How to Paint Everything: The Kill Rig

As mentioned in our preview article for the Kill Rig, this model was sent my way to get painted and I made sure to get enough pictures for a HTPE! This is going to kind of be a slightly more sane version of my ork scheme, if you've seen my Kommandos you will know I am a wee bit mad when it comes to excessively complex ork models. As it was, this model still took a whole six evenings to paint, almost twice as long as my Silent King!

Part 1 - Base coats and washes

We begin by getting a basic metal coat down, I am using Vallejo Metal Color Exhaust Manifold for this, but your choice is mostly just defining how shiny you want the metals to end up. Rattlecanning Leadbelcher or something similar would work well too as well.

After this there are a lot of colours, so for this guide I will be mostly breaking down each part into subsections so there are mearly a large number of colours used in any given step.

Step 1 - Metals

I don't really feel like doing a bunch of work on the absolute ton of metal on this model, so we are gonna leverage contrast to make it a bit more lazy. I started with washing all the metal in Nuln before a heavy drybrush of Ironbreaker, after that I picked out copper with Gore-grunta and brass with Snakebite. Neither will be super bright, but the drybrush mostly shows through and it saves a LOT of time, which we will need for the rest of the paintjob!

Step 2 - Blue armour panels

This bit is pretty simple just Sotek followed by Drakenhof, but before we get into the bright spot colours its helpful to get all the blue done so we don't have any of the wash bleed over or create a mess.

Step 3 - Spot colours

I like picking out explosives with red and any kind of iconography in yellow, then just a quick wash of Agrax will get us to the next step.

Step 4 - Rust and other corrosion

I like heavily watering down Skrag to use as rust, it works really well with the blue armour plates I think! I usually thin the Nihilakh before applying it to coppery bits, but it would work fine straight out of the box. Typhus is great for anything gross and oily, and can pull double duty with a coat of black templar changing it into heavy soot.

Step 5 - Skin

This is mostly straight forward, purple washed blue for the squig and a light flesh tone for the mouths. The ork skin starts with Golden Olive before it is then washed in two ways, once all over with Biel-tan and then the extreme recesses get Coelia to push them a little darker.

Step 6 - Assorted Organics and wires

There are a bunch of different materials being done at this step:

The cloth is Steel Legion and Agrax, nothing fancy there.
For bone and teeth I am using Ushabti washed sepia, to speed up the base coats you can do a single coat of Steel Legion under the Ushabti.
The leather is all base coated with Dryad, then I wash the pants Agrax where as the straps and such get Wyldwood to differentiate the two.
The fur the Wurrboy is standing on is just Rakarth and Agrax.
Wires and other black rubber gets hit with Black Templar, don't mind any metallic sheen which is still visible now as we will hide that with the highlights. I also do the nails and hoofs at the same time.

Part 2 - Highlights

With the boring stuff out of the way we can really start to get some life into the model! You might notice that my order with the highlights is to work inside out, as its a lot easier to hide any mistakes on easier to reach places later on.

Step 7 - Flesh and bone highlights

There are a few different recipes going on here:

Ork skin is pretty simple, just big area highlights that get progressively smaller starting with Ogryn, then Krieg and finally Ushabti.
Squig skin is pretty similar, starting with a couple of thin almost glazes of Daemonette Hide then proceeding through Slaanesh and a final thin glaze of Ushabti.
I do the highlight of mouth flesh with Cadian and then Kislev, which I also use on lips, ear tips and similar areas. For the lips I go back and wash them with Carroburg, but I don't really bother with a highlight.
Teeth and bone are just highlighted with Ushabti, usually in a few glazes for large areas.
Ork nails and squig hoofs get a highlight of Sybarite and Kislev.

Step 8 - Leather, cloth and wire highlights

The darker leather is highlighted with Dryad and Gorthor, then the lighter leather gets Gorthor and Baneblade.
Cloth is just the base coat colour of Steel Legion and Karak.
Wires are simple highlights of Skavenblight and Stormvermin, I use the same on the tires but I just drybrush those because they are nice and simple and will mostly get covered with mud anyway.

Step 9 - Armour, spot colour highlights and eyes

The eyes won't quite make sense until you realize they are just the same as the highlight colours used elsewhere. Squigs have eyes of Yriel washed Casandora then highlighted Flash Gitz and Dorn with pupils of black templar, where as the Orks just get Mephiston as I find more complex eyes can look really weird on them.

The rest of the stuff here is pretty simple, the main blue gets Temple Guard and Baharroth. Then for the spot colours the red is just highlighted with Mephiston, Evil Sunz and Wild Rider in big soft highlights, and the yellow is Averland, Yriel and Flash Gitz.

Part 3 - Details

Not as many things going on here, so we just get right into it.

The rock under the sled is done super lazy with just Wyldwood and a extremely heavy drybrush of Steel Legion.

I do the lenses and any little glowing lights with the same approximate recipe; the lenses are based in Abaddon Black then get a simple gemstone effect where I just do a sequence of successively smaller crescents to the lower right in Skrag, Fire Dragon, Flash Gitz and Dorn. After that a small crescent in the opposing corner of white is done.

The glowing bulb is essentially just the middle three colours where I base in Skrag and stop the lower right crescents at Flash Gitz and use Dorn for the opposing 'reflection'.

I coat the psyker effects with Moot as a close enough undercoat to provide body to the oils we will get to in a moment.

What I am doing here is pretty crude, I just cover the whole thing with the green oil and then wet blend a bit of black into end by putting some on the tip and then feathering it back towards the source. I do the opposite with the white, blending from the from of the 'eyeball' only partially back towards the ends.

Part 4 - The base

For this I cover the entire base of the mini with Vallejo dark earth texture paste, leaving the river/lake thinner and visibly lower then the bank. I then further differentiate the bank by using Agrax there and Wyldwood where it will be wet, after that I drybrush just the bank with Steel Legion before varnishing the model with vallejo premium air matte.

We make the water wet by applying a thick coat of gloss varnish, then once that's dry I sculpt in ripples with Vallejo Transparent Water Texture which is supposed to dry fully transparent but thats a bit unreliable I have found. Fortunately for out purposes thats not a big deal as anything which is supposed to be in motion gets a overloaded drybrush of Pallid Wych.

Once the water is done I apply Dryad to the rim of the base and throw on a big assortment of Gamers Grass tufts: