Hi there fellow hobbyists and welcome to the inaugural “Painting With The Moose” article!

Ben from Moose Studios joins Broken Paintbrush as a guest writer with this great tutorial on painting blue AdMech. His social accounts are at the bottom, so welcome Ben and give him a follow!

In the next few minutes, I will break down how I achieve the blue paint scheme that I have chosen for my Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation. Before I begin any painting project, there are a few steps that I go through that save me some time and headache as the project progresses.

Painting In Sub-Assemblies

First, I always paint my models in sub-assemblies. For this project, I separated the individual models into four parts: torsos, heads, legs, and arms. All you need to do this is an inexpensive box of push pins. I treated myself and sprung for the jumbo push pins. This makes it easy to hold and paint without actually touching the model.

Trust me when I say that once you do this, it will be hard to convince you not to paint in sub-assemblies.

Secondly, I do a second basecoat. My first one is aerosol spray paint, and my second one is the same color, but it is airbrushed on. With all of this done, it is time to get to laying down some color and bringing that gray plastic to life!

Choosing the Color

For my Adeptus Mechanicus, I knew I wanted to paint them in a scheme that was non-traditional. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t mind the traditional red scheme of AdMech, I just knew it wasn’t for me. It also helped that I am building and painting this army for a cause: ALS awareness, a cause that is near and dear to my heart, and whose colors are also blue and white.

Once I decided on my overall scheme, it was time to select my colors. I like to line my colors up in a gradient from darkest to lightest, and for my main colors, I usually work with four colors total. I also work from dark to light when I paint. It makes it a little easier to fix things working that way.

The first model I painted using this scheme was my Tech Priest, and I was very pleased with the final product:

Painting Blue AdMech

The first color I lay down is Vallejo Game Color Stormy Blue.

Disclaimer at this point: I use an airbrush for most of these colors, but a brush can be used.

I like the coverage of this color. It is an especially good shade color over a black undercoat. Do not be discouraged if you aren’t sure that you have covered every area that you wanted to cover. It’s hard to tell the difference between it and black. This is what it should look like at this point:

The second color I lay down is what I consider my base color. I chose GW’s Caledor Sky for this project because it would provide a nice contrast with the Stormy Blue, and would pop with a couple of highlights.

I made sure to avoid places that would be clearly shadowed and exercised some trigger control as I feathered it into the darker areas. I wanted to ensure I left some Stormy Blue around the areas where their arms would attach as well as towards the top of the cloak area.

This is what it looked like after this stage:

The last step that I will use my airbrush on is the first true highlight I give these models. This stage requires supreme trigger control, as I try to feather this corner around the edges of the cloak, as well as any obviously raised areas on the model. Things will look sloppy and strange at this point. It will come together.

I went for a big-time highlight with this one and chose Vallejo Model Color Deep Sky Blue:

The final stage on these cloaks (as well as the fabric part of the heads), is the usually dreaded edge highlight.

For the longest time, I avoided edge highlighting my models. It was partly because I was not very good at it (among other things), but it always looked goofy to me. If you decide to edge highlight, water down your paints as you normally do, get it on you brush, and then run the side of the brush along the edge of the model.

Don’t rush it, and if you have to give it multiple passes to get the right coverage, that is perfectly normal. I went just a shade higher for this and went with Vallejo Model Color Sky Blue for this:

Finishing Up

And there you have it!

In my next article, I will tackle the white color I achieve for their arms and pants. If you would like to get in touch about a hobby project, I do take commissions, and you can find me on Facebook (Moosehead Studios), Instagram (@mooseheadstudios86), and Twitter (@moosestudios86).

If you would like to help support tutorials like this, as well as entertaining battle reports, informative product reviews, and other hobby-related content, I would be honored if you would consider becoming one of my Patrons on Patreon (patreon.com/mooseheadstudios86). Happy hobbying people!