Sunday 29 July 2018

Terrain Workshop: Sprucing Up My Imperial Buildings

As I have been playing a few more games of 40k recently I decided to take the opportunity to spruce up my terrain collection in order to make it more fun and evocative to fight over.

The first piece that I decided to revisit was the original Sanctum Imperialis ‘cathedral-type’ structure that I bought and painted when it first came out about ten years ago.









As you can see from the above photos I initially painted it with a basic grey basecoat that was heavily drybrushed with a lighter grey whilst the floors were done in an orange/brown colour. 

Now to be fair this is perfectly serviceable and it has done the job for the last decade. However I felt that it was starting to look a little worn and really didn’t make the most of all the lovely details on the model. 

So I broke out my paintbrushes and went to work...



The first thing I did was paint the giant Imperial eagle gold (as per the original box art). This took ages and many layers of different golds and assorted washes to achieve the effect I wanted.



I also picked out all of the additional features on the external walls; making sure that the skulls/skeletons were painted an appropriate colour. You’ll also notice that I weathered the bottom of the building to represent the dust that would inevitably be thrown up over the course of continuous warfare.



The window frames were all individually painted in a
silver metal colour before being washed and highlighted appropriately.



I spent a lot of time picking out all the individual lights including the giant wall mounted lanterns. These were then given three layers of highlights to really make them pop.



I re-highlighted the internal floors with a gentle drybrush of metal which gave them a much more realistic and visually pleasing appearance.



I also took extra time to paint and highlight the internal ladders; air vents and pipes.



Because I can be slightly obsessive I then painted all of the individual buttons; switches, screens and bulbs on the internal door mechanisms! Now I know that nobody will ever see these details... but it pleases me to know that all these bits are appropriately coloured!

Overall I am very pleased with how this piece of terrain now looks and it shows that through a few hours work you can make something with even the most basic paint job into a much more impressive piece of scenery to fight battles over. 

Over the next few months I plan to go through all of my older terrain bits and show them a bit of love!!

6 comments:

  1. Nice work squire. Nothing like a good looking piece of terrain.

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    1. Cheers mate! I agree, battles are more fun when fought across good looking terrain!

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  2. Looks great! Are you planning to buy any of the new scenery?

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    1. Thanks dude! Yeah; I’ve just bought the new KILLTEAM box set at it has some absolutely lovely new cathedral like terrain inside it!

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  3. That's the way to do it! Don't you feel like you had a full new piece? :D I love what you did here.

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    1. Cheers Suber!! Yeah it definitely feels like a whole new piece of scenery now!!

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