, I started building up color in multiple washes. Other guides recommend oil washes, and I do think you can achieve better results with those, I don't currently have any. Also, I really appreciate Acrylic paint's versatility and water based nature, allowing it to be really easy to thin and also clean up.

I didn't really have a plan, I just knew I wanted washes of warm colors across the model. I picked out yellow, brown, tan, sienna, and red on my wet palette, and thinned and mixed them semi-randomly. Then, I slopped this all over the model as a basis for the next steps. What it did was create interesting variations in color and undertone, underneath the following washes. At this point, I was getting pretty nervous, and worried that I would have to re-prime and start over. But after sleeping on it and coming back the next morning, I decided to push forward, and see where it goes.

From there, I did another layer of yellow and bright washes on the panels of the armor, not being especially careful - I'd clean them up later. I also washed the places that I thought might be gold with a harsher red and sienna.

Then, I picked out several pieces for contrast. I went over some of the armor decorations with gold or copper (Warm colored metals) and added dark black spots on the pauldrons, gems, and jetpack nozzles.

After this all had dried, I went back and dabbed a bit of yellow wash into the eyes and jetback exhaust bits for some glow, added the head-piece lines in red, and then gave the entire model a sienna wash to tie the whole piece together. And that was it!

One of the big parts of painting like this was wanting it to be able to be batched; my Thousand Sons have been sitting in a tupperware for two years just waiting and waiting. But I've finally finished them up, and the style is broadly applicable and really easy and fast. I'm definitely considering retouching my Dreadnought too. 

I don't know that I'll do many painting tutorials on the blog in general; I feel much more confident scratch-building and kitbashing and sculpting. But maybe someday. Thanks for reading!

- Miss Captain Bear