Painting Log: Ruin

After many months of painting models for someone else, I finally got a chance to sit down and paint something of my own. My time as a mercenary painter served as a fantastic time killer for the next for Khador releases to come out - Ruin and Zerkova2 as a pre-release.

Ruin came out first, so it was the first thing in my queue once I finished up the Pan-O models (not that Ruin wouldn't have been the first model I wanted to paint regardless).

Join me after the break for the finished model, model thoughts, and what's next in the queue.

First off: Ruin is a fantastic model. I've mused about it elsewhere, but it bears repeating that Ruin is one of the absolute best character heavy warjacks I've seen Privateer Press produce, ever. All of the pieces are very well sculpted, and they are also very smartly engineered for ease of assembly (which makes the prospect of painting Ruin piecemeal much more palatable).

One of the best places examples is the warpwolf pelt on Ruin's shoulder. Although it is a little irritating to assemble it (as it comes in two halves that you have to line up together, then fit onto the model), the choice of having it be a totally separate piece does two great things for the model:

1) It allows you to leave the pelt off completely, so if you don't dig it, you can go without. The only thing you would need to do is come up with something to do for the spike stump that is normally where part of the pelt attaches. But that would be easy enough to redo.

2) It makes it very easy to paint the pelt and the underlying shoulder area separately. It also makes it more worthwhile, as the underlyig shoulder area is fully detailed, so sinking the time into painting it will pay off (insomuch as painting something hidden under something else pays off).

The details overall are very crisp, and easy to work with, which is a boon when you're dealing with something intricate like the seal on the fist, or the various runes and grisly totems on Ruin.

Other than the details, however, painting Ruin is pretty much as easy as painting any other Khador heavy. It has some more details on it, but the base painting approach is still the same, and isn't any more difficult than other Khador heavies. I was surprised at how quickly I was able to paint Ruin, and I think that "easy" baseline played a big part in that.

As for how I painted Ruin, I had to go with the 5th Border Legion paint scheme which originally debuted with the Kodiak. What I find most surprising is that PP hasn't re-used that paint scheme, even with the Grolar (a Kodiak variant), and with Ruin (which is clearly a Kodiak renovated by a demon).

I've always really liked the visual distinction that having a second color scheme in a faction brings, especially with warjacks. It isn't terribly common when it comes to studio paint schemes, and I was a little sad to see PP go with the 'ol Khador red scheme with the Grolar and Ruin. I think I understand why - everyone expects Khador warjacks to be red, so make these new ones red - but its still a bit of a shame.

Especially since painting green is such a wonderful break from painting red. It coats much more smoothly and easily than red does, making painting the armor plates go that much faster. The only tricky part is that the 5th Border Legion green wasn't something I could easily map to another color right away. It took me a few tries to get it "right", and even then I may still be off from what I origially used on my Kodiak way back when (though certainly close enough that I'm happy with how it came out).

For reference, those greens are: Ordic Olive for the base, Traitor Green for the primary coat,  Traitor + Wurm Green mix for highlights, and shade it with an Ordic Olive wash.

Also: trying to do glowing runes is a pain in the ass. If you've ever read any of PP's guides on how to do "glowy" things (there's a particularly good one in the Forces of Warmachine: Convergence book), those techniques are what you need to be doing. However, actually doing those things correctly takes a lot of time, patience, and practice. I always end up getting antsy and rushing it, hence why Ruin's runes are less "glowing" and more "red". One of these days I'll get it.

Up next: the only other Khador release available (and even then only with shenanigans to get her early), Obavnik Kommander Zerkova and her Reaver Guard. These models are proving to be surprisingly easy to paint (since so much of them is black with dark red highlights). I'll hopefully have a post up about them soon, either confirming how easy they were to paint, or lamenting that they ended up being a big pain in the ass for unforeseen reasons.