Space Marine Heroes 2 - Part I

 

Barrels of fun.

Before the compressor fell apart, I did manage to start on the remaining models from the Space Marine Heroes 2 set. I have a couple of duplicates, so one of them will at a later stage be painted up probably as an Imperial Fist, while the other duplicate had some minor conversion work to equip him with a heavy flamer. The conversion is not the best, but it pads out the squad and does give the heavy flamer option, so I'm just going to have to roll with it.

Using the airbrush on Terminators is a different experience. I've not done much with them recently, and while I'm quite used to "normal" marines and how their armour volumes work, Terminator plate is different. I've tried to put more focus on the upper areas, and the corners around the the "arch", but I could probably give more shading in a few key spots. It's not that critical - recess shading still gives good contrast around the armour, and edge highlights can be used to make certain areas more prominent.

The actual paints used do not differ at all to my usual method, except this time I'm trying again with a gloss varnish before applying the recess shade. This makes the shade much easier to apply by helping the shade flow into the recess areas more readily, and makes cleaning up mistakes (far fewer in number to usual) more or less trivial. Faster to apply, fewer mistakes, a much quicker experience in general. The main downside is the glossy finish that ruins photos and does make it more easy for the next layers to wear off, at least until a matt varnish is applied. I can wait.

The eye lens is Ulthuan Grey covered in Talassar Blue. The two mixed also give a nice highlight colour later. I explicitly have not gone for the more traditional reflective look mostly because the lens is raised more than on other helmets, and I went with blue rather than green because I wanted contrast in brightness rather than colour to make it stand out - mixing the two is too jarring.

One of my favourite parts about this model series is that they can almost entirely be assembled prior to painting. I keep the heads/helmets separate for easier access to some small details, but enough has been done here that full assembly is possible. As I've mentioned before, this really increases my painting motivation and means I don't have to keep track of which sub-assembly belongs with with model.

I am not planning on batch painting these models, but I might do certain details all at the same time. Keeping all the colours used on the Crux Terminators on the palette, for example, will make it easier to paint each in turn: not just one layer and one colour at a time, but each to completion in turn. This is another trick to increase my painting motivation, so I'm hopeful it won't take a year to get all of these done.

-- silly painter.