Finished- Abandon the Despoiler

This project has been sitting on my to do list for maybe a year. I loved Abaddon in the previous editions and even did my own conversion out of the Terminator Lord kit and the old metal Abby. Turned out pretty good if I don't say so myself back in the day. Put a picture of the old one after the jump.

The armor is black base with a solid coat of Dark Reaper. Washed it black and Agrax to try and darken it down but that second wash didn't do much. Then I touched up the Dark Reaper and then did a highlight of Thunderhawk Blue on the hard edges and in the weird places that we highlight on pauldrons. Then on the areas I wanted to pop, I did a highlight of Ahriman Blue. It doesn't take much, bit it is effective. I think I could have taken it further around the Chaos star but I kinda like the subtilty. 

This was my first big project painting blue as black and I loves it. It turned out just how I wanted. I think I may go back with some more blue and make it pop more. I may use this and highlight with grey for any further Deathwatch minis. 

The skin is pale flesh and that is Rakarth Flesh base washed with flesh wash and a little touch of some pale skin tone. The fire was tricky. I feel like I have to learn how to paint fire over from the start each time. I used this guide to keep me refreshed. I am looking forward to using contrast paints to try the same thing on a larger scale using this guide. 

The basics are easy enough when painting flame. Don't shade, base white, highlight from yellow to black leaving a little showing on each layer. 

The details make it more complicated. You leave almost no white showing except in the deepest recesses. Expect to paint everything yellow. I used Yriel Yellow as it is the best I have for this purpose but I feel like there are better ones out there. Next up was Troll Slayer Orange. The key is to do deeper highlights on the raised areas and drag them all the way through the yellow. Don't highlight evenly but blend areas into each other. If you mess up and cover too much yellow, smear some in and blend it. It is best to keep the two pots open at the same time. Then I skipped a step and dry brushed the area lightly with a dark brown like Mournfang or Rhinox Hide. This let me see where the smoky places needed to be. You can over do this step so just a very light drybrush. I then used Evil Sunz Scarlet for the red layer and touched up the brown layers. You can add a black layer but that is usually just overkill unless you have lots of thick smoke to paint. 

The mini costs $60 and I would value the paint job at about the same for a total of $120 replacement value. Just for fun the old Abaddon would cost $20 for the metal bits and $30 for the plastic kit. Paint job is not great but detailed so let's say $40 for a replacement cost of $110.