Base Painting 01

Painting the base colour of any Space Marine force is critical to a visually cohesive army, and just as critical to individual models. While power armour is perhaps considered an easy option to paint, there is a surprising amount of detail and painting options there, and the rounded greaves and pauldrons offer challenges not seen with other armies.

With the experience of some special models and Death Company under my belt, it's time to start with the core of any Space Marine army: tactical squads. It's also time to start with the base colour of red, and applying lessons learned from working with other models to hopefully reduce the time required to paint a model without sacrificing quality.

The format for this post is to describe the approach used on three different models, and then wrap up with what will likely be used going forward.

Spray gun (left), hand painted (centre), spray can (right).

Model #1
The first model, actually in the centre of the image above, was painted with Mephiston Red by hand. The full list is:

• Black primer (spray)
• Mephiston Red (base)
• Evil Sunz Scarlet (highlight) 
• Mephiston Red (thin base)
• Carroburg Crimson (wash)
• Mephiston Red (thin base)

The thin base is, as usual, used to blend everything together where necessary, and to fix any mistakes. This order of painting worked out quite well, with the highlighting and shading blending together very well. Using the wash after the highlight did dampen the highlighting a little too much for my liking however, and the two coats of this base felt like a waste.

Model #2
The second model attempted to fix some of the areas that were either slow, or lacking with the first model.

• Black primer (spray)
• Mephiston Red (spray base)
• Carroburg Crimson (wash)
• Evil Sunz Scarlet (highlight) 
• Mephiston Red (thin base)

Here the spray gun was used to apply Mephiston Red after the black primer, so the results were a little different to the spray can. The wash was applied second, and then highlighting, with a final thin base to blend it all together. This generally worked better, but it does require knowing how much to build the highlight up. It could have used a little more here - the wash made it looker lighter by comparison, but the final thin base pulled it back a fair amount.

Model #3
The third model had further changes done.

• Black primer (spray)
• Mephiston Red (spray base, x2)
• Carroburg Crimson (wash)
• Mephiston Red (thin base)
• Evil Sunz Scarlet (highlight) [to be done] 
• Mephiston Red (thin base) [to be done]

2 coats of Mephiston Red from the spray can were used to ensure everything was evenly covered. This ended up a mistake - it was applied too thickly and some detail has been lost, although careful painting will hide that. It's also worth noting that the Mephiston Red spray, and the base paint from the bottle, will appear subtly different when dry (the spray appears more dull), so a thing base over large areas is recommended at any rate.
The wash was done before the highlight, but a thin base in between just ensures that highlights will be better compared to the base colour as they're applied.

Going Forward
The real benefit from the spray gun test has turned out to be a bottle of Mephiston Red that is watered down evenly throughout the bottle. It can be used almost as a layer paint, or a wash, and really helps to fix mistakes, and blend highlighting and shading together. So I definitely recommend this: buy two bottles of base colour paint, and mix one evenly with water. It really has saved a lot of hassle trying to mix with a brush on a palette every time.

Other than that, the wash step may not actually be required. Next time, I will instead only use one coat of the Mephiston Red spray, and then use the thin-base over larger areas as a kind of first stage highlight. I'm mostly doing this anyway, and the wash can be added to specific areas later, if required (the helmet and shoulder pads come to mind).
Doing things this way means one less step, or least performing it much faster, fewer layers of paint (meaning less chance of obscuring detail), and should give the same result in the end. It will likely be attempted on the backpacks, which so far have only been given a single black spray coat.

Another post will cover how that gets on later, but that's it for now.

-- silly painter.

Spray Gun

All I have to say here is: if you're a Blood Angel, just buy the new can of spray paint available. You'll save a lot of trouble, and paint.

The little spray gun can probably do just as good a job, but it takes some getting used to, in order to know the right mix of paint, water, nozzle adjustment, etc. Quite simply, it's not worth it for me to get used to that when the spray paint can is already there.

On a brighter note, the custom made shoulder pads look quite good once painted. Only a very close inspection will pick them out from the plastic ones.

-- silly painter

Tactical Squad 001

Things have been a little slow of late, again, due to the annoyance of multiple colds (no, really, just one after another), work, and a bit of travel. However, a tactical squad has been started .The first spray coat is currently drying, although it wasn't really applied properly.

This time, I'm painting the arms first and gluing them on later. At the very least they'll get a base coat first - it's easier to spray them this way, given the limitations of where I can do this. Mounting them on a length of wood and being somewhere more open would be a better choice, however there's nowhere suitable for that right now. So it may take several attempts to get an even coat over the models.

The Death Company are finished now, at least to an extent I'm comfortable with. They were sure a learning experience, and are well worth the effort put into them. Hopefully there will be an image attached to this post.

-- silly painter

Painting Jump Packs

The first finished Death Company model.

Writing has been done on various areas (e.g the right pauldron) which required a very small brush and wash-consistency paint. The writing is not dark - I used Rhinox Hide (base) instead of black, but it could probably do with two coats. Watering the paint down I find easier for writing words, with the tradeoff being that it's very light when it dries. Might do a second coat, or just use black next time.


The jump pack exhaust area was originally going to be quite a plain, stock standard, metallic appearance. Deciding that this was too boring, I contemplated some kind of scorched effect surrounding it, but in the end went with the glow of idle thruster exhausts. Blue was the choice of base colour for this, simply because I thought it would look better than red/orange/yellow, and offset the large amount of red already on the model (the weapons, purity seals, and gems).

The exhaust glow was painted in the following manner:

• Kantor Blue (base) around the entire exhaust area.
• Alaitoc Blue (layer) as a "thick" highlight around the nozzles.
• Teclis Blue (layer) highlight, thinner than the previous layer, and leaving some of it showing.
• Lothern Blue (layer) highlight, again slightly thinner along the edges. It was given some more emphasis in the middle.
• Ulthuan Grey (layer) fine edge highlight, and "core" area of the nozzles.
• White Scar (layer) very fine edge highlight, just to really make the edges shine. It was also watered down for the "core" areas as well.

Quite a pleasing effect overall, although the final white highlight could have been thinner. Note that while quite a few blue paints were used, this is mostly for convenience - the same could just as easily have been achieved with mixing white into the base blue, and building up the layers with more white added each time.

-- silly painter

Moulding Shoulder Pads

As a continuation from the last post, I've managed to play around with instant mould (see also oyumaru, same stuff) to see how it would fare against a green-stuff mould. On the whole, it's much better, and I definitely recommend it to anyone trying something similar.

The instant mould is fairly easy to use, reusable, and doesn't stick to green stuff. The last point is particularly useful - it makes getting the press out of the mould quite easy. So if any mistakes are made, they're easy to fix. The popular trick of aligning front and back halves of a mould is to use lego as a kind of temporary casing - this works rather well when creating the mould, and can be useful later when actually using the mould too.

There is plenty of information out there on using instant mould, so I won't bother going into details about it here, but I will list some things I figured out on trial runs.

• Instant mould is flexible. This helps to get things out of the mould, but be careful when letting things dry. If clamped together too hard, the mould will warp slightly and ruin the press.
• Don't use too much green stuff. This will create a extra thickness at the boundary between the front and back halves of the mould, and while perhaps not ruin shoulder pads, does make them less than perfect. Trial and error are required to know how much to use.
• Mould lines. These are extra lines to push out excess green stuff. They can also help pull the press from the mould later on.
• Patience. Letting the green stuff properly cure means it won't deform when trying to remove it from the mould.

Above are two trial runs. One is painted to see if it would really look any different to a pastic shoulder pad, and the other is straight from the mould. Later presses are much better quality and have less flashing, but that just comes from experience. On a painting note, the blood drop will have to have some kind of dark outline to differentiate it from the shoulder pad base.

Please note that the cost for all of this is actually more than if I could buy the shoulder pads directly (at least for 100 or so). I don't actually like the ones they do offer - the wings just aren't as appealing. If anyone is thinking they could replicate their own entire model, then think again. Plastic models will be of higher quality and give you less trouble to work with.

Lastly, a Death Company marine is just about ready - just some lettering and "scribbles" on scrolls left. So expect another post before too long, detailing the finishing touches there.

-- silly painter

Tidbits

This post will start where the last finished: green stuff shoulder pads. No photos, mostly because the camera and lighting conditions aren't favourable for photographing cured green stuff, but it doesn't matter much.

Using vaseline and a brush to prevent the putty from sticking to the plastic, I made a mould of the front of the desired shoulder pad. The idea was just to try place the winged blood drop onto existing, blank shoulder pads: the blank pad and small amount of green stuff would press into the mould, after the mould was brushed with vaseline. Care must be taken with the vaseline though - it must be evenly applied, but also very thinly, otherwise it tends to gather in corners and ruin the shape of the pressed putty.
In terms of detail, it worked rather well. The insignia turned out very clear, and it was a promising start. The problem with this method, and with the Blood Angel insignia in particular, is that it can get very close to the shoulder pad trim. The excess must either be cut away, or the entire shoulder pad trim must have an extra layer on top. The former is far too time consuming, and the latter ends up causing thickened shoulder pad trims that would unbalance the look of the marine.
The original mould also wasn't intended to include the trim, so it runs into problems - particularly at the corners. A different approach was tried: make the entire shoulder pad from green stuff!

Making an entire shoulder pad would remove any problems with thicker trims, and the only excess to cut away would be flashing lines. As I already had half of the shoulder pad in a mould, albeit with issues at the shoulder pad corners, I decided to make a mould for the other half to save myself a bit of time (I just wanted to test and see if the idea would work for me, not form a production line). Long story short: yes, it works, and much better than trying to apply an insignia to an existing blank pad. Still have to be carful with the vaseline - you don't want the green stuff sticking to the mould. With this in mind, I'm now making a new mould that should give better results, including plastic sprue lines that should help lift the green stuff out of the mould when it's cured some.

I do plan on seeing how well oyumaru (or instant mold) works too. It might be more useful for making the mould because I hear that green stuff doesn't stick to it too easily.

Painting wise, there's not much new happening right now, other than taking far too long to paint the Death Company. On the plus side, they are starting to look much nicer, and they are more detailed than your average tactical marine.

I have adjusted slightly painting the Blood Angel symbol, compared to how it was done on Dante, by using a grey to layer the wings with. I don't have my notes with me at present, but I think it went Caledor Sky (base), Administratum Grey (layer), Ulthuan Grey (layer), and using a fine brush to paint the feathers individually. The tip uses just Rakarth Flesh (base) followed by White Scar (layer).

Another week and I'll hopefully have the Death Company finished. Well, the first five models anyway. A squad of tactical marines will likely follow on, as I want to try shading and blending with red.

-- silly painter

Drilling Holes and Camo Schemes

Just a brief post here, having recently returned from a well deserved, or at least well appreciated, holiday. If one ever gets the chance to visit the Games Workshop Hall of Miniatures, then take it.

At any rate, today's musings are on drilling holes, and the colours of the W40K universe, and are very short. No photos today.

I was originally dubious about the effect drilling holes into gun barrels would make, but it does actually add substantially to the model. It's a case of the little things that matter. The trick is to not go overboard: holes shouldn't be too large, or too liberally applied.
It's fairly easy to do in the end: just use something with a sharp point to place a guide hole (or dent) into the gun barrel, and then use the hobby drill to make the hole. Try to get it on centre too - off centre is worse than simply painting a black dot on the end. So nothing special. It doesn't take much effort to drill through the plastic though, so be careful not to go too far with it.
Mistakes can probably be fixed easily enough with green stuff, so there's a use for any spare left over from modelling: roll it into a cylinder and use for replacing ruined gun barrels.

Another point I just wanted to jot down is that there's sometimes discussion about the practical nature of various colour schemes (mostly with Space Marines, or Eldar). I find it odd that people apply the lighting conditions, human visible colour range, environmental shapes and colours (e.g of plantlife), and combat technology of Earth today to the 40k universe. I personally see the army colours being more psychological in nature, and would be adapted as appropriate to any given situation. As an example: if your enemy only sees in the IR spectrum, bright colours might actually help you to see where your own troops are in the midst of battle, making no difference to the enemy.

Final note: from experience long ago of decals on shoulder pads, this time around I'm going to try see if moulds and green stuff can make a raised edge better for painting on. Blood Angels are supposed to have ornate looking armour as well, so I'll probably give veterans and older battle brothers more attention, while leaving more standard appearances for those just promoted from the scout ranks to full power armoured warriors.

-- silly painter