Pre-Heresy Dark Angels

Did a bit of cleaning around the work space and finished up these guys that have been hanging around there for a year or two. These were painted as a batch of four instead of being painted individually which is the way I usually do things. And, sorry to say, it shows. For some reason the painting is not as crisp as with the others. It might have to do with doing so many of each piece at the same time that I can not keep the focus up. So that is a lesson learned. Do not paint more than one or two models at a time. I am really glad that I am not painting an entire army of these...  or,... there are still 45 guys left in the boxes... .

Now of to some knights... and some new titans... and then there are some more skitarii and thalaxes and...  well that will be for another time.

I must remember why I paint and not get caught up in the "collecting army" mode. Problem with being a sort of well paid adult is that you can buy more models than you can paint.

Keeper of Secrets

After finishing Varangian I felt I needed to clean the palette and do something that is not rusted metal and weathering. So I picked up a Keeper of Secrets. I think this model is fantastic as it is disturbingly androgynous and very intimidating even though it is not in a classic battle pose. There were however some minor details around the chest area were I felt the sculptors had been censored to much to really portray the model in it true form (or atleast that is my opinion). Well, that was some thing I could address with some GS. Perhaps not as clean as the original sculpt but still more to my liking.

The model was painted in my standard blue grey slaanesh tones, with purple robes. I tried to keep it to a minimum of colors but still adding depth to the colors. This was done by first airbrushing the model in three tones of grey. Then applying very watered down colors in multiple stages as well as using dry-brushing and wet blending. One problem I had with this approach was that the very thin layers of paint flaked of at some points and that the dry-brushing easily wore through the layers down to the black base. So if one looks closely one might see black edges and holes here and there as a result of this.

All the metal parts were made a heavily oxidized bronze buy using a dark green base, dry-brushed with bronze, copper and mithril. This is then washed with bright blues and greens before getting a second pass with the dry brushing to get the edges more metallic.

All and all an interesting model to paint.