So if I want to paint up some more SM stuff, I need to settle on a chapter, or more importantly, settle on a colour scheme that it fun to work on and looks good, as it's not like these guys are going to see a lot of action, and even if they are, I play for fun, not min-maxing whatever rule is broken at the moment. So all the Ultras went in a big bath of paint stripper (Fairy Power Spray, to be precise) and came out clean and new, ready for me to repaint in some novelty colours.
I should emphasis that as paint tests, these are a little rough around the edges.
My first idea was a desert theme. After all, the Tau are blue themed, and the IG are urban themed, so yellows/browns seemed a good change. I came out with this.
Its OK, but a little "beige", like they're designed to guard their local Ikea. I quite like how the "flame" effect on Terminator's badge worked out though, so I'll steal that for something else.
After this I dithered and thought about some of the more well known chapters. Dark Angels? The green and white is a nice scheme but I have a freind who is a Dark Angels / Deathwing fanatic and more importantly much, much better at painting than I am. Space Wolves are just plain silly. Blood Angels have never grabbed me, fluff wise. And then, that last thought gave me a flash of inspiration and I knocked these guys out.
Blood Ravens, from Relic's Dawn of War series. Its even more geeky than just painting 40k figures, its painting 40k figures based on a computer game! Perfect!
I even had a slightly cack-handed go at the Chapter badge.
Thankfully Forgeworld make transfer sheets for the Blood Ravens so i can at least save myself further embarrasement on that front! Also some of the touch up (or lack thereof) shows the hazards to trying to get something ready for a picture late at night when you're being told to put down the toys and come to bed!
My only problem now is that if i want to paint a Blood Raven squad, I'll either have to re-strip the other guys (which i suspect the figures won't take well) or buy some more. So first I'll finish off the "pending" list..
The plastic is pretty durable, it should survive a few re-strippings.
ReplyDeleteFor the desert/red colour scheme, I think it would've worked better using a darker red like red gore rather than an orangey red like blood red.
The Blood Ravens are a good idea and for other red colour schemes you might also want to consider:
The Genesis Chapter
The Sons of Orar
Exorcists
The Red Templars
Flesh Tearers
Admitedly out of those, only the latter have a chapter symbol you can buy to make painting easier.
i must confess that the more i think of it, the more i like the idea of doing Blood Ravens. I've been working on redoing the Force Commander in that scheme, which works OK too, although reminds me that i really don't like the actual figure to work on.
ReplyDeleteThe colour scheme is a nice one. Are you using an offwhite for the shoulder pads? IIRC, the Blood Ravens colour scheme is more of a bone white than a pure white.
ReplyDeleteThe red colour scheme is darker than that of the blood angels, which makes it a bit easier to work with. I recommend you check out the guide Ron did on FTW for painting the red on Flesh Tearers, as I think the two will be quite similar.
Also, using bleached bone for line highlighting combined with a wash of baal red is pure win!
yep the shoulders are Bleached Bone.
ReplyDeletehad a read of the Flesh Tearers guide, i may try that on one at somepoint. more importantly he's using green purity seals which made my kick myself for wondering how to make the red one stand out.
Current have a few more "in progress" though, just using a Mechentdrite Red base then thinned blood red coats to bring up the colour, rather than wash them down. Theres just some wash dropped into the darker shadow areas.