For those who aren't in the know: Dreadnoughts are a form of walking tank that contains a life-support sarcophagus to keep alive a greviously wounded Space Marine hero to continue to fight for the chapter. They are functionally immortal as long as battle does not claim them and many represent the memory of their chapter's history and legends. Oh, and Ms. Funnymoney is about to demonstrate, they are big!
The larger of the pair is Abraxus, the Furioso Dreadnought:
With a frag cannon strapped to his left arm and that fist of doom on the left he will be a nasty prospect for anyone to face, particularly as he will be dropping out of the sky in his very own drop pod. Painting for these fellows started with a nice heavy metal basecoat starting from Tin Bitz and working all the way up through Boltgun Metal and Chainmail to Mithril Silver on the hard edges. Then the usual Blood Angels red basecoat (see Book of Jeff) and highlights drybrushed on.
I gave the frag cannons shell belt a rubberised feel as the metal that I had painted it in just wasn't doing it for me. Looked too inflexible, there aren't any joins in the belt to indicate chain feeds or anything. I figured rubber would distend neatly to spit out the shell casings and would grip the coke can sized bullets nicely. My usual mix of Charadon Granite with a couple of layers of Badab Black sorted out the effect pleasantly.
I decided to really scratch and ding up the paintwork on the fists of both dreadnoughts as, lets face it, they are huge lumps of metal designed to punch other lumps of metal. The effect is simple to achieve. Just get a bit of sponge, load it up with the top highlight colour of the paint you are using and then stipple and drag chips and dings randomly around the area. Then paint in the largest chips and scratches with a 1:1:1 mix of Chaos Black, Scorched Brown and Boltgun Metal. Creates a lovely effect. I go into lots more detail on this technique here.
Smaller, but still huge, is Helios a standard Blood Angels Dreadnought. This chap is the dread that is contained in the Assault on Black Reach kit. I chose him primarily for his weaponry, multi-melta plus drop pod = lots of sad tanks.
Speaking of the multi-melta, I am really happy with how the burnt nozzle effect came out on this kit. To replicate this effect you start with a fairly liberal drybrush of Bestial Brown, avoid having the drybrush end in a regular stripe around the gun. Next drybrush Scorched Brown around the same area taking care to fade out the colour to leave some Bestial Brown showing. Finally Chaos Black is drybrushed around the nozzles themselves. Quick, simple, effective. My favourite type of painting!
To make the generic dreadnought a bit more Blood Angel-ey I nicked a shoulder pad wing from the death company box, filed it flat and glued it on. Little details like that can help to lift a model and make it fit with the army better.
So that brings us ever closer to the end of project Blood Angels. Though the planner above is for a 3k arny I am just 30 models away from hitting 4000 points and that is where the project will stop, end, finito, no more. The next image shows the 4k plan:
It is designed to represent the moment that Tycho turned at Armageddon and was replaced by Machiavi. With the options in the 4k list I can create pretty much any Blood Angels army I please and can replace Tycho with Machiavi if anyone is grumpy about special characters. I think I'll have a drop pod session next, get that big job out of the way! Till then:
TTFN
Great job mate, particularly the scroll work on Abraxus' leg, that looks very nice.
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