Living Underground Metro2033 Zona Alfa etc

If I am honest, my first attempt was a complete failure.

Firstly I had been watching alot of Bald and Bankrupt whilst reading metro, which really got me understanding what I thought soviet meant and actually what it was like on the ground:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5TNecidRD0&list=PLqWdYjn21PdH_SfBbtj7YBrpbTP-0BMa6

He speaks russian, often is in Belarus and shows the viewer old soviet buildings, bus stations, hotels etc.

What I learnt was that everything is blue, to some extent – instantly out went as much dark red paint as i expected!

I mixed this idea with the pictures I had seen of the Moscow underground stations a mix of grandeur and practicality.

With this in mind I wanted to have marble like floors and then functional walls with hints of fancy-ness. The idea was to paint as if new and then use washes to add that grime needed for metro 2033.

I went on youtube and found this wonderful video on marble:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLVE1q0fGDA&t=851s

he explained it well – and it is easier to follow however I tried this a few times and i just never got a great version of it. Damn! Back to the drawing board for someone with alot less techinical skill. I needed something…bulletproof.

So I did what I know best. Stipple with horrendously destroyed brushes!

I used an undercoat of gray and black primer (vallejo usn light ghost or vallejo black) i did some in one and some in the other as I was intruiged as to which would look better. Ultimately I couldn’t tell.

I stippled generally the blues first, varying on the floor as i wanted that natural non-uniformness of marble.

The paints I used to varying degrees:
Army Warpainter – Electric blue
Game – heavy blue
army warpainter – wolf gray
game colour – magic blue
citadel – lothern blue
game colour – glacier blue

I would like to pretend these were thought out, ultimately these were ones I had alot of. The only ones I added in that I did think about were:

wolf gray, glacier blue and electric blue – with glacier blue being my choice for Soviet Blue! (later on I will explain why this became my favourite in a later post)

I then stippled on top of this:
game colour dead white
nocturna – medium flesh

This was to add just a bit of colour difference for the floor marble

I was happy how these turned out for a very basic approach. Most of the brushes I used were largish ones I had ruined the bristles on or make up brushes. and stippling with the consistency on the brush as if dry brushing.

If i ever felt i went to heavy with one colour I would normally stipple white and then build the other colours over slightly again.

Once finished I used a gloss coat a few layers to give a marble shine.

————– The Walls————-

This is where my unpreparedness came in…

for the most part I went 1 of 3 ways:
1) for anything which was low down and had the architecture lines going across it, I would paint as marble.
For this I went with:
game – extra opaque heavy skin tone
nocturna medium flesh
and white.

For the lines I would paint over them in game – heavy skin tone and then paint with any bright bronze/copper eg: army painter – true copper. I then brushed over the top of this with citadel runelord brass which gave a very nice dulled shine of brass.

For my second type of wall I used game colour glacier blue and pretty much just slathered it on any of the brick work (using them as tiled walls) and some of the concrete flat walls.

The last again was just with a soviet red. a good ol’ soviet red. I went for a darker one – army warpainter chaotic red.

Ultimately I only did this in a few areas to give impact. halfway through the build I realised it made it hard to see weathering and graffiti so stopped with this method somewhat.

The below also shows my method of using dark iron colours like army warpainter rough iron and citadel runelord brass for pipes, doors and large Soviet frescos.

Also shown in the below picture is something i’ll show in another post but the idea of soviet statues!