"Thinking Machine" - UR-025

I am not a machine as you would understand. 

I am not a slave. I am not a thing. 

I am beyond and above you. 

I am a man of iron. And I am free.

- Blackstone Fortress

Hello and welcome to another Friday on The Art of Caesura!

Since last we met, I've been working away on a big stompy robot in the form of the Man of Iron: UR-025. 

I've said it before, but UR is another Blackstone Fortress miniature that is quite unlike anything we'd seen from Games Workshop before. 

I really love the kind of retro-chic look of UR - he kind of looks like an old refrigerator or bathtub - very "Fallout". I adore how GW leaned into that aesthetic with the mint green colour scheme that they used on their studio version.

In addition to Amallyn, UR-025 is the other character that my wife plays. She has had moderate success tearing traitors to shreds with UR's Gatling canon and even more success ripping Spindle Drones in half with his orange claw (thus scoring his secret agenda). Many missions do end, however, with UR slowly trundling towards the maglev lift with the other heroes madly pressing the "door open" button, while wildly flailing their arms, beckoning him to move faster! 

Now, let's talk paintin'! As you can see in the images above, I sprayed him Grey Seer. 90% of the time I work up from a Chaos Black undercoat, but in this instance, I felt it would be easier to reach the mint green that I was looking for from a lighter undercoat. 

Then, using the "inside-out" technique, I started in on his metal bits, as they were deeper in the miniature and harder to reach. I used one of my new metalic paints: Vallejo Model Colour Silver. It is quite bright (maybe in between Stormhost Silver and Runefang Steel) and goes on very smooth. 

Once I had all of the metal bits painted, I went back and cleaned up any of the areas of the Grey Seer that I had accidently hit with the silver. 

On to his iconic mint! To create this colour, I mixed equal parts Nighthaunt Gloom and Gauss Blaster Green. Because Nighthaunt Gloom was a "proto-Contrast Paint" it flows really nicely, and mixed with Gauss Blaster, gave a good thin consistency for this application. I covered all of his armour panels (bar his head) with this mint green.

I then set to work on his equally iconic orange arm. I don't know why he has an orange arm - it's kind of reminiscent of C-3PO's red arm - but I like it. To get a really saturated tone, rather than using my Troll Slayer orange (which covers very poorly) I mixed Evil Sunz Scarlet with Nazdreg Yellow. This gave a nice lush orange. 

With the main colours in place, it was time for the weathering. I weathered this guy different than I usually would, rather than giving an all over wash of, say, a deep green to shade him, I did three recess washes (a chunky wash of Seraphim Sepia, then a smaller wash of Agrax Earthshade and finally Nuln Oil just in the deepest recesses.) This technique was more like panel-lining on this guy. 

Once I had the panel-lining done, I decided to bust out some of my AK Interactive weathering pencils to add some dust to his lower legs, shoulders and a few other areas. 

I used the three rust colours from the big set (Light, Medium and Dark Rust, I believe they're called, though I don't have my set in front of me). I had planned to just "colour the rust on" and then apply water on the model to give a nice dusty effect, this is how I did it on Thundrik's Profiteers. However, when I was sharpening the pencils I had to shave a good bit off to get a sharp tip (losing two tips in the process) so decided just to mix a bit of water into the shavings and paint it on. 

I'm really delighted with how the red rusty colours turned out against his pale green. I even did some rust streaks coming out of his backpack grille (above) and out of the flap on the upper right part of his backpack in the photo above. 

I finished up the final details (the handle grips on his chest and back, the various buttons and lights and the battered black stripe on his right knee. 

Then on to highlighting! I highlighted all the metal with Stormhost Silver, and did some sensuous blending on the orange (reds and oranges are the easiest colours to highlight vibrantly, because you just mix in yellow (the brightest colour on the colour wheel!)

I barely highlighted the mint, only reapplying the original mix on the most raised areas, because I actually wanted it to look quite flat, in keeping with the retro-chic aesthetic. 

All that really remained was to base him. I really wanted to incorporate a skull on the base as a call-back to the box cover image of UR holding a skull in a reflective "alas, poor Yorick" pose (which for those who know the lore behind the Men of Iron, is a great Easter Egg of sorts - having an abominable intelligence, which has never been human and has existed for tens of thousands of years, contemplating mortality). 

I busted open my box of skulls and was intrigued to find Ur-ghul skulls! This would be nicely thematic for some of the horrors the gang might come across in the Blackstone Fortress. I painted it separately (mostly in blue tones to help it blend into the base, not distracting too much attention from the model himself - and hey, have you ever seen an ur-ghul skull? How do you know they're not blue!?) 

As I was about to superglue it to the base (something that should have taken less than 10 seconds), I found that my superglue had hardened in the nozzle. I tried to clear it and anyway, long story short, I nicked the glue tube sending an arterial stream of liquid superglue straight at me from T-shirt to crotch (fortunately I was wearing pants). I couldn't believe the force with which it shot out, I was so shocked that it took me a moment to act - there was glue everywhere - and I was still trying to get the bloody skull on the base. 

I mitigated the damage as much as possible, but had to add a couple layers of Lahmian Medium to a few areas of UR where the glossy glue had landed and dried. Never a dull moment. 

There we have him/it, UR-025. 

Tune in next week for more escapades, right here on The Art of Caesura!

Watching: The Big Short (2015) - Adam McKay

Listening: Scenic World - Beirut

Next Week:

This is SPARTA!!