Blood Angel Hellblasters - Part III

Blue helmets and overcharged night lamps.

Dark Imperium Hellblaster squad finished. Not quite as quickly as I might have liked, but they're done now.

The plasma coil "glow" is sufficient for line troops, although I'll admit it looks more coloured than glowing. I could do more - highlight edges with more white, add some extra shading to areas, maybe some OSL, but have decided that this is sufficient. Quite why there would be glowing plasma coils I'm not sure - wouldn't it be better to keep an obviously sensitive area of the weapon armoured? Unless it's for a different purpose, such as heat dissipation - but then I've no idea why it would glow. In any case, it does serve to make the squad immediately recognisable. Same reason that blue helmets actually make a kind of sense: a battlefield commander can instantly see where their heavy support options are.

The decals I'm getting better at. There are still some problems once everything has dried, so I still prefer carved icons, but decal skills are useful. Mostly I cover the entire decal with a solvent, wait a little bit, then press it down further with a cotton bud. This helps to really make the decal flush with the surface because the solvent makes it a little more malleable. When that's dry, a coat of Stormshield to protect the decal before covering everything in Purity Seal varnish.

Quite happy with the squad overall though, and looking forward to the next squad now.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angel Hellblaster - Part II

Lean, mean, plasma shooting machine.

The first of the Hellblaster squad from the Dark Imperium boxed set is finally finished. No changes in painting from the last post, it's mostly that this time the decals have been added, or an icon hand painted (right knee), and Purity Seal varnish has been applied. Some metallic highlights afterwards as well, of course.

The first model always serves as an excellent reference point, and I think the rest of the squad will turn out well enough based on the Sergeant. My approach to painting Blood Angels (and I do keep a document describing how I do each component, in addition to occasionally looking back over this blog) is slowly being refined, but not much now needs changing. I'm hopeful that I can start to progress a bit more quickly through squads now, though I'm not yet convinced that I can do it in any sort of batch painting process.

The problem with batch painting and myself, particularly where it concerns Blood Angels, is that my desired level for individual troops requires individual attention - and that's not good for bulk model painting.

I'm far more motivated once a model is fully assembled, and it's unfortunate that this rarely happens before a model is nearly completed anyway. That's another point that slows down batch painting - it takes much longer to get all models to the point where final assembly has been done.

All that said, I did try partial batched painting here, so the rest of the squad isn't far off from being done. Painting all the backpacks in one go was a resounding success, and the same for the bases. Painting all the guns at once was a moderate success - but that might not be such a problem if I could paint hands and gun separately. The gun would be far easier to give a basic airbrush initial highlight, and is something that might be feasible for models that aren't push-fit. Painting all the helmets at once however, was definitely another resounding success.

Dance off!

Overall, preparing five models at a time is probably worth it, but I need to be careful about how many models to try paint at the same time.

Just in case I need to reference it again later, the helmets were painted the same as with the Aggressors. Starting with the airbrush:

• Kantor Blue
• Macragge Blue first stage highlight.
• Caledor Sky second stage highlight.

Then fill in the details with a normal paintbrush (this includes Nuln Oil for the breather grill), followed by:

• Drakenhof Nightshade in various recessed areas, to help pick out the shape of the helmet.
• Macragge Blue highlight, particularly over edges on the top, rear and sides of the helmet.
• Caledor Sky for detailed highlight around the top of the breather grill and "brow" of the helmet.

At this point is might be worth mentioning that by painting helmets separately, it does become more difficult to match up against the lighting direction of the final assembled model. In this case I didn't even try: the face of the helmet is highlighted more than the rest, regardless of where the model will be looking.

There is a reason I do this: the helmet is a focal point, and the highlighting keeps the focus there. Lighting isn't just about being physically accurate with painting, it's also about defining the shape and impression of the subject, and by bringing focus around the eye lenses, it gives much more character and life to the model.

-- silly painter.

Blood Angel Hellblaster - Part I

Powering up.

With Mephiston completed, and despite other projects in the works, I wanted to carry on with more troops in an effort to simply get more models done. Primaris models are still good for airbrush practice, and I have pretty much everything else sorted for them, and so can get individual models done fairly quickly (by my standards).

Still, there's always something new with any squad. In this case, Hellblasters have plasma weapons. This means I had no reference for gun casing colours, but did have an idea for the plasma coils from the original Mephiston model.

So the plasma coils are quite simple in this case. I had thought of trying to use the airbrush for them, but ultimately decided that it would look out of place, and it was just as quick to use a normal brush anyway. This is really something that the contrast paint range excels at too.

• Corax White over all the plasma coils, and a little along the edges surrounding it. Alternatively for the edges, just make sure they're highlighted quite brightly.
• Aethermatic Blue over all the coils.
• Aethermatic Blue again, but heavily applied around the lower edges and allowed to flow over the surrounding gun casing areas.

I dabbled with a bit of Temple Guard Blue for lighting effects, but found it didn't really work properly.

I quite like the effect. It's not overly bright, but instantly recognisable as a plasma weapon - Hellblasters will easily stand out as such. The Aethermatic Blue works well as an energy colour, and being a green-blue complements red armour well, and is still distinct from the deeper blue of the helmets.

The head this time was done far more simply than normal:

• Wraithbone over the exposed head areas. A couple of coats was required to make it even, naturally staying clear of the eyes which were done previously.
• Guilliman Flesh contrast paint over the head.
• Eshin Grey, very thin, mixed with a little of the Wraithbone still on the palette, to give a shaved head impression. This step really gives a lot of character, and is definitely well worth doing.

The blues for the helmet (and right knee pad) are quite simple:

• Kantor Blue for the base.
• Macragge Blue for initial highlights.
• Caledor Sky for final edge highlights.

For other helmets I will likely use Drakenhof Nightshade in recessed areas to give a bit more depth, but it wasn't needed in this case.

Everything else is as normal. The model isn't complete yet, but it's not far off. The next squad member will have a little more contrast in tone from the airbrush step - this is something I'm still very much working on, but also getting better at. I don't think I'll ever beat the quality of what I can do with a paintbrush, but I'll leave that time consuming task for special characters.

-- silly painter.