I’m painting these Excoriators space marines who mark the date and place of damage done to their armor. Their plate becomes a shrine to the times they have put themselves between the Emperor and the weapons of his enemies.
This is a step by step of how I’m doing impact craters on their armor.
My thought was for the impact to resemble concrete or ceramic plates. A few visual images helped. Particularly the top right.
Helpful tools in this process are:
-a good quality kolinsky sable brush that can hold a sharp point (Windsor Newton Series 7 #1)
-reading glasses +2.5, these allow me to hold the mini closer to my face which is practically magnification.
I’m using liquitex heavy body acrylics with a wet palette made from tupperware/paper towel/parchment paper.
Burnt Umber looks close to Mournfang Brown, and the model has a basecoat of Unbleached Titanium which is close to Screaming Skull best I can tell.
1. Made a rough circle with burnt umber.
2. Added rays across circle of random length/spacing. A mix of short and long lines gives a dynamic look.
3. Colored top half of circle with about a 1:1 mix of unbleached titanium and burnt umber, then bottom half with 1:1 mix of unbleached titanium and white.
4. Added a rough spot of burnt umber near to middle of circle and connected the inside ends of rays to spot.
5. Put a dot of black where the rays touch the circle and a dot near the middle.
6. Here I put a line of white along the bottom edges of circle and rays (photo is unfortunately on blurry side, blame phone).
7. Did a mix of 1:1ish unbleached titanium and burnt umber- dabbed around top edge inside circle and top edge of bottom half of circle. also added a couple secondary cracks to rays.
Final thoughts:
The secondary cracks in step 7 aren’t necessary, I like the look without them. The inside of the circle can also be broken up with more lines at random.
I will add another smaller layer of white to the underline I did in step 6, especially close the the black dots.
Any lines that look too thick can be made thinner or with the base color. Fading the ends of lines with base color can make them look sharper too.
