Space Wolves Assault Intercessor; Painting Comp Win!

Okay, my Space Marine project is moving forward! I’ve finished another Primaris Marine, this time a Space Wolf.

Around a year ago I painted a mini-marine Space Wolf to commemorate the birth of my son, and went with a 2nd edition inspired color scheme. The idea with this new Primaris was to try the contemporary studio scheme which is slightly darker. I took the main palette from some Youtube videos (Russ Grey for midtone, Fenrisian Grey for highlights, Fang for shadows), but added some contrast with additional point-highlights of Blue Horror and made the shadows deeper with Wyldwood. If I were to paint this scheme again, I’d go with brighter highlights (Blue Horror all over, white on corners), but it’s fine for now.

This being a close combat oriented model, I decided it was an Assault Intercessor and as such would get red-and-yellow pack marking on the shoulder. This had me a bit worried, as yellow would be difficult to clean up if I splotched with red, but thankfully I needed to do very little fixing. Another bit of freehand was the “Fenris” text on the sword. I pondered between using the actual runic alphabet and just runic script for a bit, but went with the script so that anyone (me included) could read the text.

I happened to pose this model’s head in a way that allowed me to try something new with the eyes: to paint them not looking straight on but to the side. Not only does the face look more interesting/expressive, it’s also a whole lot easier to do!

As with the Dark Angel, I built the model using an upgrade kit. I did have to convert him slightly though, as the left arm drawing a knife wouldn’t fit the Assault Intercessor body I wanted to use (for the running pose). The issue was those thigh plates, which were happily very easy to remove with a knife from the multi-part kit bits. I didn’t even need to do any putty-work to fix missing details, as some accessories hid what little damage there was. Oh yeah, and I scraped off the aquila for a more utilitarian look which I think fits the Wolves well.

New and old side by side

With those small alterations I can claim the conversion square on the bingo card! Almost at a five-across, but that display board isn’t happening this year…

And to finish the post off: hot diggidy damn! I’ve won the painting competition I entered with my Dark Angel! (link to a Facebook post with the top 3 of both categories) Needless to say, I’m super pleased that people liked my work. I also got a 50€ gift card as a prize, which might well be used for the next year’s entry 😀

I guess it’s only fitting for the First Legion

Revelators Bike Squad

So I really took my time with this one, but I’ve now finished the last biker in my Bike Squad. I showed the two other bikes back in… 2020. Yeah…

This guy, and his bike, sat on my desk for the two years pretty much with the first basecoats applied. Now that I’ve found myself enjoying painting marines, I thought I’d finally bite the bullet and get the model finished and off the table. After a week or so of painting, he’s ready to join his biker buddies.

I still quite like these models, even though they’re really showing their age. The whole bike seems to be skewed a bit, and the mini-marine has even less waist than, say, a current Tactical marine. And I guess it’s telling that on GW’s website the biker model has it’s helmet antenna broken off… But, with some minor conversions/kit bashes, a nice paintjob and base they still look cool.

Speaking of conversions, I built the meltagun arm from Tactical squad bits, adding a pistol grip cut off from a pistol holster, and even went so far as to reposition the little aquila trinket to look like it’s flapping around in the wind. As you might have picked up on, the pose is inspired by the old metal biker with plasmagun.

Painting-wise, there’s not much to say. I tried to paint it as similar to the previous bikers as I could. There are some differences that come from not batch painting and leaving the project for two years, but they’re very minor. The only really new thing was the heat burn effect on the melta barrel. I’m not really happy with how it came out, I rushed and didn’t let the different colors dry properly, so I got some coffee staining which I of course couldn’t really fix. But it’s serviceable, and I’ll try the technique again with some future model.

And hey, that’s a vehicle painted!

Elf Cleric

This little model was painted almost a month ago, but didn’t get photographed before now due to work starting again and me wanting to finish another model (coming up soonish…) before setting up the camera gear. When I dropped off my Dark Angel to the painting competition, I also decided to buy a small mini from the game store. I thought I’d have a chance to complete another square on the hobby bingo by finishing a mini in 48 hours after acquiring it. And while it took me a while to take the photos, I managed the painting in time!

Now, I knew that of the 48 hours, I’d only have maybe 4-5 hours to work on the mini, so I didn’t want to get a GW model that I’d obsess over, taking a couple of hours just to clean, build, base and prime. Good thing that the store had some cheap Wizkids D&D models. I picked up a “Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures: Female Elf Cleric”, a blister with two models. They’re made out of some bendy plastic and the details on them aren’t great, but not terrible either. Perfect low-stakes models then, and they even came primed! I tried to clean the mold lines a bit, but the bendy plastic didn’t want to cooperate so I didn’t bother. Out of the box and straight to painting – I felt a bit like a kid again!

The model was finished in two sessions of around two hours each. In addition to finishing the model quickly, I wanted to try out some new paints and practice new techniques. During the summer I bought a bunch of new paints (some of the new Contrast pots and some Vallejo Model Color bottles). Among them were VMC Dark Sea Blue and Pale Sand. They seem to be all the rage among YouTubers, and I decided to try and use the blue for all the shading and the sand for all the highlights. I think it mostly worked, though I still need to practice some more with this idea of universal shadow and highlight colors.

On the technique side, I tried to paint a worn leather texture on the coat. I remember seeing Vince Venturella doing this by painting small scratches and dots on the basecoat with quite a bright color and then glazing over them with the basecoat color. This was then repeated multiple times, which resulted in a very interesting(/realistic?) layered effect. Again, I think I got the right idea and a pretty nice result for a first try, but some repetition is required on future models!

I also tried to do some simple OSL on the model. She’s got some kind of a spell going on, which was cast from transparent plastic. I wanted to color it, and thought that a Contrast paint could work well. I first painted the transparent bit with matte varnish, in the hopes that it would help the paint stick. I then used very thinned down Siegvald Burgundy to paint the spell and the surrounding areas. I then used VMC Pink and Off-White for some quick highlights, both on the spell and the model. The spell was then given a coat of gloss varnish. I think the final effect is pretty cool, retaining some of the transparency.

And here’s the bingo card with the cleric added. The square says “paint and base”, and I’m aware that my base is probably pushing it a bit. But hey, it’s my card and I say it counts! 😀