Rather coincidentally I’ve just done my own Psychic Awakening as Games Workshop are releasing their own Psychic Awakening – I’ve recently completed three Primaris Psykers for my Astra Militarum force.

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As Longhunter keeps telling us all; the psychic phase needs to be used. If we don’t take Psykers then we are missing out on an entire phase of the game.

With three Primaris Psykers and Aradia Madellan, I can now take advantage of this phase. Although during my last game they did very little because they were all dead by turn two.

Yellow Primaris Psyker

My first Primaris Psyker was red. This second one was yellow – a colour I’d never really painted before. Other than wires.

After priming the model black I applied Flash Gitz. I always prime in black, always have. Maybe priming in white or grey or brown would make applying the yellow easier. But the model was already black before I decided to make it yellow and I just don’t like priming in other colours because it leaves those hard to reach places a bright colour.

This looks odd because those hard to reach places should be in shadow and be black.

Yellow on black coats

Anyway, I managed to apply my yellow layer on black. It probably took seven coats. After attempting the wet blended method I’d used with red – it looks awful. This invoked mixing in black and white to yellow to give me my shade colour and highlight colour. Sadly this didn’t work. Yellow is just weird.

So I opted for Seraphim Sepia wash and Cassandora Yellow wash to give me my shaded yellow. My highlight was yellow mixed with white – but with a lot of white and very little yellow. This made a sort of Dorn Yellow tone – because I didn’t have any Dorn Yellow to hand.

World’s most expensive lightbox

Overall it worked well and it does look like a yellow fabric coat in the end.

Yellow Primaris Psyker Completed

Blue Primaris Psyker

So now I’d managed to muddle my way through yellow, I moved straight onto a new colour to blend, blue.

I used Caledor Sky for the base layer, again over black and then Teclis Blue and finally Teclis Blue mixed with white for the highlight.

I spent a lot less time on this one compared with my yellow Primaris Psyker and Aradia Madellan (below). Sometimes I get bored with a method and just want to see the back of it. And sometimes I feel like I’m not gaining anything with what I’m doing so abandon it and say that this is as far as I can take this.

The endpoint of the blue was a bit of both. I was bored and I wasn’t making it any better with the time I was putting into it.

As the first blue I had done, I was happy. It’s no worse than my first attempt at red.

Blue Primaris Psyker completed

Primaris Psyker Aradia Madellan

This model is a joy to paint. And I think is my best model to date.

The cloak I had a lot of fun with, but it did take two hours to do. The red-to-purple transition just happened. I wanted to paint it a deep purple, but I did not have a purple so I made my own purple.

This process of making the purple then led me into making the transition because I was accidentally making all this purpled from red and blue and white. I used Caledor Sky, White Scar, Mephiston Red and Evil Sunz Scarlet.

I’m really happy with the end result and I’m excited to try it again on some other models. Maybe Astropaths?

Cloak Work In Progress

I also wet blended the trousers, inner cloak, front cloth, scarf on the waist and the arms. The trousers and arms are Zandri Dust. The front cloth and inner cloak are Screaming Skull.

The gloves were just Ulthuan Grey and washed with Nuln Oil. The scarf was white and blended with Seraphim Sepia.

The cloak was done with these four paints – and water

Primaris Psyker Aradia Madellan Gallery

The Power of the Glaze

Maybe I said this before but I wanted to say it again. Using a glaze can really help bring your model together in the most subtle way. Firstly, for me, a wash is a thin paint that you want to run into the recesses and nooks of a model to give depth and contrast. I say “for me” because there are various ways you can categorise glazes and washes. But this is how I view and use them.

A glaze, for me, is a very thin paint you use to paint the model. It’s not necessarily used to go into the recesses of the model – although it could be used that way. This very thin paint that contains very little pigment will slowly change the colour of the area as you apply more and more layer.

So it’s really good to use on say a white and the. Glaze it with multiple layers of another colour to build up a slight shade. I’m no pro at this but I think it’s a technique worth trying and exploring.

The other use of a glaze is to tie the whole model it an area of a model together. I did this on multiple occasions on the cloak. Sometimes when I’d finish a session on the cloak it just wasn’t sitting right with me. Maybe the transition wasn’t working very well or a shaded area was at shaded enough. A thin purple glaze over all of the cloak would just tint the whole thing to purple – ever so slightly – and really help blend the whole cloak together.

Give it a go!

Primaris Psyker Basing

Finally, all the bases use Agrellan Earth with a Seraphim Sepia wash and a Screaming Skull dry brush. The grass and flowers are from Serious Play.

Bases in progress