Today we’re going to showcase the Best Painted Army runner up from ATC 2017. Come take a look at this amazing Dark Mechanicus army that took home silver.
Stiff Neck Studios took home both first and second place in this year’s best painted armies at the American Team Championship that took place over the weekend. This is the first year ATC did not have a paint requirement because of the release of 8th edition, but that didn’t stop a lot of painters from bringing out their best painted armies. But two armies out shined all the rest, and they were both painted by the same studio.
This Dark Mechanicus army belonged to Wesley Cogdal of Stiff Neck Studios, which made him the runner up of Best Painted Army, and is now up for sale. Let’s take a look at the army and see what they had to say about it.
Getting called up at the list minute by a fellow artist from SNS saying there was a spot available on their team for ATC Wesley Cogdal needed to produce a good looking army and fast. So fast in fact that he would end up only having a little over three weeks to complete whichever list the team decided would play well but not violate the studios #1 rule, the rule of cool.
That’s right, no matter what, artists at SNS always default to what will look the coolest. If it’s a boring looking model but has great stats then the fix is a conversion for “counts as”.
Deciding to go with Dark Mechanics because of a lower model count and the fact that most of the models were on hand in the studio was an easy choice. When you look at the conversions they are mostly very simple kit bashes from the undead and dark Eldar range. I mean we all know spikes, skulls and chains screams Chaos and requires relatively easy modeling.
The bases are from Micro Art Studio and were pretty simple to paint. Clear resin was tinted with green and brown washes and then poured into the lower areas to represent water. This is more effective than using other water effects because they shrink as they dry and only look wet instead of a deeper pool of water. This same effect was repeated for the two “counts as” primaries psyches in the globes. This is a perfect example of the rule of cool in full effect.
Painting was also kept very simple and quick by restricting the color palette of the army to just a few colors. Weathering was done by undercoating the model a dark brown and then covering it in AK Interactive chipping fluid.
Once dry we airbrushed the bone color and highlights on and then using warm water removed some of the paint to reveal the undercoat. All the metallics and greens were painted with a brush to prevent overspray from an airbrush onto the white surfaces.
All in all, for a quick turnaround, the army turned out really well, and ended up receiving 2nd place best painted at ATC. 1st place went to another SNS artist with a brilliant Eldar army.
If you are interested in learning more speed painting techniques from SNS then book yourself a seminar time at the NOVA Open, up in Northern Virginia at the end of August and look us up on Facebook.
The folks over at Stiff Neck Studios really did an amazing job with this army. Make sure you head over to their Facebook and give them a follow. They will be giving away a Blood Bowl box to one lucky follower at the end of the month.
Make sure you check back with us tomorrow to see the Best Painted army from the American Team Championship.
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About the Author: James Rodriguez
