My original plan for Dante was to go with the studio recipe for gold on Blood Angels — Retributor Armour> Agrax Earthshade> Auric Armour Gold > Liberator Gold — and not the scheme for Dante and the Sanguinary Guard, which is brass over bronze. They’ve got gold armor, why not make it gold?
But then I followed the studio scheme for some other Blood Angels, even when it wasn’t my first instinct, and loved the outcome. And I thought that this “angelic brass” look would also help set them apart from the rest of the army (which I suspect is part of why it’s the studio scheme!). So I went for it, more or less — and I’ll be damned, it turns out gold!
I finished him up on June 20.
I was fascinated to see how Dante would go from deep, dark bronze to gold, so I took a couple WIP photos to highlight the stages of that process. This kind of magical transition is one of my favorite things about miniature painting.
With one exception, all of my Blood Angels to date have had their layers applied the same way: as edge and transition highlights. Somehow this makes them read as fairly bright red despite the fact that most of their armor is still Mephiston Red darkened with an Agrax Earthshade wash.
The exception is the Chaplain’s helmet, which had its first layer (atop a Rakarth Flesh base coat and a wash of Agrax Earthshade) applied to 90% of the surface area rather than just the edges/transitions — I basically repainted the whole helmet in Pallid Wych Flesh, leaving only the cracks/shadows alone. Then the final layer, White Scar, went on as an edge highlight.
That second approach was the only way I could see Dante’s armor turning out gold. If I left it mostly dark bronze, no amount of edge highlighting was going to change that. Unlike a normal Space Marine, he has musculature and other features molded into his armor that make it fairly simple to paint the “highest” areas over completely — trusting the lower pigment count in the layer paints to allow the richness of the bronze underneath to show through — and then do a spot/edge highlight with the final, most gold-colored, layer.
It definitely didn’t come out perfect, but it was a blast and I can see doing more parts of other figures this way in the future.
Commander Dante color guide
I mostly stuck to the studio colors, but diverged in a couple places — mainly because I didn’t want to buy more paint and I didn’t have the right green for his laurel or the Fenrisian Grey for his black elements. (Shades in italics, as always.)
- Armor: Warplock Bronze > Agrax Earthshade > Brass Scorpion > Runelord Brass
- Black elements: Abaddon Black > Dark Reaper > 50/50 Dawnstone/Calgar Blue
- Eyes, jets, and axe blade: Caledor Sky > Drakenhof Nightshade > Temple Guard Blue > Baharroth Blue
- Parchment, left pauldron, inner portion of halo: Rakarth Flesh > Agrax Earthshade > Pallid Wych Flesh > White Scar
- White elements: Celestra Grey > Drakenhof Nightshade > Ulthuan Grey > White Scar
- Leather: Screamer Pink > Carroburg Crimson > Pink Horror > Emperor’s Children
- Seals and blood drops: Mephiston Red > Carroburg Crimson > Evil Sunz Scarlet > Wild Rider Red
- Gunmetal: Leadbelcher > Nuln Oil > Stormhost Silver
I was tempted to paint some Sanguinary Guard first before taking on the chapter master himself — but when I started this army I painted a Sergeant Karios first rather than an unnamed battle brother, so in that spirit I started the “golden boys” with Dante.
It feels good to have him done, and it was fun to paint just one figure rather than a whole squad. I’m impressed with Citadel’s recipe for the gold on him (and the Sanguinary Guard), which includes no gold paint but somehow reads perfectly as gold.