A Death Company Dreadnought is predominately black. Highlights on vehicles are also easier due to long and sharp armour plate edges, and there's a lot of metallic colours that are some of the easiest highlights to get away with. Washes over metallic colours are also easy - it's mostly Nuln Oil. Some Seraphim Sepia and Agrax Earthshade was used for a rusted or scorched look.
The crosses also provided the first change of some Blood Angel highlighting with red. Nothing special - it's just a base of Mephiston Red with Wild Rider Red along the edges. Care had to be taken here: too thick detracts, too thin doesn't show up at all. A nice fine brush helps here.
Some of black armour plating was highlighted by using the side of a very wide and flat brush to get Celestra Grey along edges. This is mostly a drybrushing technique, even if the paint is a base paint. It worked rather well, but the key is to keep it to the edges and drybrush only. If it builds up too much, then the grey is too bright and it doesn't work. That took a bit of figuring out, and I'll likely use a different technique for black armour highlights in future.
The claws were a base of Leadbelcher, with Ironbreaker for highlighting. This was then given a glaze of Guilliman Blue (2 coats). Lothern Blue was layered onto the tips and some edges for some extra glowing power effect. Overall it worked rather well, but it's a little uneven in some places. I could have gone for the normal effect seen in Games Workshop photos, but I felt that a power claw should be metallic with a blue glow, not just blue with highlights in general. Not sure if that makes sense in words, but just compare the image with other photos off the 'net. The more glaze also means the claws aren't as bright in comparison to the rest of the model and complement rather than stand out too much.
The torso sarcophagus was very simple compared to other styles I've seen. No highlighting was done at all in the end because I felt that the coppery colour fit too well. It's just a couple of coats of Balthasar Gold. The reference image has a normal metal colour, but that's just too much silver on one model.
The (model's) left shoulder insignia is Yriel Yellow, with a Fuegan Orange wash (a couple of coats), and Flash Gitz Yellow for the highlights. It's far more impressive than in the photo, particularly because a very fine brush kept the detail in place. It works well as a non-metallic gold, and is more photogenic than the metallic paints. Something to keep in mind if I ever enter painting competitions. The halo over the cup is Gehenna's Gold tipped with Auric Armour Gold, but the second highlight is barely visible on such a small area. It would still serve well for other models however, such as Commander Dante.
The Blood Angel insignias were based with White Scar, with Drakenhof Nightshade applied as a wash on the wings. This didn't really turn out fanastically, so I've looked at alternate methods in other models. The blue, however, works well and gives it a much cleaner look than using something like Nuln Oil. The middle blood drop gem is stock standard: Mephiston Red as a base, with Abaddon Black used to darken the top, and Wild Rider Red highlighting the bottom. A small dot of white gives the gem-like appearance. Care must be taken with the white dot however - it's easy to make it too large, and just as easy to make it too small (after which corrections typically make it too large).
I did try some Dark Reaper as another black highlighting paint, which might work well in some specific areas (it's actually next to the red crosses in some places), but doesn't work for the edges of armour plating. It can also be seen on the grapples above the torso. It's a good paint for bordering an area of brighter colour, rather than trying to highlight black, so at least that experiment was useful.
The base was just messing about really. I can't even remember what I did to that, but it somehow works. It was mostly some work with different grey paints, and a wash (possibly Agrax Earthshade, but I'm not sure) to give it some browns.
And that's it for the already painted models. Commander Dante is up next, because I wanted to see how the gold colours would turn out on something more large scale, but I've been taking photos as the painting of that model progresses so the format will be a bit more "work in progress" than "here's the finished model".
-- silly painter
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