I was up early Saturday morning, sadly it wasn’t excitement of the new box arriving or the drive to finish painting my squad, but a trapped nerve in my shoulder I did a week ago. Still up I was, and so I took the opportunity to paint the Dark Angels (its my left arm that’s causing issues, I’m right handed, and the gentle manipulation of holding a model while painting it has actually helped keep the pain at bay – lucky eh!). First job was to finish off the bases, which I outlined in my last post. Then I moved on to the eye lens.

1. I gave a the lens a base coat of VMC Ice Yellow, leaving a black border around the lens as best as possible.
2. Using Citadel Blazing Orange (probably ~25year old paint pot – its a thin bright orange) I painted the pale base coat orange.
3. I used a thin red ink (Scale 75 Inktense Red) to try and shade the lens a little.
4. Tried my best to dot the lens with Ice Yellow.

After doing this I realised that the silver armour trim could do with a little highlighting. I used a nice bright silver, VMA Silver, to pick out the edges on the trim. I concentrated only on the head and front of the shoulder pads, and the two bands on top of the back pack. This was for speed, and because the head and immediate surrounding area are the focal point of the model. I tried a random criss-cross pattern to go along the edges trying to create a battle worn edge rather than a pristine edge highlight.

Did you pre-order ‘Horus Heresy: The Age of Darkness boxed set’? Have you had a dispatch note to say its shipped? Is it arriving tomorrow eek later today? Did you set yourself a target of painting a tactical squad and transport before the new box arrives? If you answer yes to all these, perhaps you’re in the same boat as me?

Previously I mentioned that I had completely messed up placing a decal on the shoulder of my test marine. I ended up free-handing a tactical marking on the right shoulder pad. This left me pondering if I should now freehand the remaining 9 marines’ shoulder pads, or risk trying the decals again. I procrastinated long and hard over this issue – as is typical for me – to the point where its ‘Heresy Eve’ and my tactical squad isn’t finished! Panic was setting in, a decision needed to be made… freehand work or decal work. The freehand won, so it was time to break out the big guns.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I managed to grab some hobby time on Sunday to continue painting the tactical squad and Aion Advancer. The tactical squad had all the trim and various gubbins painted VMA Gun Metallic. While the highlights on the armour were applied with Scale 75 Arphen Jade, followed by VMC Ice Yellow. I quite like how they look at this stage, except that they aren’t black enough for me here for what I am aiming for with the Dark Angels.

Before I glued the shoulder pads in place I finished off the white Dark Angel logo. This was painted in 4 steps.

With the release of the Horus Heresy 2nd edition box rapidly approaching I really needed to sit down and get some paint on my tactical squad and transport if i wanted them painted before new stuff turned up! So I sat down and did some painting Friday night, I managed to get the first of the squad nearly finished.

This particular marine is the squad’s pathfinder, taking one for the team and working out how to paint them up. Following on from their green-black airbrush session, they were highlighted with Scale 75 Arphen Jade, with a final sharp highlight of VMC Ice Yellow.

With the green armour done, I quickly finished the trim with a gun metal silver, and glued the shoulder pads in place. The white DA symbol was based in a dark grey, then a medium grey, white grey and a pure white (I’ll detail that better in a later post).

The model was hit with a gloss varnish in preparation for a black oil wash. But before the black wash i needed to add the decal to the model’s right shoulder pad. This is where disaster struck and I made a right mess of placing the decal, and then subsequently made a bigger mess trying to get it off.

But we carried on and got this this stage on Saturday morning, having waited for the gloss varnish to dry some more before applying the oil wash.

I managed to get more painting done on Sunday, but that’s for the next post.

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