Bot War Painting Challenge 2021 - Atlanticans Rising

These bots certainly don’t have as much detail as Neptune, but that’s not surprising as he is a “character”, I say that loosely as each of the characters is named, but it’s clear in its design that Neptune is a bit more special than these 4.  Anyway, I still wanted to bring out the details on these bots starting with the tyres that are on each arm and leg. Their alt-mode takes the form of a 6-wheeled artillery vehicle, so the tyres needed to be picked out as they would be prominent on that mode and are key characteristic for these bots.

Secret Weapon do a lovely set in their acrylic range for doing tyres and rubber hosing. Starting with a basecoat of Tyre Black (which is a sort of bluey coal black) this is painted over the whole tyre. Over that I then applied Rubber which is a blue-grey to the main tread parts leaving the recesses in tyre black. A highlight of Rubber Highlight was then used on the edges and to help single out each of the tread points.

This same workup was used on the piping that runs down each side of the chest piece.

To finish off the tyres I used a thinned down mix of Army Painter Dark Tone, which I mixed with Instar Paints Water+ to reduce the strength of the Dark Tone and help it to run onto crevices as well as glaze the rubber workup to improve colour harmony.

The final piece for today was to go back and work up the yellow details. This was achieved by using several layers of Pro-acryl transparent yellow and then mixing in Pro-acryl golden yellow to increase opacity, painting upwards with this mix so that my brush left more pigment at the top of the detail and concentrating the yellow there.

This is a fragile step so will take a few more coats. I will leave it to dry overnight and then go again tomorrow. These bots will be finished tomorrow, I just need to finish the weapons, black line, edge the armour, and paint some other little details. I’ve injured my ankle so that will be a good excuse to keep my foot up and paint.