Code White

In Ontario hospitals (and probably others, too), Code White is code for a violent person or situation.

Since the 240z is going to stay white, I'm going to call it Code White. Not sure on who the driver will be, yet.

(Once again, progress pics appear to be lost.)

Here she is, with gear primed and blacked. Actually, just two coats of black. Couldn't find any primer, and the black I used first dried shiny. That's a no-no. Fortunately, my good old Citadel Chaos Black was salvageable with just a couple drops of water. I have no idea how old that paint is, but it must be nearing ten years.

Drybrushed. This is the first time I've ever drybrushed properly, I found out, and I have to say, it's a great technique. The colour used was gunmetal, made from Mithril Silver and Chaos Black. Man, these paints are long-lived.

And now we skip some embarrassing steps where I screwed up the washes to see the finished product.

I asked for advice in a DF group, and got the suggestion of doing a black wash and wiping it off (actually ALL the painting choices came from suggestions. I was at a loss on my own.) Well, I made a wash out of that standby Chaos Black I keep mentioning, and let it sit much too long. Code White became Code Grey.

I plowed on, taking the next suggested step of a brown wash. Well, all I had, aside from some cheap shiny acrylics, was Dark Flesh. Turns out, Dark Flesh is a lot more red than you'd think.

So I'm faced with two layers of washes I did poorly and feel have ruined the look of my car. I tried wiping them off, but they were dry. I turned once again to sandpaper. Some careful scraping here and there removed most of the damage, and actually turned it into some almost-decent weathering.

Relieved, I touched up were some of the gear that had got sanded, and started picking things out with another round of drybrushing. I mixed up some rusty colour (Dark Flesh and Chaos Black, naturally) and filled in the wheels with that, as well as rubbing it here and there on the gear and the car itself. I did some straight black around the guns and oil/smoke dispenser, to make them look used and dirty, and gave the windshield a little love with whatever brown was left on my brush.

I think it could still use a proper brown wash/drybrushing, and frankly maybe even a white/bone one. Lotta salt on Canadian roads, after all.

Now then.


The Bad:

My washes were bad, the paint's too thick on the spoiler and the spoiler should probably have a more bare metal look, there's some bare plastic visible in the window grilles, the front around the guns is a mess, and there's a few nooks and crannies that still look almost untouched, and it still needs a matte spray/varnish/protection.

The Good:

I like it.

It's not going to win any awards, it's far from the best-looking DF car I've ever seen; but I like it.

I hate painting. This is the first mini I've painted in over ten years. But I enjoyed myself. There were a lot of reasons I left Warhammer, but painting was a big one. Converting and building minis - I could do that all day. Painting? It's stressful and annoying and makes me anxious. I'm too sure I'll mess up and ruin the model. So sure that I'd rather just not make the attempt. With this car, though, I actually enjoyed it.

If you're not having fun in your hobbies anymore, you need to stop. These games are supposed to be FUN, and that's something the community, thanks to its representation by forums, forgets.

"No, don't make a Chapter based off the missing legions like GW intended, that's lame and you're a stupid Mary Sue."

"No, don't call your Tau this just because it sounds cool, use this official glossary we've compiled, even though it barely has a handful of words."

"No, don't question the company, of course they know what they're doing, despite ten years of proving exactly the opposite."

No, look. I'm here to have fun, that's all. I don't give a crap about how YOU think the setting should work, the game should be played, the models coloured, or anything. I want to enjoy myself, maybe tell some stories, and make some cool, bizarre, ridiculous miniatures and terrain, preferably with friends.

So yes. Code White fails spectacularly at even beginning to approach "well-painted." But I had fun making and painting it, and that is the only reason to do this hobby.

Fun.