"Tank on Legs" - Vrilpanzer

The Panzer name is a German word that means "armour". 

It derives through the French word pancier, "breastplate", 

from Latin pantex, "belly"

- Wikipedia

Welcome back one and all to The Art of Caesura!

I hope you've all recovered from the blog's 6th birthday party last week; if you haven't had a chance to check it out yet...I'll wait right here. 

Okay, re-jazzed? Great! So, you might have noticed a rather large "mini" at the end of the birthday post; indeed, it was the blog's birthday present! Today, we'll be looking at that very miniature: Reichbusters' Vrilpanzer!

Just like last year's Shrieker, this guy is another big bruiser from Mythic's Reichbusters. Completing him was a fun exercise in speed painting, but we'll get there. Let's start with prepping the model. 

I started by indenting and then drilling the gun barrels. Not shown here, I later decided to further enlargen the barrel holes just by poking a hobby knife into each hole and swiveling it around. 

Then it was time for rub a dubb dubb! I always wash these kickstarter minis (especially the larger ones), just with a toothbrush and dish soap, because I find that they have more release lubricant from the mold which can cause issues with paint adherance. 

Now, we'll get into the speed painting element. While my wife and daughters were up with my in-laws over Christmas and New Years, I had to come back to work for a day and a half between Christmas and New Years. So after driving down on Wednesday night, I prepped him that night, then primed him (black) and then undercoated him Leadbelcher before work on Thursday. 

Then on Thursday night I did most of the brush work below. 

To keep things chugging along at pace, I brought out some of the details with contrast paints. I painted some of the elements with Contrast Black Templars and painted othere elements (pistons, hinges, bullets and the like) with Contrast Snakebite Leather to make it look bronze. I also started the base at this stage.

Now, onto the weathering! This was going to do a lot of the heavy lifting for this speed painting process so I wanted to make it varied to increase visual appeal. 

I used AK Interactive's enamel paints for all the weathering. After placing Decay Deposits onto all the bronze areas to simulate verdigris, I moved onto the steel areas. 

I worked from my lightest to darkest colours. I painted Rust Streaks on in patches with an old brush (you could use a small ripped up sponge). 

Next, below, I applied Streaking Grime over much of the model - this would provide a nice mid-tone of dirt and grime. 

The final weathering paint I used was Dark Brown (also by AK Interactive) - I applied this to recesses, but also in some irregular patches around the model. 

Next, I busted out the white spirits, cotton buds and removed some of the enamels. I have also seen people use make-up sponges (those pink wedge-shaped ones) without any spirits to remove oils / enamels when they are still wet. I look forward to trying this myself in the future. 

Once the spirits and enamels had fully cured (which brings us now to Friday morning before work in this painting timeframe) I drybrushed the whole model with successively lighter steel colours as I got closer to the "head" of the model. I started with Leadbelcher, then Stormhost Silver, then Vallejo Metal Colour Silver.

After the quick drybrush, came the Vril effects. 

I painted all the Vril areas (the visor and Vril canisters on the back and right arm) with several coats of white before working them up with Yriel Yellow and finally Evil Sunz Scarlet. 

With the painting complete (in basically two short sessions - maybe 3 hours total) let's look at some atmospheric shots of the Vrilpanzer.

The Kickstarter edition of this game came with two of these guys! I loved painting this guy up as bare steel, and I think it would be fun to do the other one up with chipped black armour.

See you next week on The Art of Caesura!

Attending: a workshop with Marco Frisoni this weekend - more on this in a future post!

Watching: The Grimdark Compendium

Next Week:

Grymm resplendent...