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.

With the painting now all done, I broke out the weathering powders. To dry and dirty up the models, and blend them into the bases. I used two colours of powder, Kromlech Light Mud, and Secret Weapon Green Earth, sadly Secret Weapon don’t seem to exist anymore. The tank looked great, and the marines were ok too.

Unfortunately sealing them with gloss varnish killed the powder. I have to admit I’m not very knowledgeable in using weathering powders, so I need to go find some good tutorials myself, especially about how to fix the powder in place. Obviously the gloss varnish had to go too, and so the finishing touch was to give the minis a matt varnish.

I had just finished taking those photos of the finished models, when there was a knock at the door. That knock was the postman delivering my Horus Heresy Age of Darkness boxed set. So I managed to achieve what I set out to do at the start of June, paint a tactical squad and transport before the new set arrived!! One cool thing that came out first was the neat Element Games HH themed sticker. That was a nice touch!

Thanks for reading – here is the usual affiliated links paragraph. If you’d like to support the blog, please consider making your own hobby purchases through one of the affiliate links. It doesn’t cost you anything, I just get a little commission which helps pay the WordPress fees etc. You can click the links below or the webstore banners on the site.

Element Games (get double element crystals using code DAV615), and The Outpost.