How to Paint Stormcast Retributors – featuring lumpy spray paint.
This post was meant to be all about how to paint Stormcast Retributors, in a similar vein to the Liberators, Sequitors, etc that I’ve already covered. Firstly, I always start by spraying them with Retributor Armour, as I find the spray the best base colour. As usual, this post starts with them sprayed with Retributor Armour.
However, go back up and just have a check of the Prime’s hammer in the middle, and compare it to the hammers of the other two chaps. While spraying about thirty Stormcast, one swoop over a line of them came out lumpy, leaving a coarse texture all over the side it sprayed. I think this was as a result of not shaking the can enough. There’s a picture at the end of the post where it shows the front (lumpy) and back (smooth) of the leg, but for now, here is a mid-basecoat close up picture of the hammers.
It’s coarse enough that you can feel it when you run a finger over it, and it seems to absorb paint like no-one’s business. I’m not sure the reason behind that, but it’s a pain.I had a similar thing happen when I sprayed a load of primaris marines with Averland Sunset, but managed to scrape off the texture with some vigorous toothbrush action. More importantly, it means that my Retributors look like they’ve been coated in cheap Christmas glitter.
Rather than scrub them I thought that, it’s only the front of two of them that’s badly effected, so I’ll see how they look painted up. As it turns out, it’s not too bad. The finish clearly won’t be as smooth, but painted right and you can’t tell too much from a distance.
Onto the painting
The base colours are pretty standard, so if you’ve read through any of my Stormcast tutorials or watched any of the videos on our youtube channel (here), then you’ll have a fair idea.
Staff and hair: Mephiston Red
Hammer head: Leadbelcher
Shoulders, loincloth and chest emblem: Kantor Blue
Ribbons, flooring, skulls: Rakarth Flesh
Loincloth metallic: Vallejo Model Air Chrome
Dirt: Vallejo Flat Earth
Gaps in crags: Vallejo White
Washes are where the texture really became apparent. Normally the Agrax Earthshade shade would usually create a smooth, brown dulling over the gold, now it seemed to stain it. By going around each lump in the texture it actually made the gold a lot darker. It wasn’t too much of a worry though, further paint should sort it all out!
Shades:
Agrax Earthshade: all gold and Flat Earth
Nuln Oil: Model Air Chrome and Leadbelcher
Drakenhof Nightshade: All blue areas
Druchii Violet: all red areas
Seraphim Sepia: ribbons, skulls and flooring
Once the shades were dry, it’s time to reapply the base colours. These are exactly the same as the originals, only this time you’re leaving the shades visible in the recesses. There are areas of the armour that wouldn’t receive much light on all models, and on these models, it would be the areas under the arms/pauldrons, and under the backpacks. For that reason I only add a little Retributor Armour to highlight these areas. For the rest of the miniature however, it’s as below.
Staff and hair: Mephiston Red
Hammer head: Leadbelcher
Shoulders, loincloth and chest emblem: Kantor Blue
Ribbons, flooring, skulls: Rakarth Flesh
Loincloth metallic: Vallejo Model Air Chrome
Dirt: Vallejo Flat Earth
Gold Armour
Next I worked on a few different aspects. The first was the gold armour. I’m not sure why, but I love painting the Stormcast armour, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve been doing a air few of them over the past few months. It seems like there’s a lot of smooth surface to do some nice lighting, but enough detail to keep them interesting. Possibly my favourite miniature for painting at the moment. Anyhow, I did the gold in the same way to this video, with the layers from start to finish listed below:
1, Retributor Armour
2, Agrax Earthshade
3, Retributor Armour
4, Liberator Gold
5, Liberator Gold and Model Air Chrome mix
Finally… I say finally, there’s still a lot of work on them now, as they’ve got a lot of small parts that I haven’t done yet, so start to finish, here’s how I did each section.
Retributor
Hammer – Highlight edges with Necron Compound – this dry paint makes edge highlighting metal SO easy.
Hammer shaft – Add a tiny bit of white to Mephiston Red, and highlight each ridge.
Ribbons – Two layers of highlights, the first is Rakarth Flesh and a little white added, the second is just adding more white to the previous mix.
Loincloth, shoulders and chest emblem – Added white to Kantor Blue and highlighted, then added a little more white to the mix and highlighted again.
Hair – Added Fire Dragon Bright to Mephiston Red and highlighted the hair, then added a little more Fire Dragon Bright and highlighted the highlights.
Base
Dirt – I mixed a little white with Vallejo Flat Earth and drybrushed it on.
Flooring and skulls – The same as the ribbons. I added the highlights to the most rearward facing edges on each miniature to tie the bases together.
Crag – I used Fuegan Orange shade, then a tiny bit of Carroburg Crimson to the edges of the crags. I then used a very thin brush to add some white to the central areas of the crags. This was to give the impression that the more open areas were white hot, while the edges were cooler.
The end results can be seen below.
Final Comparison
Below I’ve put up a few pictures of a Retributor with the annoying textured paint, and with the Prime who was barely textured. I’d definitely say this was because I didn’t shake the can enough. The second comparison is between the front of the textured Retributor’s leg, and the rear which is smooth.
On the whole, the highlights and paint have hidden the worst of the texture. However, it’s clear when comparing the two close up that there’s a horrible lumpy mess on one miniature, but not on the other. Similarly, the front of the leg looks fine from a short distance away, but close up you can’t help but notice it. I’d call using painting techniques to cover it a partial success (which means it’s also a partial failure…). From a couple of feet away it looks fine, but close up you’ll always notice. This is more of a problem with reflective paint which naturally highlight’s each tiny bump.
In conclusion, I think the Retributors turned out okay. The paint job is a standard affair that I use on all my Stormcast infantry. In terms of the textured paint, it depends how you look at it. If it was a character model, I’d definitely say scrub it or remove the paint and start again, as it’s just a bit of an elite footslogger. I’d personally just crack on, and remove the textured models as the first casualties.
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