Enter the Gargoyles

My most recent hobby project was to paint up a brood of gargoyles. I was a little intimidated by the prospect of painting their wings. I didn’t really know how I was going to go about getting that see-through look.

I looked at a few painting tutorials for wings and I became even more intimidated. There was a lot of blending and watering down and mixing and using paints that aren’t from Citadel and I got scared.  I’ve said it before, but I want to keep the paints as simple as humanly possible. I effects and color schemes to be easy to reproduce and replicate months later. I can make another squad of genestealers easily without having to worry that I have the right ratios of White Scar White to Ushabti Bone.

While I realize this will limit me as a painter, I’m happy with my efforts so far and I think that’s generally what’s important when you’re painting your army: are you happy with how it looks?

After a solid month of dawdling with my gargoyles, I sat down, figured out what paints I would need to get the effects I needed and began to experiment and test and paint and actually got some paint on those models.

Here are the results.

I think they came out great. They fit in well with my genestealers and my tervigon and the army is coming together thematically. When I put them all side-by-side, it’s an impressive sight and I can really appreciate why people are so dead-set on having fully painted armies on the table when they game.

For the carapace and body, I used the exact same techniques and colors I did for my genestealers, though my technique has improved considerably. The wings are three colors: a base coat of Screaming Skull, followed by Kislev Flesh near where the skin of the wing meets the bone in a feather/flame pattern and then a wash of Druchii Violet. After I washed the skin in Druchii Violet, I used a paper towel to wipe away almost all of the wash where the wing would be the thinnest giving it a kind of see-through feel.

All in all, I’m very happy with how they turned out and I can’t wait to get my army on the table, if only so I can show them off before they’re quickly taken off the table again.

-D-