Painting an Adepta Sororitas

The Artist Proof

I recently celebrated my birthday by going on a trip to Toronto with a good friend, and hitting up some shops. I stopped by a Gamestop which I was shocked to find as I had no idea they were in Canada. While browsing their stock, I was surprised to find that they had a bunch of Warhammer 40k models for a pretty solid price. I ended up picking up this Adepta Sororitas Artist Proof for under $30.

An Artist Proof is an unprimed and unpainted model, which allows you to paint it yourself and add a lot more details than the automated painting process would add. The artist proof in question looks like this:

View post on imgur.com

Painting Process

I went through a pretty lengthy painting process taking a few weeks. Basically, I worked on this whenever I had some free time from work and my after work coding. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is actually a very relaxing hobby and extremely therapeutic. If I had a rough day, it was a perfect time to do some painting.

So first step was to prime it. I used a cheap airbrush kit from Amazon and a gravity feed airbrush. I mixed some standard black primer with airbrush thinner and applied a few coats until the model was fully covered. For those who don’t know, primer and resin are very similar but primer has a lot more resin and less pigments. The resin is meant to stick to the base surface and provide a “sticky” layer for the subsequent paint applications to stick to. You don’t need to prime before you paint, but it will improve the odds of the paint staying on the surface and not chipping.

Following this, I started to apply the low detail paint layers. For example, if the majority of a helmet is black, I painted the whole thing black, and so on. I used acrylic paints for painting minis for this step, thinning it with airbrush thinner until it sprayed evenly. Once the base paint layers were complete, I added secondary colors. The helmet is black but has a white face plate. To achieve this, I used green painters tape and masked the surfaces I didn’t want to get paint on. I used the airbrush to apply several coats, and repeated it for every multi colored part.

Wet Palette

A wet palette is similar to a dry painters palette but is moist so that the paint doesn’t dry out. Normally, paint tends to dry bottom up where it makes contact with the palette, so to combat this. In contrast, a wet palette provides some moisture so that the paint stays wet for hours. You can even put a lid on it and preserve the paint for days in between paint sessions.

I constructed my own paint palette from an old bento box. It turns out it is super easy to make. You just need a lunch box or bento box, some swedish dish rags, and parchment paper. You just have to cut the swedish dish rag and the parchment paper and place them into the bento box in that order. Then, simply add some water and watch the swedish dish rag expand. The parchment paper layer on top creates a barrier between the water and paint while allowing the moisture to impregnate the paint - possibly through osmosis. Honestly, I don’t know why it works, just that it does, and it is really easy to make.

Once I created the wet palette, it was time for the details.

Details

I used some fine brushes, the acrylic paint, and the wet palette to paint details onto each part over the next few weeks. The paint dried pretty fast, so applying multiple layers was easy. The hard part was adding microscopic details and reworking parts that turned out badly.

Honestly, the toughest part was probably the eye lens. It was meant to look like glass so I used some nail polish instead of acrylic paint. It looked alright, but when I tried to improve it I ended up ruining it. I had to apply a new base layer and start again, but this time it turned out much better.

Sealing

The model was finally finished, but now it came time to preserve my hard work. Once again, sealer is not mandatory, but it creates a clear top coat of resin that protects the paint underneath. For the weapons, I used gloss coat which came out a bit too glossy for my taste. For the rest of the model, I used semi-gloss and it turned out much better.

Photos

You can actually see the whole process from beginning to end in this album I threw together. It was easier to just link the whole album instead of posting the individual pictures in this blog post.

McFarlane Adepta Sororitas Battle Sister

Conclusion

This was an awesome project and a lot of people appreciated it once it was finished. I felt pretty confident with my painting abilities, but more importantly, I found a hobby that I enjoyed quite a bit. I plan to do a lot more of these in the future once I have some free time.