Blood Angels Assault Intercessor Sergeant

The last couple of weeks have been mostly taken up by work, but I’ve been chipping away at a Blood Angel when I’ve had the time and energy. He’s done now!

The model was originally built last fall or so, out of a monopose Assault Intercessor and Blood Angel upgrade bits. I made the mistake of stuffing too much bling on his waist, which made the model look a bit off from some angles. Before I primed him this spring, I decided I’d re-do the accessories, and think the model’s way better for it. I also spent a lot of time deciding between a bare head and the helmet. On one hand, I like painting faces a lot, on the other I’d like to have a few helmeted warriors in my Primaris collection and I quite like the yellow helmets on Blood Angels. The helmet won in the end. The base is scratch-made, and might be my favorite infantry base I’ve done so far. I imagine he’s charging down a space ship corridor, as a nod to the Blood Angel Terminators in Space Hulk.

I wanted some variety on the normally all-red armor, so for the paint scheme I settled on an Assault Intercessor to get the yellow helmet, and a sergeant for the black shoulder pads. Although, if I’m being honest, I really enjoy painting red so I would’ve happily painted everything in it. But alas, I think I did well with the yellow and black bits as well. After I had decided on the color scheme, I considered a few different styles of painting. I really like the ‘Eavy Metal style, but painting the Ultramarine was plenty of that for a while. Richard Gray’s and Trovarion’s takes were also considered, but I didn’t think this was the right model. I ended up going with something similar to the way I painted my Dark Angel, using volumetric highlighting. I didn’t push the edge highlights as much, but paid more attention to the weathering. There are a couple of places where I’m not totally happy with the light placement or the chipping work, but nonetheless I thoroughly enjoyed painting the armor.

As for the detail work, I of course saw the opportunity for some hazard striping and went for it. I actually even painted the red cable on the floor in hazard stripes, but thought that was a bit too much and changed it. All of the gems, lenses and the purity seal were lots of fun to paint and among my favorite details on the model. I also continued with the script practice, writing “Baal” (Blood Angels’ homeworld) on his right tasset plate. The “curly bits” didn’t end up quite as nice as I would’ve wanted, but nice enough, and it’s legible at least. Trying to do a fancy font myself really makes me admire the ‘Eavy Metal paintjobs. I mean, the lines on that “blood” text are so razor thin! I’ll keep on practicing…

Anyways, this Blood Angel is the fifth of nine in my Primaris first-founding chapters project, which takes me over the half-way point. That’s a good excuse for a group photo, I reckon, so here you go!

A handsome bunch, no? And to finish this post off I’ll claim another square on the bingo card. Again, there were multiple possibilities here, but I’ll go with the “model from a faction you don’t own painted models for”.

Imperial Fists Intercessor Sergeant

Working up the courage to paint a yellow model took some time, but using the new Contrast paint made the process almost trivial. My Primaris collection now has an Imperial Fist!

The model was built mostly from the Intercessor kit with the IF upgrade sprue. The pistol arm(+hand) are from Assault Intercessors, as I thought the pose was a more natural pair for the raised fist. I changed the “heavy bolt pistol” to a regular one though, as I like my pistols more reasonably sized 🙂 I put the model on a sloped piece of cork, which made the model more upright and, to me at least, works very well with the overall pose. If you don’t count the kitbashing, the one conversion I did was to remove the IF icon from the power fist. Mostly because I felt there would’ve been a bit too many fist icons so close to each other (I mean, just look at this), but it also gave me some room for freehanding!

As I mentioned, this was an exercise in Contrast painting. I took Aidan Daly’s Imperial Fist scheme as a starting point. I zenithally primed the model with Greyseer and White Scar sprays and coated it with Imperial Fist Contrast paint. A smooth, vibrant one-coat solution! I don’t have Fuegan Orange, new or old, so I used thinned Gryph-hound Orange for recess-shading instead. I then layered and highlighted using Flash Gitz Yellow, Ice Yellow and white. While I of course had to work very thin when layering (more like glazing, really), it was actually enjoyable as I had the solid IF basecoat to work on. After finishing the armor I had to paint all the black elements, which was somewhat stressful, but I managed to do it without too many slips.

The bit I probably enjoyed painting the most was the head. I’ve been really enjoying painting the Primaris heads, they’re relatively large, very well defined and have some great expressions. This time I left the five-o’clock-shadow out as I imagine Imperial Fists are always properly groomed. I tried something new with the hair: some gray/white above his ear to hint at him being a “more seasoned veteran”, or the light gray hair that many Fists seem to have.

There are a couple of freehand elements on the model. The first one was on the aforementioned cleaned up power fist. I try to incorporate the name of the chapter/legion, its primarch or homeworld on each of these first-founding Primaris models, and went with the primarch, Dorn, here. I wanted to try a more gothic lettering than I’ve previously managed to do, and after looking at a lot of references and doing some back-and-forth fixing mistakes I had the design you can see in the photo above. The position of the letters is just a tiny bit to the left of where I’d want them (in relation to those studs), but definitely not enough to repaint a black design on yellow background! I also painted the company marking on the left knee, which was a relatively quick thing to do and brought an additional point of interest to the model. Decals were used for the other details: the squad markings and the small maltese/templar cross that seems to be a popular motif even with Primaris Fists.

I tried to keep the weathering subtle on this one, to emulate the clean ‘Eavy Metal-look. Of course, I did muddy up the legs like I always do, which went a bit overboard as it often does. I’m not super keen on the coffee staining that happened, but otherwise I’m happy with it. Likewise, I’m generally happy with the chipping. I’m not sure if it’s weird that there’s no chipping above the knees (other than on the hands), but kept it like that to mostly preserve the clean yellow armor.

As for the bingo card, I’ll definitely claim the “rarely-used color scheme” with this model. While I previously haven’t painted any models predominantly in yellow, I got to say that I’m pretty excited to work with the IF Contrast paint again in the future. Perhaps on some box art-scheme Orruks?

Ultramarines Intercessor

Long time no post, but I’m still kicking! I’ve been quite busy with work and other 1:1 life stuff (more on that soon-ish), but when I’ve had time I’ve chipped away at another Primaris marine: an Ultramarine Intercessor!

When I started my Primaris First Founding chapters/legions project, one of the goals was to build each model with an upgrade sprue to give them some extra flavor. I decided to make one exception, and that was with the Ultramarines. Being the posterboys of marines and GW, he was built as generic as possible.

In addition to building each Primaris model as an individual, another goal was to try out different ways of painting marines. For my Dark Angel I tried a combination of volumetric and edge highlights, while for the Space Wolf it was subtle volumetric shadows and edge highlights. I’ve wanted to try the ‘Eavy Metal approach for some time, and what better model for it than a box art Ultramarine! The color palette and process is also very well documented nowadays, perhaps best by Dave Perryman, an ex-‘Eavy Metal painter. I followed his YouTube video for most of my model.

There’s a whole lot of edge highlights going on, and while on the studio models all of the highlights are applied on every edge, I confess to applying the final highlight only on upward-facing edges. This is mostly because I couldn’t make it thinner than the previous one (as far as I could see), at least consistently, so I thought I’d not cover all my previous work and save some time in the process. Still, I’m super happy with the result! While on closer inspection I can see that the box art is way sharper, the highlights thinner, from a bit further away it looks like I have my own ‘Eavy Metal model! I also feel like I improved my brush control quite a bit, especially doing the knee and shoulder pads where you don’t have an actual edge to highlight.

Probably the biggest departure from the studio version are the shoulder pad markings. I’ve always liked the idea that each marine can have slightly different heraldry. This is/was often shown in Codexes and White Dwarfs, but rarely shown on models. However, the Indomitus box came with very nice Ultramarine decals, many of them a bit different from the others. I chose an Ultima sign with “XIII” on it for the left pad. For the right one, I used some “vintage” decals from the Battle for Macragge boxed set. I quite like the big squad number and the small tactical arrow, and it satisfies my need to make every model, even a box art Ultramarine, my own in some way 😀 I had some issues applying the decals and had to do them twice, plus paint over the older ones as they were more transparent/not as white as the new ones. Got it looking nice in the end though!

The base also got the box art treatment. I found it interesting that the main brown color was done without washes, just drybrushing. Efficient! I tried static grass for the first time here, and while I’m not totally happy with the result, it’s fine. I used Army Painter’s Field grass which is not quite the same tone as on the ‘Eavy Metal models (anyone know which product they use?). I washed and drybrushed the grass to integrate it more to the base, which is another deviation from the studio models, but I quite like the look. Also, this was my first base without a black rim. Back to black with my future models, I think.

So yeah, this was most likely my last finished mini for the year. Not a bad one to end on, I reckon! I don’t know what I’ll paint next, but it’ll be something a bit quicker, a bit less precise 😀 Hopefully I can get back to painting right after New Year’s!

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.

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!

Dark Angels Intercessor Sergeant

I’ve finished another one-off mini, an Intercessor sergeant of the “First Legion”. It’s also a bit of a special model, as it’s the first one I’ve entered into a painting competition. More on that at the end of the post…

For the longest time I’ve had an idea of painting an example of each of the 18 original Space Marine legions, or their 40k equivalents. Not much has happened with the project, other than the retro-scheme Space Wolf. But now I’ve taken a step forward with a Primaris version of a Dark Angel. The model is built with a mix of bits from Intercessor, mk3 and mk7 bits, as well as the DA Primaris upgrade set. Going forward, I’d like to customize the rest of the Primaris Marines in a similar way, but that depends on if I can find some good deals on the chapter upgrade bits.

For painting the figure I mostly followed a Tale of Painters tutorial, but added some extra highlights and a bit more volumetric highlights. The goal was to have a well defined model with high contrast edges á la ‘Eavy Metal, but also explore the volumes a bit more. Now, while my edging is still waaays off of the gold standard, I’m getting more confident with it, and am very happy with the final look. Painting the volumes was also interesting and a learning experience, as I did quite a bit of back-and-forth adjusting the tone by glazing and layering.

While most of the model was painting the armor – a paint-by-numbers affair – I did a couple of freehand details as well. The main one is the company marking on his left knee. As this is just a one-off, I picked what looked to be the most complex one, the 4th company. I got to say, painting it would’ve been a whole lot easier if I’d kept the sword separate. Would’ve also helped with the backside of the sword… The other detail was the “Caliban” text on the left shoulder. I’m still struggling with doing an interesting font, something other than just block letters. Maybe I should practice on paper first? Anyway, good enough I say.

For the markings on the right shoulder pauldron I used transfers. They were from my stock of vintage 3rd edition era Space Marine transfer sheets, from back when they came with more than just Ultramarine markings. The decals still work fine, but the film on them seems to be pretty thick and MicroSol doesn’t seem to get all the wrinkles out of them. I ended up scratching the wrinkles off very carefully with a hobby blade, and smoothing everything up with a layer of gloss varnish. Of course, as there are two decals there on top of each other, it was very slow work setting up those transfers. I might have to look into getting a stronger decal solvent…

There are a couple of things that I’m not a 100% happy with. His one eye is one of the weakest I’ve painted. I think I used a little too thick paint and lost the sculpted detail, not knowing exactly where the eye and the lower eye lid were supposed to be, and that’s why I didn’t repaint it. It’s not horrible, but should’ve been better. (Again, need to leave bare heads as sub-assemblies in the future!) The other thing is the plasma coils on the pistol: I did the contemporary “inverted” glow and like the sides very much, but the top of the coils doesn’t really work. I’m not sure if there’s some way to make it credible, or if the old boxy flat-top coils are just unsuitable for this effect. I left the effect be, however, as the blue color makes a nice triangle together with the bionic eye and the sword’s power node.

Happily, I get to claim another bingo square with this model. There were a couple that would’ve applied, but I went with the “paint a model from a new army or faction”.

Finally, the competition. It’s my old hometown’s game shop’s annual painting competition, which I always missed when I lived there. What better time to enter than now that I’ve moved away! 😀 The comp has two categories (“big” and “small”), and the winners are decided by customers’ votes, so it’s not all that serious. The voting goes on until the end of August, and I’ll go pick up my model then and see how the Dark Angel has done. I don’t know about my chances of winning, but I was really excited to get to show off my model live, and to see what others have done. There were a lot of cool models and a few superbly painted ones. My personal favorites on both categories were converted Nurgle models with awesome NMM effects and really cool display bases.

WIP: Prep Work

Between recent painting projects I’ve been building a lot of stuff in preparation for the “priming season”, which has now finally arrived! I’ll show some of these models in this post.

First up, a couple of Orks. Both of them are something of a bucket-list model for me. The one with the shoota has an OOP WHFB Orc head, which I’ve always loved but didn’t get to buy before it got discontinued. I finally acquired it from eBay, probably for a bit too much money… The big shoota gunner on the other hand has a custom helmet (inspired by a Meganob head). I tried out brown stuff (less sticky than the green), and practiced sculpting a bit. I sculpted the visor shape first, let it dry and then drilled the holes with a pin vise. To finish the helmet off I added some bolts from a plastic rod.

Next up, it’s on to the Indomitus box and its Space Marines. These guys will be painted as Black Templars, something like my test model. I’ve converted these character models slightly with parts (mostly) from the new BT upgrade kit. The Chaplain I left unchanged as I felt he’s an excellent model as is, and wouldn’t be improved by doing a headswap or adding more accessories.

The Bladeguard Veterans and the Lieutenant were likewise built according to instructions. Superb models, though I’m a little concerned about painting the eye lenses on a couple of the models, as the heads pretty much had to be glued on with the rest of the model. The shields however are not glued on yet, should make painting much less frustrating. As a final note, drilling the barrel on the Volkite pistol took some effort, but I think I managed it well enough.

Then it’s on to the Necron side of the box. No real conversions here either, the only thing I did was to clip the bayonet off of the Warden’s gun, as I did with all my Warriors. The models are shown mainly for their bases, especially on the Reanimator. As it’s supposed to be a repair machine of sorts, I thought I’d use the Necron corpse, originally meant for the Primaris Captain’s base, here.

Speaking of bases, above you can see some new Imperial cultists / Cawdor. The models themselves have been done for quite a while, but I finished their bases only recently. The standout features are the resin books and candles I got from Greenstuffworld.

The final group of models is a set of 10 Poxwalkers. Nothing special with these ones, they’re all stock, but they’ve been zenithally primed. I used Citadel cans this time – expensive, but they haven’t let me down so far (knock on wood), and seem to be a bit smoother than the automotive ones I’ve used. I’ll be painting the models with Contrast paints and some additional highlighting, like my previous ones, but this time I’m planning on varying the skin tones and cloth colors a bit more.

To finish up this post let’s return to the hobby bingo card. This is anachronistic as I’ve already shown a more recent version with one more square, but let’s do it anyway… The ork helmet visor scores me the “sculpt something on a model” square. Fairly unimpressive as sculptures go, but it’s something more than just gap-filling, and I’m very happy taking these baby-steps in my sculpting journey.

A Couple More Revelators

Huh… In the last post I said that felt like painting some more Revelators, and I actually ended up doing so. Right away! Odd… But here they are, two mini marines painted much more simply than the Primaris of the last post.

I’ve previously said that I don’t much enjoy painting this scheme anymore. Happily, I had done a large part of the annoying work (carefully layering Dawnstone) previously, so now I got to start with the more fun stuff. Doing just a single highlight on just the upper edges of the model was pretty quick, the metallics were fine and using Contrast paints instead of washes felt like a good call. The yellows were annoying though… Always seem to get some grit in the paint, and don’t really understand why.

Painting the sergeant’s face was the most rewarding bit. Modern Space Marine heads are always a treat to paint – expressive, very well defined and relatively large – and this applies especially to the Primaris ones like on this model. Once again I added some color to the face with thinned-down Carroburg Crimson, but I also tried doing stubble. This was just (very thin) Drakenhof Nightshade, and it worked out really well! I think it’s about the best face I’ve painted. I’ll keep on practicing with the glazes on future heads, and I think the next step will be some tattoos.

The other bit which I thought was successful is the glow effect on the power sword. It was done by glazing with a couple of blue paints and white. I probably should’ve gone even thinner, but I think the effect is convincing enough.

These two marines are not yet part of a larger squad, just two models I liked the idea of and kitbashed. If you know your Space Marine markings, you’ll see they’re the beginnings of a Tactical Squad, though when I’ll get to making the rest of the battle brothers is anyone’s guess. First I’d have to get some more running legs!

Primaris Revelator

After painting the Black Templar I got the urge to paint some more Primaris. Luckily I had one started: he’s now painted up in my Revelators color scheme.

This model was built at the same time as the Templar, and as discussed previously, he’s converted a bit and is a mix of Firstborn and Primaris Marines. I’m very proud of the helmet modification, and now with paint on it you can actually tell what’s going on.

As he’s not a part of my existing army (of mini marines), I painted him a bit differently. I wanted to practice painting volumetric lighting rather than just edge highlighting everything once or twice. It took a bit of back and forth to get the shadows and highlights looking appropriate (ish), but I’m very happy with the result. My goal was to get the armor looking matt, not reflective with the extreme value contrasts of NMM. I think I managed to pull it off pretty nicely, and the gray armor reads more or less as Dawnstone, which was the target.

In addition to paying attention to the volumes, I tried a couple other new things as well. The first was a new recipe for the gold bits. It requires less paints, is more pleasant to paint and, with the additional contrast, looks better too. Needless to say, I’m very happy with the method and will be using it for all future Revelators. Previously I had been using Auric Armour Gold in the recipe, which is just a terrible color. I mean, is it just glitter in transparent medium? I think I can toss the pot now…

The other new thing was subtle weathering of the armor. I’ve noticed that I often go a bit overboard with weathering. Not necessarily in the sence that it would ruin the model or be unrealistic, just doing more than what I set out to do. This time I paid more attention to it, and again, think that I managed pretty well. There are areas that are really nice and some places that are not so good, but overall I like the effect.

Comparison of Revelators painted at different points during my hobby journey.

Huh… Now I feel like painting more Revelators. Funny how inspiration (/hobby-butterflying) works – it doesn’t really matter what I paint, I end up wanting to paint more similar models. I even have a few Revelators models started ages ago that need finishing. But of course, for whatever reason I’ll probably end up picking something different for my next project…

To finish off this post, I’ll claim another bingo square with this model: “incorporate a technique you haven’t mastered”. Volumetric lighting and the weathering both count, as I’ve still got a looong way to go before I start to approach “mastery” in either.

The keenly-eyed among you might notice there’s another new filled square in the card. More on that later…

Black Templar Initiate

I’ve painted my first Primaris Marine! I built this model at the tail-end of 2020, and he finally has his Black Templar livery on.

I started the hobby back in the WH40k 3rd edition days, and like countless others, was awed by John Blanche’s Black Templar cover art. Even so, I didn’t paint my first marines as Templars, and up until now that has continued.

The inspiration and the actual color guides for this model came from Maxime Corbeil (who in turn was inspired by Blanche). I’ve admired his BT army ever since seeing it in a White Dwarf (2017 Tale of Four Warlords), and dreamed of having models like that in my own collection. The black armor and all the edge-highlighting intimidated me for the longest time, but after I decided to just get on with it, I actually found it pretty fun. Highlighting the black armor took around two hours all together. Funnily enough, somehow I spent around 4,5 hours on the rest of the model, and one more on the base…

But even if I clocked in quite a number of hours on this lowly troop model, at no point did it feel like taking very long. Well, other than painting the shoulder pads white. That took quite many layers… Other than those, everything else was rather quick(ish) and enjoyable to paint. In the future I’ll try to keep the pads separate and prime them white to speed up the process.

More than anything, this model was a test piece. While I’m extremely happy with how it came out, I do see plenty of room for improvement. Mainly the (spot)highlight placement. I’ll have to study mr. Corbeil’s work a bit more before the next Templar. There will also be a more obvious change with the future models: I’ll follow Maxime’s guide for the bases as well, to get that classic orange-y dirt look (and hopefully a tad faster basing). This model was always going to join my Imperial Cult collection, and hence got the marble base.

I use this model to claim another square in the hobby bingo: paint a model in a color scheme you don’t normally use. Now, as I said, I haven’t previously painted any Black Templars, but even if the scheme was “black”, I would be OK. Ghaz was black, sure, but one model doesn’t yet mean “normally”.