Bot War - Painting Challenge 2023

Before the challenge starts we’re allowed to fully assemble and prime the models we intend to paint for the challenge and are encouraged to post this shot as the start of our progress thread in the Facebook group.

I’ve gone for 2 different directions here as I will be approaching the 2 factions differently. The Atlanticans will have a lot of layers with a TMM base, citadel contrast filter, and then highlights, so they just got a solid coat of black Ultimate primer.

The Overlords on the other hand will be painted up in some organic colours and have a greater luminosity than the Atlanticans, so whilst they also had a black Ultimate primer as a base, they then had a thinned down liquitex white ink laterally sprayed over from an above angle to give some saturation boost for the colours to work with when they start to get applied. The ink was mixed with a little MIG Ammo Lucky shot ultra matte varnish and airbrush thinner. This was to help the white not be too strong, but to also mess with the consistency so that I could have a mottled effect and create some natural variance in the layers that will go over them.

OK, I had a right nightmare with my primers and airbrush. The black would not adhere to a couple of models, more so with the Atlanticans tanks and the fliers, but a couple of Overlords also suffered. Some of these models are brand new and some have been sat in my backlog for a few years. All were washed and scrubbed but the primer just would not adhere, I even tried vallejo mecha black, vallejo surface primer, and Badger Stynelrez. In the end I stripped and scrubbed them with Isopropyl alcohol and rewashed them again. But still a few had issues. There’s nothing I can do at this stage as I need them primed so tried to slowly build up a solid basecoat. You will see these “bad ones” appear in photos as we go along, but it’s only tabletop and they look OK from 2 feet away.

It didn’t help things that my H&S infinity custom airbrush has a leak and caused me all sorts of grief. I fully stripped and cleaned it many times during the priming session and even replaced all of the seals. In the end I benched it and used my Bartsharp which worked fine (although a little less controllable). Not a great start to the challenge.