Getting Battle-Ready!

Transcript*

Intro

Hello there. Welcome to the Loisirs vers le soleil YouTube channel. My name is Paul and today we will be painting terrain. But this terrain is specific because it serves basically just one purpose to put in your 40k games. Uh now this is the Battlezone Manufacturum. So a factory setting for your games. The Munutorium Armored Containers. So it has shipping containers, barrels, cases, and whatnot.

By this point, we’ve had a free painting demo. We will have two painting class. If you’ve attended that class, leave a comment down below letting us know what you thought of the experience. So, yes, uh we will be painting this today because painting terrain is actually one of my favorite things to do. It’s such a low cortisol sort of uh painting experience, painting hobby. It’s just so fun, so casual, even though this is surprisingly a big canvas. Let’s get to it.

Playing Warhammer 40K

40k games aren’t just played on an empty sort of plain flat table. No, no, no, no. They have terrain on them. They have the mat. And one of the terrain options besides ruins, which is the most common, are something like this, where basically both ruins and shipping containers and such get in the way of line of sight. So, if you’re in and around the ruins or the shipping containers, and if they’re treated as one whole thing, you typically either have a reduction in line of sight. you have a penalty on your shooting accuracy minus one at least or you can’t even shoot them altogether depending on the rules and the addition and I expect this will change in the upcoming 11th edition because they always change.

Um so that’s really good and plus something like this will just make your boring flat table a little better. We want to make it nice. There we go. And so what I’m going to be doing today is building one of the three included containers here and just showing off how I would paint it. But to be honest with you, terrain like this where it faces the natural elements, weather, battle damage, whatever. You can paint it however you like. This is the one thing where I would say where it is a large surface that you do not need a rattle can for an aérographe for. You can paint this with a brush, brush strokes and all because again, this will be weathered to hell and back and it is just a terrain piece.

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with going parade ready on boxes, but to make it as realistic and grimy as possible, let’s make it nasty. Plus, have you seen like a dock and the shipping containers there right now in real life? It’s gross. They’re all gross. Rusted, grease everywhere, whatever that is. Maybe bird poop as well. Who knows? It’s [music] just terrible. To snip off the shipping container pieces precisely, I’ll be using Tamiya 74035 Sharp Pointed Side Cutter. It is very precise, very fun to use and easy on the hand. Yeah, I’m not being as precise because again, it’s just a shipping container, not a miniature. I’ll see you at the end when I basically built one shipping container.

Priming

So, shipping container is done. This took about 10 minutes to assemble. We’ll be hitting this container with Vallejo’s Spray Black [music] Primer. Um, and since this is a rattle can, if you’re using a rattle can as well, or an airbrush for that matter, either or, please make sure you have a spray booth with a filter in the back like we do. Or please open your windows and be in a well ventilated area as well.

Preferably not your room where you sleep in because the residue will stay even with the window. Or if you don’t have either of those, wear a respirator mask with a face shield. We don’t want you to poison yourself, so please take all precautions when it comes to aerosols. Here we go. Container has been primed black.

Base Colour

And I decided that I’m going to continue what it [music] looks like onto the box. Get as close to it as possible. So to get that, I’m going to be using a 70/30 mix of Carmine Red to Flat Brown from both model color. I want it to be more redder than brown. So leaning towards that. And for the brush, I’ll be using Vallejo’s size 10 effects brush.

And something like [music] this, right? Something that sort of flat and wide because this is a flat wide area and [music] I want to be able to accommodate as much paint as possible onto the [music] terrain piece. So around here is the mixture that I’m looking for. So if you’re following along and you feel like this is [music] either too red, too brown, whatever, just keep adding colors till you’re satisfied. Just make sure you don’t have too much on your brush. Uh, so just streak it around like that [music] on your palette and then time to apply. And if there’s too much on one spot, just spread it [music] around.

Remember guys, two thin coats, even on terrain, it will just look better. [music] And if you feel like you’ve applied too much onto one spot, like there for example, just soak your brush till there’s basically nothing left, [music] dry it a bit so there’s not a lot of excess water and just remove it. Spread it around. Just keep doing that. Remember, until it’s dry, they’re still water soluble. Yeah. You can just kind of slap it on like this. It’s terrain. And so long as it’s wet, it will dry fairly evenly and thin. Keep an eye out. Spread it around. You don’t want to cause too much of a buildup, right? Just keep propagating it.

Wash Application

So, now that that paint [music] mix is dry, we’re going to be hitting this container with Agrax Earth Shade. Though, you can use any sort of [music] wash. Uh, I prefer brown here just because it kind of gives it that rust coloring more than it already does, but also a lot of grime is more brown colored than anything else. So, using what is nearly a pure [music] Agrax Earth Shade with just a little bit of water mixed in, just maybe two drops. You’re just going to smack it along the container unevenly if you want, evenly if you want.

Doesn’t really matter. Maybe have a little bit of a pattern. Maybe it faces this way. So, the weathering is over here, but that’s up to you. Doesn’t have to be that way cuz again, uh it’s not going to be facing that way all [music] the time. Just make sure it doesn’t pull. Just use water if it’s still wet and just to redirect. So, here I’m just soaking my brush and just using water to redirect the wash someplace else so it doesn’t pull. Gravity is your biggest enemy when it comes to washes. Again, it’s low cortisol, man. This is such an easy thing to accomplish. you can make terrain in 30 minutes to an hour one that would satisfy a full game of 40k because it’s just so easy to do. Low effort but fun.

Alternative Wash

And if you want, this is all optional by the way, you can use streaking grime instead of Agrax earth [music] shade or any brown shade. The advantage with streaking grime is that it is enamel. So enamel dries quite slowly, the slowest out of the big three, which is lacquer, enamel, acrylic, right? And this slow drying process allows it to dry more evenly. Um, so that when it dries, it gives off this airbrushed sort of look even though you applied it with a paintbrush. It’s [music] really just beautiful.

Uh, but also nothing’s really stopping you from [music] using this in conjunction with the brown wash, which is what I’m going to do. [laughter] So again, this is completely optional. If you don’t have streaking grime or whatever, completely skip this step. Before we apply the streaking grime, your shipping container should look something like this. Basically, really nasty stains everywhere because of how sloppily we applied it, which is completely and utterly fine.

This is supposed to be gross, right? It should look something like this. And also, I’ve elected to mention that the previous step with the wash incredibly messy. In fact, don’t be surprised if you pull somewhere on your table, your cutting mat. Please do have a cutting mat so that whatever paint uh you missed or uh goes on the table [music] ends up on the cutting mat and not on your mom’s furniture. For this step, we’ll be using the same wide brush plus this weathering sponge brush from Tamiya.

That’s the item code right there, 87083. These sponge type brushes uh are really good. Mr. Hobby also has a couple of them and they’re nice or what we’re about [music] to do. And also make sure you have odorless thinner. Can’t go wrong with odorless thinner, but it is needed for this step.

Streaking Grime Application

Vigorously shake your streaking grime and directly from the pot. You just apply on the spots that you want it to go. Now, let’s try on the sides first cuz I want to just sort of demo the effect where it’s going to be the most grimy. Focus it on the lower half of the shipping container. Now, a little pro tip. You don’t have to do this one. Uh granted this entire step is optional, but this specific one you don’t have to do it. But basically, I would wait a day at least till the acrylic paints are sort of fully cured.

Sometimes people even wait a week, which is I think overkill, but because this is enamel and it is much stronger than water-based acrylics, [music] there’s a chance that the paint will either crack, melt, bubble, or lift uh because of the reactions. And to avoid any of that, people wait extended periods of time to cure it. Or you can just cheat the system by applying a top coat when it’s still sort of just dried on the day. Uh the top coat will be the one that that gets eaten by the streaking grime instead of the main color. So let this soak for maybe 5 to 10 minutes and then we’ll come back.

You then take your odorless thinner after a little bit of soaking with this and you dip it directly into the thinner so it’s fully soaked. And what you’re going to do is just dab, lightly dab. So what you’re doing here is removing the excess streaking grime from the surface while leaving it on the recesses. Now your mileage may vary, of course. You may want to remove more than what I am removing now. And that’s okay. So long as you keep dabbing. And [music] dabbing is important because again, it’s weaker acrylics versus stronger enamels. It’s okay if your odourless thinner gets stained like this.

That’s no problem. Not at all. And just redo the entire step once again till you’re satisfied. There’s no sort [music] of right way of doing this cuz again it’s weathering, low cortisol, up to you and how dirty you want this [music] to be. So, my idea here is to just focus it onto sort of the lower 2/3. If you feel like it stopped absorbing, um, basically just take a paper towel and just dab again. Same thing, just dab. You can even maybe let it soak like that so it absorbs anything excess and then re-dip it onto your odorless thinner. Rinse and repeat the process.

And your mileage may vary in how uh dirty it has to be, [music] but again, up to you. And there we go. So, it’s still a little wet. Also, I included a little bit of the process up top as well, but for the most part, it’s heavily concentrated where the bottom is. So, let it dry for a sec, and then we’ll finish it off with maybe three more steps. To be honest, you can even stop here if you want. This is nasty. This [music] is super nasty.

Touch Ups & Metallic Application

Before we move on, uh the third to the last step is just touching up details that you didn’t paint as of [music] yet. So, that would be the turrets, the touch pad, plus all the skulls, and that’s about it really. Maybe uh steel grates like that will be colored with gunmetal as well. Yeah. So, just paint the little details that you missed the first time. For the bronze parts, I’m using Arcane Gold Base.

And [music] for the silver parts, well, using Ammo Silver. There we go. It looks incredibly appropriately weathered. And again, like I’m going to keep saying it, you can stop right here. But if you want to go a little bit farther, [music] um, what we’re going to be doing is bringing back the original colors for each and every part. So that would be the mix maroon for the box as a whole, the silver for the gun, the gold for the skulls and the panel. And what we’re going to be doing is just retouching some spots. Basically [music] just adding tiny bit of highlights onto where the light will shine the most.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re like, “Isn’t that counterintuitive? bring back the original color after weathering. No, basically all you’re doing is just providing the necessary sort of highlights to make it stand [music] out because using weathering without doing highlights is the equivalent of having too much shadows. You turn up the shadows on a photo and it becomes super muddy.

Uh just a little bit to help it stand out would go a long way. And in [music] fact, it would have the opposite effect because some of the details stand out. the griiness of the rest of the model stands out too. So just for the skulls, just the crest, top of the dome where the five head is and the cheekbones. I’ll probably just do the same thing on that skull right there. Top [music] of his dome, maybe a little bit of his mouth and this arch. That’s it. Goes a long way. Long way.

Dry Brushing

For dry brushing, I’ll be using the XL Vallejo dry brush and just paper towels. So again, if you don’t know how to dry brush, just take your brush right there cuz this is a compound color. And you take your paper towel and you just remove 90 to 95% of all paints from your brush. You don’t want to smudge anything. Keep going until there’s barely anything going onto the paper towel.

All right, that’s barely any. All right, and you just go back and forth in the [music] direction that you want. So for this one, I’m going to focus a lot of the dirt more towards [music] the second half or the bottom half of the container. So the top part will be a lot brighter. For scenery like this, dry brushing is the way to go instead of edge highlighting or at least, you know, the the larger broad areas. some specific parts again like the details, you’d want to use an edge highlighting technique, but to save time and your sanity, I’d go dry brushing and the bigger stuff. All right, there we go.

See those right there? The arches of the vents. Yeah, if you edge highlight each vent individually, then it will take three hours to do. Probably not. Maybe about an hour and a half, but it’s still a long time. And uh dry brushing just simplifies it. And of course, I went heavy at the top. But even with the heavy dry brush, it’s still really weathered though looking bleached. That’s good because the sun hits from there while retaining the the griiness at the second half, the bottom half of the container.

To finish it off, we’re going to be using Adam silver or any gunmetal that you have. I’m using silver because it’s brighter. But if you want to go a little bit darker for this one, that’s on you. That’s okay. Basically, same thing though, but even lighter. I’d go even lighter. The lightest possible because all this is doing is to really show that it’s truly weathered. Paint’s been peeling in some spots. So, true wear and tear. And this has the added benefit of highlighting the rivets. Rivets are annoying to paint because they’re so tiny and there’s so many of them. Yeah, they’re easy. You just put a dot, but who has time for that? [laughter] You can even do stabbing motions like this in certain parts to make it look like it got damaged there [music] via scratches or it fell on its side or something. So, something like that, [music] right?

Final Look

And there we go. A simple, easy, low cortisol paint job that can be done in an afternoon. All you have to do is dry brush, find the right color, and figure out where weathering is coming from. And to be honest, I just said everywhere. [music] So again, even more low cortisol, no stress. Something simple like this for your table will go a long way in providing sort of immersiveness and realism, and it grounds the whole experience uh and makes your table look pretty good.

You don’t have to go parade ready on your ruins or shipping containers. And if they look like this, that’s not even just good enough. It’s really good for your table. Period. Well, that’s it for me today. Thank you guys so much for watching. What do you guys think? Do you guys go uh a little overboard, at least to other people’s standards, uh when doing your terrain for your table, your game table, or do you just sort of have cans uh Styrofoam here and there to represent like ruins or containers or something?

Let me know down below. And as always guys, my name is Paul and down below as well in the description box is where you’d find all the links to our social media pages. Also the links to our [music] realtime website. So all the products you see in this video is available through our website down below. Uh and finally guys, if you enjoyed the video, you learned something, like and subscribe.

You know, we’re trying to hit 20K subs. Uh the initial goal was actually before end of 2026, but it turns out trajectory says we may hit it prior to the beginning of the fall, maybe [music] around that time. So, hey, that’s awesome. That’s really good. I remember the days when we used to beg for 1,000 subs. Now, uh we’re nearly at 20K. [music] Time flies. It’s been less than 3 years. Wow. Lot has changed. So, yeah. Bye-bye, guys.

About the Author:

Paul Catindig As someone who’s been building model kits since he was 8 years old, Paul is very knowledgeable and adept at model kit building! When he’s not building or painting kits, he spends his free time cooking, playing video games with friends, or at a restaurant patio somewhere. Hopes to make his very own movie one day.

*Video by Paul Catindig
Video Edited by
Daniela Castellano and Leo Nguyen
Transcript generated by youtube
Edited by Angelo Castellano