Another couple of models, a Blood Angel and a Space Wolf, finished after a long time on the painting table.
Even though they’re test models, and I’m happy with the results, I have no intention of starting neither a Blood Angels nor a Space Wolves force.
I just wanted to paint them, and took the chance to experiment with multiple things while doing so.
They’re both regular marines from the old multipart kit. In fact, they’re the exact same model; only the Space Wolf has a little bit of bling with a bolter from one of the sprues of the Sanctus Reach: Stormclaw boxset and the backpack from Kromlech.
I’ve always wanted to paint a Space Wolf, as I find their blue-grey armor color very appealing. Plus, it gives me the chance to experiment with snow bases. Something I want to use for my Frostgrave warband.
With the Blood Angel I wanted to further experiment with colored metallics, as I’m doing with my JSA/Yu Jing for Infinity.
Both Space Marines have battle damaged armors and I did it with chipping mediums, as I wanted to see if the effect can work in infantry sized models.
Usually I paint the metallic red with Tamiya Clear Red over regular metallics, but not this time. I didn’t think the chipping medium could work with the Tamiya Clear Red, so I used Vallejo Model Air Signal Red instead, which is a metallic red out of the bottle.
I found Vallejo’s metallic red slightly lighter than I liked, to be fair. But the rest of the painting process helps to darken it and in the end it turns out OK.
The chipping itself is a little bit subtle, as I didn’t want to go overboard with it. Is it worth the effort? I don’t think so, really. You can achieve similar results with the sponging technique with less work. But then using chipping mediums is really fun. So if/when I paint other models for these armies I’ll keep using it, even if it requires an extra effort.
To paint the Space Wolve’s right shoulder pad I cut some masking tape triangles, which was also a first to me. Up until now I had only masked whole areas of a model to protect them from overspraying, but this time I used the masking tape to create a motif (even if it’s a simple one), and I’m really pleased with how sharp it turned out.
Following with the colored metallics, I painted the Blood Angel’s chest aquila in black metal. I’ve tried to paint black metal a few times, but never with a result that satisfied me 100%. This time I painted it with some very dark metals, followed by a black wash to darken it even more and finished painting the shadows with a slightly watered black ink from Scalecolor. I’m happy with the results, but I’ll have to see if it translates well to bigger areas.
The next experiment was with the decals. I didn’t want to just blend them, but also add some battle damage like the rest of the armor has. For this I used Vallejo’s Decal Fix and Decal Medium. To achieve the battle damage effect, once the decals where set in place I attacked them with some more Decal Fix to soften them and them very gently scratched with a toothpick or an X-acto knife to actually damage them. Do this carefully and in multiple passes if necessary to avoid damaging the paintjob.
I was very happy with how well the decals blended, even though I think I didn’t center them properly on the shoulder pads. And you might have seen that I’ve used the battle damage method again, this time more heavily, in my Dark Angel’s Dreadnought.
After that, a coat of gloss varnish and an oil wash. I had previously used it with my Deadzone Enforcers, but this time I left the wash to dry for a longer time and the end results were better.
And with that the models were almost finished before glueing them to their bases for the final varnish coat. I painted the eyes trying to achieve a quickish OSL effect. Not completely sold on how they turned out, specially on the Blood Angel.
The bases, made with the Imperial Basius 2, where some of the first I made. And while they ended up looking darker than what I wanted, it was also fun highlighting them by airbrushing horizontally to the base instead of the regular drybrushing.
This was the end of the road for the Blood Angel. Done.
But the Space Wolf needed some snow. No! He needed a lot of snow! I wanted to represent him fighting in the middle of a snowstorm. Even if it’s only a test model I could imagine that the overall effect on a full force would be amazing.
I’ve never done any kind of snow effects before, and here I really did experiment. Trying multiple methods to see how they worked. There’s a couple of areas were it doesn’t look good enough. I’ll need to keep experimenting with it (more Space Wolves?), but I’m mostly happy with the results.