We don’t usually do much for Orktober (we’re not massive fantasy or GW players), but with not much gaming I figured I may as well try and get at least one random project with some Orks in this month. And I’m happy to say that I’ve just scraped in. These are some DakkaJets for Aeronautica Imperialis by Games Workshop. This is another of those good looking systems that I don’t play enough. We don’t play much GW and only a couple of us bought into this game. We played a couple of games, but it’s a new system and there aren’t a heap of different units for it. That’s improved of late, but the global pandemic and Melbourne’s lockdown has meant we don’t play anything so it’s a bit moot what’s changed recently.

I went for a gradient from yellow to red. I started with a yellow base coat over the front half and then came in with the red over the top, reducing how much the front part was sprayed. It wasn’t terrible, but I’m not 100% happy. Getting good coverage on the red meant coming in at different angles, which meant the yellow got taken out on the backside of some surfaces. I also didn’t end up with as much yellow as I would have liked. I don’t hate it, but I would like to improve things a bit. I have a few more Ork planes (most are bigger) and so I’ll see how I go with the others trying a couple of different things. I’m also planning on doing a couple of models in some different colour schemes to serve as heroes and other special planes.

I’ve given them soime visual interest by picking out most of the add on panels with different colours: yellow, red, silver and white. I then went a little further and adding some checks to some of them. These were a combination of decals and hand painted.

The picture below shows one of them next to an Imperial Navy Thunderbolt I painted a while back. That thing is pretty big compared to the DakkaJet. I thin kthe two schemes I’ve gone with contrast quite nicely. Not much chane of friend or foe confusion in visual range.

Colours

I didn’t use that many: red, yellow and some metallics. A little Sky Blue for the windows and some black and white for the wing repair panels. I like how they’ve come out, but colour complexity didn’t feel that necessary. Anyway, some specifics below. One thing to note is that I did an undercoat of a bone/ivory colour. This is to help the yellow come out nicely and pop. I also added a panel line wash at the end.

• Medium Yellow (VMA 71.002)
• Red (VMA 71.003)
• Steel (VMA 71.035)
• Gunmetal (VMA 71.072)
• Sky Blue (SC-51)
• Panel Line Wash Black Night (A.MIG 1611)