Mortal vs Marco

We’re all fans of Marco Frisoni right? The way he effortlessly ‘speedpaints’ his way through characters and warbands, churning out seemingly competition-standard results in under 4 hours.

I’ve learned tons of techniques, tips and tricks from him over the years but I had never attempted to follow along with one of his ‘tutorials’ until December 2021….when I decided to give it a go.

‘Merry Christmas’ by Ed Sheeran and Elton John was top of the charts, the Black Templars had just had their range revamped, and a new High Marshall Helbrecht model had just been released. This was the video that Marco released the month prior, the one I decided to paint along to:

The reason why this project is now a 2023 Spring Clean Challenge entry will become clear shortly, but I’ll save the spoilers ?

The staple of all Marco videos, the value sketch using the airbrush.  White ink over black primer.  His looks a bit smoother close up, but that’s not a problem, it’s a close enough match at this stage.  I was also snagging screenshots of his stuff from YouTube and comparing to my phone photos so they are not equal in terms of image quality but I’ll swallow the excuses down and crack on with the story…

Oh, and I didn’t want the ork on the base, nor the unhelmeted head, but I allowed myself those variances to make sure I ended up with a model I actually wanted, and might even use in my army.

Flesh Tearers Red Contrast paint on the red bits.

So far so good…

He’s at it already!  No common-or-garden black paint for Marco, oh no, he’s making his own chromatic black from Talassar Blue and Gryph-Hound Orange.  (Yes I had to buy those specially).

No problem though, I could replicate that, and I might use this method again – it’s a nice Contrast type black.

Again, still happy with where this was at this stage.

Helbrecht’s armour is a nice shiny gold.  Cool – there are plenty of gold paints on the market right?!  GW make some decent ones.  Vallejo even better.  And Scale 75’s are my favourite.

But…wait, what?!  This is Marco’s idea of the ingredients required to make gold:

No bother – I can do this – another Contrast paint I’ll probably never use again, but we’re in too deep now to stop!

His is slightly more towards yellow than mine, but I know he’s going to make it more orange later so I’m ok with it being this close.

At this stage I’m actually really happy with the process and the match.

In these steps we add the little servitor dudes to the base (yes, Marco had me buying 3 new Instant Colours just to do their skin!), and paint the silver parts.  Marco mixed blue contrast paint with regular silver paint.  Yes, I went a bit too heavy on the blue at the time this pic was taken but that will get corrected.

Ok, I’m clinging on for dear life now.  Marco has broken out the airbrush and seems to think it’s funny to tint tiny details with seemingly no regard for overspray.  His god-like powers compel the paint to land in the right places.  Me, however? It was like giving a firehose to a 5 year old child.  Like giving surgical tools to a Neanderthal.  It was never going to work.

It wasn’t too bad as pictured above.  My ham-fistedness could just about cope with the cape.

But Marco had clearly decided to pull a Mo Farah on me and kicked for home, leaving me taking a piss in the gutter with Paula Radcliffe.

From the front…yuck!