Grimnir’s Thunder – the Alliance’s carrier

So in my previous post, I discussed how I painted the blimps of the Grimnir’s Thunder. Here I’ll discuss the ship itself….

Grimnir’s Thunder is the armour tank of the alliance and one of two (arguably the only true) carrier of the Alliance’s fleet. She’s a behemoth of metallics and if WD 382 is to be believed a simple paint job….

Whilst it’s true, you do only work initially with three colours, the amount of intricate details on this model make it far from simple to paint.

As usual with my ships, I decided to paint the components and base before assembly. My base guide here covers the basics of the base, though with the Thunder’s base, there is a small (what appears to be) steam powered mini boat in one corner.

Not sure how easy it is to spot, so let me jump to the end for a second…

As you can see here, the little ship (aww dinky) has been done in a paint scheme similar to the Grimnir’s Thunder (so Chainmail for the steel, 1:1 mix of Shining Gold and Scorched Brown) for the paddles and turret weapon. Wash it down with Devlan Mud, then highlight back up. Do all of this after you have finished painting the base, otherwise your colours might mix during the washes.

Grimnir’s Thunder’s base colours are Gnarloc Green, Chainmail, a 1:1 mix of Scorched Brown and Shining Gold and Tin Bitz. WD 382 talks you through it as a paint guide.

In my case though I fond the little details (the runes) the hardest to sort out. Let me show you.

In the WD they recommend you do the metallics first, nuh-uh, in my case, I did the greens first and then applied the metallics.

I also painted the blimps first.

 

This meant when I came to wash (again the guide says do it for just the steel and the green) I could do the whole thing.

To highlight (also in the above picture) I just went over the various panels in their various layers (see WD 382 to find out what colours I used). Keeping the detailing clean here was the hardest part and required a really steady hand (I recommend holding the model in one hand, the tip of the brush in the other and with practice u can get a good stead hand by pressing the heels of your hands together while you paint (or buy a vice….).

White Dwarf advised another layer of fine line highlighting around the steel panels and some randomized chipping by mixing Blazing Gold and Mithril Silver together and applying it on the various ‘gold’ metallic points. Frankly i liked the end result without that step as it gave a much more striking model….

Job’s a good ‘un.