The Thin Beige Line

Next up we have the Sith Apprentice – Darth Maul.

As I have no chance of getting him on the table any time soon, I thought I’d make things easier for myself and leave him semi assembled for painting.

I began by spraying white over the lightsaber, in order to give the blades a bright base colour. I then masked the blades with tape before spraying the rest of the model with my standard Khaki primer. (I would’ve preferred to use grey for Maul but as I’d not been able to get to the shops for a while, I was running out of spray cans).

As the head fitted neatly into the collar, I found it convenient to keep it separate at this stage. This made it a simple matter to prime it with Wraithbone and put it aside while I worked on the body.

It has been my intention to keep the paint jobs for my Legion miniatures quick and simple and for Maul I’m going to try something different. Black is a difficult colour to work with but instead of highlighting up from black (which I would usually do in blue), I’m going to use blue as a base colour for the Contrast paint – Black Templar.

As Maul’s costume is entirely black, I have used several different blues to try and differentiate various costume elements. For the leather boots, gloves and belt I used GW Kantor Blue. The bulk of the robes were painted with Vallejo Luftwaffe Blue while the inner tunic was painted with GW Macragge Blue. I used the lighter German Field Blue to add a simple dry brush hight to the fabric areas.

I left this to fully dry before working over the entire costume with a 1-1 mix of Black Templar and Contrast Medium. The Medium really prolongs the working time, which allowed me to cover the whole model before any one part began to dry. In the image below, you can see the paint is still wet!

Using the medium would also reduced the pigment. This meant I would have the option of stopping at one coat or going in with a second if I wanted to go darker. As the Contrast layer began to dry, the effects of the various blues became clearer.