The Gate and the Giftbringer

Filed Under: Hobby

Hobby update!

Despite pissing about with some other things¹, I have managed to finish a couple of projects.

Firstly, the Ophidian Archway. This recently-out-of-production kit has been catching my eye for years, so when I spotted a built one going for a reasonable price (a bit less than the original RRP, actually) I had to grab it.

It arrived partially broken and primed black. I reattached the broken part with some glue and milliput (there was a big gap) and put a little bit of extra primer over the top with the airbrush. Then to paint it I did a lot of drybrushing grey colours, made use of my barely-used-these-days Citadel metallic paints for the metal parts, and made light use of some washes (Seraphim Sepia, Agrax Earthshade) to add a bit of colour variation.

It’ll make a great addition to my terrain collection. For future work I might mount it on a base. If I get a chance to get another cheaply I’ll probably take it – it was a lot of fun to paint this one and I had many ideas for other ways I could have approached it.

After that, I painted up the gift I got from my community Secret Santa:

Yep, that’s a night goblin Santa impersonator, riding a sleigh pulled by a gang of squigs. A truly incredible kitbash. I am in awe of my Secret Santa’s skills.

I’m pleased with how the paint job came out. After priming black, I covered everything in a dark blue before coming in from above with off-white paint and a drybrush of white to pick out the raised areas. After that it was mostly a Contrast job, highlighting details with normal paint.

Finally, I went back to scratch-builing terrain, using up the last of my XPS foam to construct 1-inch-tall flat-topped hills:

As well as a couple of spires:

And some weird rocks:

I discovered a trick when painting these. Finding the grey I’d painted them to be a bit cold and flat, I decided to try a careful drybrush of Ushabti Bone - a light khaki - on the edges of things. This really, really worked to add definition and contrast to them, even making the darker grey in the recesses appear almost blue to the eye. Very neat. It worked so well I’m tempted to try it on some of the other terrain I’ve built and painted…