Painting up my first talos. Getting 'ardcoating right

I've been trying to catch up with all the Dark eldar modells i bought on the cheap towards the end of last year. With the release of their 7'th ed Codex, a lot of ads went up regarding sales of unpainted, and even unbuilt modells started to flourish. Now this is not all that uncommon, but it tends to happen a lot less with the release of codexes that are considered immediately powerful (Eldar, Tau, Necron) but it does keep happening with some of the releases for codexes that are a bit more niched (Ork,Dark Eldar,Tyranids) one immediate assumption is that all of the codexes that are not immediately considered powerfull is that people are jumping ship, but i rather think that it has to do with the fact that a lot of people on the fence have a "one day" project. 

You know, the kind most miniature painters have, "oh one day i will paint up that Forge world model" or "one day i will start a new mini-force of 750 pts" and then a new codex is relased, and the final stress of buying another codex for something you have not even started with gets to be to much, and the ads go up. And when it comes to immediately powerful armies, you do not have to look too far to sell your armies, so even getting an ad up might not be needed. You just ask around in your immediate circle of friends/players.

Still, needless speculation aside.One of the models i bought was a Talos, now as a rule i had the ambition of keeping a straight Kabal army, with the exception of a Haemonculus with Wrack assistents (the pull of victorian horror beeing to strong a notion to ignore), but i got the Talos at about 1/3 the price, so i have played it twice. Both times against Tau. And let me tell you. The look on somebodys face when they don't know what a Talos is. Priceless! 

So, at T7/S7 and MC status, you generally laugh at tanks, you move through cover, you strike at AP2, and with a 10 point upgrade you get the chance to reroll all "To wound" rolls. Mix this with six attacks on the charge, and a HoW strike, and you have a GREAT line breaker.

Downsides then, you are slow. Very slow. You might move trough cover. But you still have a 6" move, and no fleet for you, oh my no. I have given my Talos a TL heat lance, and a Stinger pod(two blast templates, S5AP5) the stinger pod means you are pretty much shooting at infantry, and charging infantry on that turn, so if you have a TEQ to get at? Good for you. If not, it is something of a waste to spend you 120+ points on. So the Twin linked heatlance is pretty good, it has let me take down riptides, suits, and vehicles. You talos also rolls with a 3+ and a FnP base. So i am VERY happy with what it has done so far. I guess D-weapons would mess up it's day, but whose day wouldn't it mess up?

When it came to the painting i had a few ideas to try, i wanted to get the blank masks on the Wracks i had done, and i wanted to get a pale pinkish hue on the skin, beyond that i wanted to do a lot of Varnishing (for which i had gone full consumer ho' and bought GW's own) so as to give it a shine that was reminiscent of the glistening carapace of a beetle. 

Now i had never used 'ardcoat on this big a surface before (this was before i finished up my Venom)

This will not be fast, but i am gentle on the brushes. 

So i assumed that i would take maybe two, three coats? I ended up doing about seven. Now this may be because i am "a shit" and not in the know on what i am doing. But seven seems to be about right. I also made sure that the Heat lance comes off real easy loike so that i can swap it for a Pod or even a Haywire blaster. But the end result ended up being 

To my actual satisfaction, it is difficult to get a good detailed picture with my cell-camera. But i did some "blood splatter" with drybrush korne red on the blades, and with the pleasure of doing a big base i could add-on an old marine backpack, and did two "smaller" terrain pieces from the basing kit for skull piles. The "spine" tail that runs the length of the body to the weapon option was done with "druchii" shading on bleached bone, to make sure it was visually distinct from the body. 

The "blank mask" is pretty iconic of the talos, so was wondering if i was going to draw some flashes or similar, but in the end i settled for a nice blank look. 

All in all, i was pretty happy with this modell.