Archaeopter Part 2 – Base Painting Citadel’s Adeptus Mechanicus Oddity

The Archaeopter continues to be an absolute blast of a kit!

I’d had great fun painting the cockpit, and that enjoyment has carried right through to painting the full airframe. There’s actually quite a bit of surface area to paint. Most of it is red, tan, or black, though with some metallics thrown in for good measure.

While I typically airbrush larger models like this, I decided to go with brush painting this one. I find it very relaxing and enjoyable. It’s basically doing models the way I did as a kid. And while airbrushing gives a wide range of options for fading and shading very nice gradients, brush painting is so simple to just pick up, start, stop, and then continue any time. Even if the power is out you can brush paint… assuming you have some decent light of course. 😉

For this build, I’m pretty much sticking with Citadel colors. It’s not really to be “canon” though. I simply find them to be wonderful paints to brush on. Certainly Vallejo is no slouch, but I suppose it just seems right to paint a Citadel model with Citadel paints.

Plus I had all the colors on hand anyway… 😉

A Good Value

There are lots of little details, which actually was part of the reason I chose to brush paint the model. Quite a bit of masking would have been required for airbrushing, and far more subassemblies to keep things straight. And with one of the build goals being “avoid frustration”, not having to mask certainly fit the bill.

While it is definitely not a cheap kit, Citadel’s Archaeopter really delivers. It’s a fun build, with no fuss, and it looks cool. And there is are so many wonderful little details to paint, you definitely get your money’s worth out of this one!