I’ve got warm memories of last year’s Christmas break, a good week of getting up late, barely getting dressed, eating trifle and ham leftovers (not together!) and playing Cyberpunk 2077 all day with the atmosphere of an inner city Melbourne revelling in leisure around me.
This summer break there’s been a bit less Cyberpunk and more hobby. I will try to make an annual tradition of completing a hobby project during my time off – without making it feel like work, and this year’s project is the Ork terrain from the Kill Team Octarius box set.
Thanks to Youtube I’ve seen many people extol the virtues of oil washes as a way of applying rich definition to miniatures and more particularly terrain pieces. Compared to a product such as a GW wash, they are much, much cheaper and have a flexibility (you have to mix them yourself) not afforded by a pre-mixed product. You can also re-activate them while they’re curing to wipe off excess wash and fine tune the amount of tone they apply.
Offsetting these benefits are a few drawbacks. Hydrocarbon based products are messier, smellier and more toxic than water based ones. They can also dry a little bit glossy – although this depends on the mineral spirit/thinner that is employed. The drying time is great for the aforementioned wiping, but I had to leave my terrain for over 48 hours before spraying it with a matt varnish.
Overall though, I think the benefits are more than worth the hassle and I will be using them frequently for large scale paint jobs.
The ‘problem’ with these terrain pieces is that they’re so fantastically detailed. It took some effort to not paint all the details individually. I’d still be in the process – or more likely have just burned out and moved onto something else. So good on me for having the maturity to leave a lot of detail as ‘rusty steel’!
Preparation
Chaos Black spray
Airbrush Leadbelcher zenithal (sort of)
Rusty Steel
Airbrush Vallejo Air Brown RLM26
Airbrush VMC Amaranth Red
Oil wash Windsor and Newton Winton Burnt Umber ‘pea size’ : 6ml of Mineral Spirit
…drying time…
Drybrush Leadbelcher
Light drybrush of Runefang steel
All the elements get the wash, not just the steel but I won’t go into them. The whole set needs more than 6ml of wash – probably closer to 30ml but that is the ratio.
Mini Makeovers 