Forging a Dynasty

Time to paint Overlord Kor’Nell! This section will be about creating the Necron ’living metal’ – the unique Xenos material from which their bodies are forged.

I’ll cover the steps in some detail.  Partly because, you never know, someone might be interested… but also so that I can remind myself how I did it when I inevitably forget!

The basing material is a mix of polyfilla, pva glue and sand, blobbed on thick to create texture.

For a primer I use Molotov black which is designed as a refill for acrylic paint pens. Incredible stuff, you end up with models that look like they are made from black plastic.

Then some Vallejo Steel, thinned with airbrush thinner and sprayed all over. Not worrying about getting it in the deepest recesses but that’s more for speed than any difference it makes.

Next I mix Magenta and Payne’s Grey ink in a 6:1 ratio (because the Magenta is transparent and the Payne’s Grey is opaque so the latter is much stronger). This is sprayed from the bottom, like a reverse zenithal, to tint the silver with purple. This looks crazy now but we’ll make it much more subtle.

I airbrush silver again, this time a 45 degree top down zenithal. This re-establishes the silver as the dominant colour and pushes the purple into the very lowest surfaces. The idea here is not to make the metal look purple, but to provide a very subtle colour contrast with the green that will come later. It’ll be almost imperceptible unless you look under the model bit it will create movement in the scheme and visual interest. You can see here the difference between the top down and bottom up views. It’s invisible from top down: