I am really happy with how he turned out, he was a good day and a half of work over the weekend but worth every minute. Now, about painting him: The blue armour was achieved with my standard Ultramarines technique (when you have worked for GW you develop one!) which is: Basecoat Mordian Blue; shade with Asurman Blue; block in armour plates with Mordian Blue again; first highlight 1:1 Mordian Blue and Ultramarines Blue; second highlight Ultramarines Blue; first edge highlight 1:1 Ultramarines Blue and Space Wolves Grey; edge highlight of Space Wolves Grey; glaze with Asurman Blue; edge highlight Space Wolves Grey. Yep, that is nine stages, but that is how many you need to get nice looking Space Marines. The robe I toyed with painting bone as per the usual Librarian look, but wound up going for the Blood Angel red that I usually use to tie him in to the rest of the army.
I wanted the spear of flame to be really hot and red so as not to add another colour to the model. Red is a tricky colour to give a glowing look to as you need lots of white to achieve a glow. Now think about what red and white make? Yup, pink. No way was my badass Librarian going to be firing pink flames, so to avoid this I started the painting with a base coat of Golden Yellow and Skull White to knock off the very white tone. This was then glazed in layers with first Blazing Orange and then Blood Red, I re-highlighted the peaks of the flames with the yellow/white mix and then glazed it again with a couple of thin coats of Baal Red. Now for the lighting you have to "see" where the light will land. Do this by imagining a sphere of light cast by the source:
From this sphere we can see that we need the arm, the rim of the shoulder pad and a touch on the psychic hood's cables need some light hitting them. The top of the arm should have nothing as it will be in its own shadow. Build up light with very, very thin washes over fully painted componants. I started with Blood Red and built up to the yellow/white mix from before. Be very careful with thin washes not to leave tide marks, feather out the edges of the wash to avoid any sharp lines. The final edge highlights can just be painted in to give them some definition. I also chose to repeat the process in the eyes of the Librarian as it makes it clear that it is something to do with him casting a power that is creating the fiery blast. The imaginary sphere method prevents you from putting light where it should not be and ruining your effect. Light illuminates a constant distance not weird teardrop shapes and so on. Give it a go sometime, it really isn't as difficult as it sounds and used sparingly can really make a model.
Another little detail that I was quite happy with was the green marble on the scroll cases and the staff. You can't see the staff marble very well as the copper traceries all over it draw the eye too much but the little scroll tubes look lovely with it.
While the twenty or so wash stages on the Librarian were drying I took the opportunity to paint the second of my two tactical squads. This is technically the third squad (according to their knee pads) as the first squad will be the veterans. These look a little darker than usual because I messed up the Baal Red glaze and used far, far too much. I fixed it with a thin layer of Blood Red but the colour is so translucent that the camera cut through it and showed the darker layer beneath. Sheesh! At least I now know how to paint Flesh Tearers red if I ever want some allies for the army!
This unit benefited from quite a lot of little conversions and modifications. The marine above is a good example. I've always had a soft spot for the hard-as-nails I-can-fire-my-machine-gun-one-handed pose so I threw an artificer boltgun in there to indicate his specialist status. This also shows off the snazzy boltgun and the Mk VI armour.
Gotta love that powerfist, with something that ornate I needed to add more detailing parts to the model to make the whole thing decorated with gothic bits and pieces. Just the power fist alone would have looked weird.
Just a nice pose, the lovely Death Company boltgun looks great and just goes to show that everyone who collects Blood Angels should have a box of them just for the bits. The engraved saltires on the armour plates look just as good as black crosses on red as they do as red crosses on black. That sentence kinda got away from me a bit.
Another example of Death Company parts looking really nice. I saw the chalice of blood fetish as being maybe the mark of a mature Space Marine who has had the progenoid organs harvested already by the Sanguinary Priests. Kinda like a reverse donor card! Their Razorback is being painted up this week as I have my first game ever with this army on Thursday, hurrah! Hard to believe that the army is already 1250 points in size. Doubtless I shall get trampled all over as Mark is experienced with his Orks and I have no clue with the Angels yet. We shall see... till next time I leave you with the "army so far" cards and a:
TTFN
This is the list for Thursday, wish me luck!
I won! By the skin of my vampiric teeth and by the last dice roll of the game but I won! Hurrah! Given that I suffered from terrible "shiny model syndrome" but won anyway, I think the army will work.
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