WIP: Grey Knights Land Raider- Painting Heraldry

Back for a second week in a row with progress!

The big goal for this week was to get the classic GK heraldry stripe going down the side. I had done this once before on my Stormraven back in 2014, but had kind of blocked how much of a pain it was. The problem was exacerbated by my foolhardy decision to glue the Scibor angels on to the front fenders before I'd really made up my mind whether or not I wanted to keep them. "Oh, it's a flat panel. I can just tack em on and pry them off if I don't like it". Yeah, not so much. Those babies are ON. Anyway, that means I can't put the stripe on the front like normal- it'd just look weird. They'll have to go on the back, over and around all that detail. This is gonna be fun.

It actually took me two attempts to get the mask right. My job has increasingly kept me away from doing hands-on stuff and I've got to say, I'm rusty as hell. For the first pass, I couldn't find a pencil in my entire house, so I tried using the finest point pen I could find. Even at .03mm, it was too thick. I had to go buy a mechanical pencil (bottom line, the measurements are BS. The .05 lead gives you a much smaller point than the .03 seeping pen). The key to this is to put masking tape down on a cutting mat (de-stick it on your pants once to reduce the sticky factor first) as straight as possible so that the edge of the tape is parallel to the edge of the mat. That way you can use a right-angle ruler or a T Square to keep all the lines parallel and square. This is a pretty precision job and you've got to use everything you can to keep it clean.

I went along making a vertical line every 3mm, taking the time to get them right, and erasing and moving a line if it wasn't perfect. In hindsight I should have done the horizontal lines first as it was tougher to keep them parallel with the tools I had. I did those second and just measured about 20 times before I put the lines down. Where you put those lines will depend on the size of your area. You'll have to use youre best judgement, but the important thing is two sets of 2 lines 3mm apart, with a gap in the middle big enough for your skulls, or whatever you want to put in there. This one won't have anything in the middle as there's already plenty going on in there with the Forgeworld Inquisition doors, and I wanted more red than I had on my Stormraven.

Then I went along and put a little tick mark across the horizontal line every other segment so that I won't accidentally cut it. Then the next line gets tick marks on the opposite lines. The important part is to make sure that the opposite side of the design is mirrored so that the two inside horizontals are the same. You want your crenellations the same on both sides rather than staggered.

Now for the cutting. Take your time and go slowly, paying a lot of attention to your blade angle. Try to keep it more vertical or it will get away from you. Assuming you're right handed, your natural motion will be to have a shallower angle when you're on the left and to raise as you move to the right. At this scale and level of detail, that can really move your blade tip quite a lot. Well more than enough to notice with the naked eye. On a pattern like this, your eyes will pick up any little imperfection. So keep it vertical and move your shoulders as you move along rather than just your elbow.

Once all the cutting is done, carefully peel off the two outside strips and save them. These can be used for turret covers or whatever. You can also gently put one down on the vehicle (don't push it down!) along the edge of your paint area to help you align the center mask. The masking took a while here. I had to cut it in quite a few places to account for the uneven surfaces. If the surface drops or raises a level, cut the mask rather than going around the corner or your pattern will get uneven. You'll have to then mask the little drop (the vertical wall) with a separate piece of tape. This is really a bitch if there's a corner of a crenellation on two different surfaces. Just keep a fresh sharp blade and take your time.

Then it's all painting. I did two passes. One with a Crimson red for the recesses, and a second pass with a more scarlet color for the main surfaces. And voila. GK crenellations. These will take a little cleanup as the super irregular surface pretty much guaranteed some leakage, but it should be fairly easy to tidy up.

See ya next time.
~Deet