Basilica Administratum
This ruin is a follow-up to the Sanctum Imperialis. Like that first project, this is mainly a combination of a couple of Games Workshop polystyrene plastic kits and Hirst Arts plaster. This particular combination is less integrated because getting the measurements right on the floors of the Sanctum was a pain.
Colours used in this project, for future reference in repairs: Vallejo's black airbrush surface primer (SP) was applied from below, followed by the corresponding grey primer from above for simultaneous priming and preshading. This combination produced a bluish tone I couldn't precisely emulate on a wet palette by mixing the two primers, so I used a bit of Vallejo GC Heavy Bluegrey in later brushwork. Highlights are plain white diluted with W&N matt medium. I wanted a lighter overall colour reminiscent of white marble, but drybrushing the GW model got boring fast. In retrospect I should have mixed grey and white in the airbrush for a final pass. The darker grey on the floors is Vallejo GC Heavy Charcoal.
General shading and weathering washes were made with Les Bursley's formula, variously from Vallejo GC Smokey Ink, a black ink and just a tiny bit of a green ink for a couple of miscellaneous stains. The blue is Vallejo GC Imperial Blue and tiny amounts of lighter ones for just a couple of the highlights. The complementary yellow is Vallejo GC Heavy Goldbrown. I tried to suggest three types of material for the skulls: Some are just grey like the main building material, some are naturalistic with a GW Bleached Bone glaze over a GW Snakebite Leather base, and some are metal.
The rusted metal is mainly Vallejo SP German Red Brown, with a little GW Rhinox Hide and a thin wash made from GW Fiery Orange for the less and more corroded parts respectively. To control that and other washes in this project I developed a technique of first painting the object with deionized water and tensides (two parts of the Bursley formula), then applying the wash itself more selectively. There's just a little bit of Vallejo GC Gunmetal Metal mixed with black and applied before the varnish, for shaded areas. The main metallic colour is Vallejo MA Steel, which was applied over the satin varnish as a final touch.
