Heresy Era Dark Angels - Characters and plasma repeater support squad(s) painted!

Got a fair bit of brush time in over the last few days, as well as some cool new gear - A good combo!

I wanted to do a few placeholder character models for the Dark Angels while I await whatever new models may drop with the release of the next book, Malevolence. The two Dark Vengeance models got a helmet swap and some Mk.III backpacks to heresy them up a little, while the chaplain basically just got painted as-is. Even so, they're a little over-blinged which reads as a bit more 40k in general. Nevertheless, quite pleased with how they turned out!

The plasma support squad was the initial test of the paint scheme using the Vallejo range of substitute colors for the armor, and while they worked out reasonably well, I ended up buying some Incubi Darkness and Kabalite Green which are both about a step darker and will hopefully not be quite so stark on future models.

Still researching how I want to do the heraldry thing with the models. As a nod to the fluff, all of the models in the army will have the green right shoulder pad to represent them being Calibanites (and as such filthy dirty traitors, as the situation demands). I'm thinking of going with a common heraldic design to denote squads, with some additional personal heraldry on occasional other areas of the armour. Most of the color plates seem to suggest a mix of red slashes, black and white checkerboard and bone, so will have to experiment with various combinations thereof! So that said, the two squads above aren't done per se - still a fair bit of work to go, but as a proof of concept I think we're on the right track!

You may have noticed a bit of an increase in the quality of the photos due to the acquisition of a proper light box (finally). I've been experimenting with backdrops and techniques over the last several months as you may have noticed, and finally broke down and bought a Foldio 2 based on the comments and reviews of several fellow bloggers - thus far I have to say I am quite impressed! The adjustable overhead lights make getting good bright white light at the intensity desired, these were taken at about half brightness as the full chat was blowing out the pics. The translucent material of the box itself means that I can position my stand lights to either side and get some nice secondary diffusion. Now if only buying new gear automatically granted a commensurate boost in  painting skill! Hah!

Heresy Era Sons of Horus - Armies on Parade family photo!

I recently finished off the last of the models I had assembled and figured a family photo of what's been painted up so far was in order. Packed everything up and popped over to the local GW to put them in the Armies on Parade lineup and snapped a few pics!

There's actually quite a few of 'em once I got 'em all laid out! Fairly infantry heavy so far, but I find it's good to crank out a mess of infantry and leave the big toys for later. Still plan on adding more to the force, and there's quite a bit still awaiting assembly, but we're looking at about 3500 points complete already!

Couple off-angle shots as well - Pretty happy with how the greens turned out across the force, and I'm rather enjoying the various spot colors here and there, the hot oranges pop nicely against the cooler tones of the armor.

Updated the painting chart and really pleased with how it's coming along! Still a few things on the ol' wish list to order up from Forge World once the new rulebook drops, and a couple models still awaiting assembly in the Closet of Doom. However, I'm thinking I might switch gears for a bit and work on a different project for a little while to recharge the batteries after all this green!

Heresy Era Sons of Horus - Vets and Characters painting begins, and a few more builds...

Bouncing back and forth between projects this month is helping keep things fresh and the painting servitor has been operating at peak efficiency! Got a fair bit of brush time in over the last couple evenings and made some headway on the veterans, Maloghurst and the master of signal.

Started off by giving the models an undercoat of 50/50 Black and USMC Tank Crew, to give the models a nice base for the green to highlight up from.

Next up was a generous drybrush of straight USMC Tank Crew, concentrating a bit heavier on the upper surfaces. Maybe it's the year or so of painting nothing but reds but I gotta say, I really like this green!

Time for the edge highlights! After the stylistic experiment of the recent Thousand Sons, I wanted to get back to my preferred style, and all the armor plates were picked out in USMC Tank Crew Highlight, again concentrating primarily on those edges and surfaces that were exposed to an overhead light source. Also roughed in the reds on the topknots and banner.

The reds were given a wash and highlight pass, and then I went back and re-blacked all the weapons and shoulder pads which cleans up the models dramatically. The black was then given the initial highlight pass with a 50/50 mix of black and Sombre Grey. Starting to come together now!

The second box o' joy arrived yesterday containing, among other things, some legion upgrade kits (shoulder pads, helmets, etc.) and I set to SoH-ing some event only models I've had kicking around for ages. First up is a Primaris Medicae, in a Cataphractii variant suit of armor. He'll be joining the squad of lightning claw terminators planned for the force.

Next is a traitor terminator librarian. I didn't end up using him in the Thousand Sons army for obvious reasons, but he's gonna fit in fine with the Sons of Horus!

Last but certainly not least is of course Ezekyle Abaddon, the not-quite-the-despoiler yet. He'll be leading the big ol' squad of Justaerin Terminators, and will be transported to the fray either via teleportation or in the belly of a Spartan Assault Carrier. There's a model that I'm not particularly looking forward to assembling!

While I'm definitely going traitor with the force, I have always wanted to build and paint the Abaddon vs. Loken duel vignette, so there will be one loyalist when all is said and done!

40k Blood Ravens - Characters painted, more or less...

Rather than spam the blog with every single step I figured I'd push ahead and post up the (more or less) completed models, and keep the recipe pics for my own reference. So without further ado, a whole mess o' character pics!

First up is the commander in Gravis armour - I really dig this sculpt, he's heavy and brutal, and the wrist-mounted bolter with the ammo feed is a nice design touch.

Really dig the Primaris Chaplain sculpt as well, another brutalist re-imagining of an iconic model. I particularly like the Iron Halo!

The Librarian I'm of two minds about - I enjoyed painting it, but felt that it's the least epic of the new character models. Nothing particularly remarkable in the design, though it is solid and reads as a Librarian straight away. Went back to the well with the ethereal green weapons and cabling, which sets off nicely against the blue and red.

Ah the new Apothecary - I absolutely LOVE this new sculpt and think it may be one of the best Apothecaries they've done. Really enjoyed painting him up although from what I understand they lost a little utility on the 8th edition battlefields.

The Ancient is a fairly unremarkable sculpt comparatively speaking, but as I've always been a big fan of banners on the 40k battlefields, I really did enjoy building and painting him. Picked up a sheet of totally-not-blood-raven-transfers (wink!) from Fallout Hobbies at NOVA and was well pleased with how it turned out!

Finally, the four Lieutenant models - Fairly basic marine sergeant type figs, but pretty happy with how they turned out. Had to use my usual bright blue color scheme somewhere in the projects after all, and the power swords fit the bill nicely!

Now for the downsides - Overall I'd say when the dust settled I'm only about 75% pleased with how they turned out. It was a bit of a speed painting exercise after a long stretch of no real hobby activity, and they feel a little rough. I know that I can do better than this, and looking back over them there are some pretty jaggy blending and shading issues here and there. Part of that I think comes from painting-red-fatigue and in retrospect I think I may have been better served choosing some other chapter than the Blood Ravens. I'm committed now however, so we'll press on regardless.

That said, I just got a shipping notification for the next batch of Sons of Horus bits, so sometime in the next week or so I should be getting a nice big box o' joy from Forge World, which includes enough bits and kits to actually get started on the next Heresy force. I'm really looking forward to getting cracking on with the sea-foam green scheme, and will be taking some lessons learned from this current project to heart when it comes time to bring brush to model on the SoH!

40k Blood Ravens - Character painting continues!

Got a little brush time in over the last couple days and have been plugging away at the characters. I figured I would document each step so I'll have a reference to check as I work through the rest of the force and ensure they're all following the same steps.

After laying in the reds on the armour, next up was to hit everything intended to be leather, bone or parchment in Vallejo Tierra (Earth).

The bone and parchment areas were then picked out in Bleached Bone, while the leather got a second pass to brighten it up. The chest eagles and the ravens on the shoulder pads were re-blacked in at this point as well to clean 'em up a bit.

Next all the bone, parchment and leather were given an Army Painter Strong Tone wash to bring them down a little and give a touch more depth.

All the bone and parchment areas were then re-highlighted in Bleached Bone followed by a pass of Pale Sand on the uppermost surfaces.

Finally I went in and re-blacked the shoulder pad rims which cleans up a fair bit of slop and sharpens 'em up a bit! Next up will be highlighting the black on the rims and chest eagles, then on to the metallics. So far so good!

40k Blood Ravens - Character painting begins!

The last month has been almost bereft of painting and building models, which has really been a bummer. While there's been a lot of games and fun had at various conventions I've really missed clipping out bits, gluing my fingers together and putting paint to models. Time to dust off the ol' painting servitor and get cracking! While there's some Sons of Horus looming on the horizon, it's going to be another month or so before I have all the models and whatnot to really get started. So it's time to dip my toes into 8th edition for a bit and see how it goes. I've been wanting to get to grips with the new Primaris marines and figured that some Blood Ravens would be a nice way to go (what with them theoretically being a Thousand Sons successor chapter)...

Naturally the project began with creating a massive grey plastic mountain of models, and I rather enjoyed building them. Took an afternoon to primer everything and pulled out a first chunk of models to get started with - when in doubt, start with a bunch of characters, right? So far it's mostly been just laying in the base armour colors - I really dig the Gravis armoured captain, and the ancient is rather cool as well. Tons of cool detail to pick out, and while they're a little sloppy so far I think they're going to turn out looking pretty sharp!

The trio of Chaplain, Apothecary and Librarian offers up the opportunity to work in some other colors, though the robes and tabards in the Blood Raven red should help tie them all together. Again, rather messy so far but they're starting to come into focus!

Just to round things out are four Lieutenant models, which are probably too many. I'm actually considering using them as sergeants for the tactical squads instead. The one thing I'm less enthused about with the nuMarines are the mostly-monopose nature of them - With these four I was able to do a little mix-n-match to make them all a little different, but as we'll see in future posts, many of the 'normal' marines end up fairly same-y which is a bit of a bummer. Still, overall I'm rather digging the models, and there's nefarious plans bubbling away in the back of my mind to use them as the basis of some 'true-scale' heresy era marines... Madness!