Blood Angels Legion Moritat - Part II (Showcase)

 

Eye see you.

For various reasons I was motivated to keep going on this particular model, and have now completed it to a level I'm happy with. I can always do more of course, but half the point was to adapt the "Trovarion Grimdark" style and make the model look they've been through some rough battles.

How much the particular model helps I'm not sure, but the results are incredibly well worth it. I've generally been following box art these days just for the sake of not having to worry about colour schemes, but in this case many of the panels I kept as red rather than mixing it up between red, black, and dirty white. The rugged appearance outlined everything perfectly well, despite red being the dominating colour, and trying to mix in colour variation for what I can only presume to be ablative armour panels would ruin the look. In other words, the rugged look was not only faster, but looks far superior to the "clean" approach for this particular model.

I've often said that single miniatures like this lend themselves well to experimentation, and this made painting details much easier on account of just using whatever was on the wet palette to come up with something interesting. The Volkite Serpenta (fancy name, but the weapons) are:

• Incubi Darkness mixed with a little Corvus Black for shading
• Incubi Darkness for the mid-tone.
• Incubi Darkness and Dawnstone for highlighting.

The Dawnstone, being a grey rather than a white, I've used in various places as I find it useful for brightening a colour without desaturating it overly much like a white would. The weapon muzzle is:

• Balthasar Gold around the outer edging.
• White Scar thinned to wash and pooled in the muzzle.
• Fuegan Orange shaded over the previous step.

The undersuit ribbing is a little different to normal:

• Mechanicus Standard Grey over the appropriate areas.
• Mix in a little Corvus Black for darkened areas.
• Mix in Dawnstone instead for highlights.
• Nuln Oil to add some definition. In places where this didn't work, a few careful strokes of Corvus Black to replicate this (particularly the right armpit area).

At this point I didn't really want the normal black trim colours, but instead switched them out for the insignia colours I normally use. This gives the trim a slight blue shift rather than being purely grey, and I chose this for the simple reason of the power cable sheaths going to the weapons are already giving a lot of grey, and I intended to give a little hint of blue on the base that the trim would keep balance with.

• Abaddon Black over all the trim.
• Dark Reaper dabbed as a highlight, in keeping with the overall highlighting approach on this model.
• Russ Grey dabbed or used as edge highlighting as desired.

There was quite a bit of back & forth with the colours on the trim (wet palette is a must for doing this) just to try get a balance of definition without going too bright. The model is quite dark in general and anything bright would be likely to stand out too much. I also took the opportunity to use the black and outline some areas where I felt it was required. This is quite subtle and doesn't show up greatly in the photo, but the subtle things often make the largest difference.

Grenades are nice and simple:

• Iron Warrior
• Athonian Camoshade
• Leadbelcher highlight
  

The leather pouches I tried to give some scratches on, even if they are quite small details. The trick is really to give uneven edge highlighting and give the appearance of worn leather.

• Rhinox Hide
• Gorthor Brown to edge highlight most areas, in a fairly clean manner.
• Baneblade Brown to add scratches or uneven edge highlights.
• Agrax Earthshade to tie it all together.

I could have made those pouches stand out ever so slightly more, possibly by thinning the Agrax a little bit, but didn't want to risk ruining it completely and so tagged them as "good enough for now".

The base was a bit interesting in that I wasn't entirely sure what to do, but then decided that perhaps I could use the opportunity to give all the 30k models from Blood Angels and Sons of Horus a similar theme. This would effectively have them all fighting in the same ruins, very likely during the Siege of Terra. The common element is the marbling effect first done the steps for the model of Horus, and the slab of stone seemed a good fit. It's lighter too, which contrasts to the darkness of the model (generally good, it's a colour theory thing). I also still wanted blue in places, which was one of the drybrush paints to make it seem though this slab of marble has crashed down into the rubble of ruined asphalt perhaps. I generally just played around until something looked vaguely appealing. Also, that's a Sons of Horus helmet on the ground: this Moritat is obviously good at their job.

Terminatus Stone was lightly drybrushed around the feet. I ordinarily don't do such things, but this particular Moritat has been fighting a while and some dust would gather.

The eye lens is a glowing eye lens - apart from being much easier to paint this way, I also figured there would be a lot of battlefield information overlaid inside the helmet, more so than standard marines, and this might give a slight glow effect. It also looks cool.

Same jump pack formula from a while back, just painted better.

Actually the jump pack glow did have one difference from the original formula: I used Blue Horror instead of Ulthuan Grey. Not much difference in the end, but I wanted the excuse to use an edge paint.

A couple of transfers from the Thunderhawk sheet (they just happened to be an appropriate size) and another model finished! I hadn't really intended to divert attention from Project 20, but when inspired it's sometimes best to just go for it. I'm really pleased both with how well this model turned out, and with forcing myself to try a different painting style. I'll admit that I'm not currently a patreon of Trovarion, but in a couple of months when finances are back in order then I might well be.

-- silly painter.