Spindle Drones | Blackstone Fortress

So I wanted to keep the color scheme somewhat close to what the box art looks like, this is just a very slight twist. The main ‘trick’ to this particular paint scheme was to do a wash of Carroburg Crimson over Eshin Grey then do edge highlights and weathering in Daemonette Hide. For people that don’t use Games Workshop paints or don’t have those specific shades: deep red wash, medium dark grey(doesn’t really matter if cool or warm but in this case I used a cool toned grey), and a light red-toned fairly desaturated purple.

To start with I primed the model black, then did a quick spray on top of white primer. Then I went over the bottom half of it with black (I use Vallejo because it dries super matte) and the top half with Eshin Grey. For a more weathered look just one layer of the grey works, but for a cleaner look it would take at least two coats. The next step is a somewhat messy wash of Carroburg Crimson – pooling actually works nicely as far as getting some really neat color variations goes.

The next step is taking the Daemonette Hide and doing some edge highlighting and adding texture. The reason I picked purple instead of using a light grey is because it adds more color, and looking at how the grey mixed with the red wash it’s leaning pretty purple anyway.

Now the rest of this is going to be a bit of ‘draw the rest of the owl’ but since I’m not reinventing the wheel here I’m a big believer in just giving people the big picture and letting them figure out the way they want to achieve that. Like the lenses on the ‘knees’ of these drones – there are many, many tutorials on doing lenses and I’m still figuring out what way works best for me.

I did some quick and dirty edge highlighting on the legs and undercarriage of the drones in Stegadon Scale Green (a very warm toned navy blue) just to break up the black. The base color of the lenses and all the tubing is Caledor Sky (bright lapis blue). I left the tubing flat because this is just a quick tabletop paint job and the detail & texture on the top kind of carries the rest. The eye of the drone is Vallejo Warlord Purple (hot pink) and I mixed white into it to get the glow.

And that’s it for these guys! They’re pretty simple to paint but the sculpt offers a lot of opportunities to play around with texture and lighting. I opted to not do OSL in this case but you could really go nuts with it if you wanted to.