WIP it good: Scouts on the painting desk

Over the past few days I worked on my converted Scouts, Squad Cain. The camo cloaks were an interesting challenge, and unfortunately they went from so-so to pretty good for my skill level to destroyed.

Squad Cain

These guys are new territory for me: The last time I painted camo was on model tanks when I was like 10 years old, and I wasn’t trying for a pseudo-digicam effect like this. (Plus, you know, I was 10.)

First cloak partially done

I think my base, Mechanicus Standard Grey, might be too close to the Dawnstone layer in tone. The other layer, Celestra Grey, pops nicely. I’m also not sure if a wash (Nuln Oil because black makes sense? Drakenhof Nightshade to pick up the blue tone in the terrain?) will darken them too much, rendering some/all of this layering work pointless.

Going back and forth between these two, adding swatches

I guess if the shading dims things down too much, I can always touch up some of the swatches when I work on other highlights. We shall see!

Steady progress on day one
Burned some midnight oil on day one and ended up here
Cloaks on day two, pretty happy with how this pattern is turning out
Day three: base coats done!

I don’t like to waste paint, so whenever I’ve got too much of a color on my palette I tackle a small element of whatever mini is on deck — in this case, the parchment and one giant toe on Narses.

Narses is officially on the board!

Post-wash, the darker camo patches on the Scouts’ cloaks are more subtle than I’d like, but the lighter ones look pretty good. My gut says I’ll mess them up if I try to redo them all, so I’m leaving them as-is.

In hindsight, this is where I should have stopped — maybe, maybe adding a delicate highlight to emphasize that their backpacks are under the cloak, but otherwise not attempting to highlight the entire cloak.

Camo cloaks after a Drakenhof Nightshade wash

Because after hours of painting these guys . . . my highlighting job basically destroyed the camo pattern. It’s like 11:00 pm as I’m writing this, so I’m too tired and frustrated to make a clear-eyed assessment of whether I can salvage them right now.

Well, shit

To do that, I’d have to either repaint the camo and then delicately reapply to wash, or just base coat the cloaks fresh and redo them completely. Only one of them (the middle guy) looks like a touch-up would save him, so I suspect my options are really 1) live with it and move on or 2) a full repaint, shade, and highlight on the cloaks. That’s a solid 2-3 hours of work, most of it in redoing the camo patches.

On the bright side, maybe I could start fresh with a different base coat color — one that has a logical highlight color — and skip the too-similar camo patches, focusing instead on only making them pop. We’ll see.

Scout color guide

Since there’s no Blood Angels Scout color guide on the GW site or the back of the box, I’m reusing what I can from the tactical squad and making a few choices of my own. (Shades are in italics. I updated this guide after fixing my Scouts.)

  • Armor: Mephiston Red > Agrax Earthshade > Evil Sunz Scarlet > Fire Dragon Bright
  • Cloaks: Mechanicus Standard Grey > Dark Reaper and Celestra Grey camo > Drakenhof Nightshade > light Dawnstone drybrush
  • Clothing: Rakarth Flesh > Agrax Earthshade > Pallid Wych Flesh > White Scar
  • Black: Abaddon Black > Eshin Grey > Dawnstone
  • Metal: Leadbelcher > Nuln Oil > Stormhost Silver
  • Gold: Retributor Armour > Reikland Fleshshade > Auric Armour Gold > Liberator Gold
  • Helmet ventilators: tubing as metal, breather and joints as black
  • Eyes: Evil Sunz Scarlet
  • Scope lenses: Lothern Blue > White Scar
  • Rifle tubing: Macragge Blue and Averland Sunset > Agrax Earthshade > Altdorf Guard Blue and Yriel Yellow

Bases are “the plains of Armageddon,” from my Space Marine color guide.

I painted myself into a corner with my cloak color choices, since I don’t have a logical lighter set of highlight colors to use after the shading, hence the 50/50 blend. I’m not an experienced enough painter to use a blend when I want a consistent color across uniforms — but necessity demands this blend, for the Emperor and Sanguinius!

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top