I started painting my Land Raider Crusader, Judgment, in earnest back in July. Vehicles are fun to paint because they’re such broad canvases, and I get to break out my largest brush — but they also take me some time to finish! Hopefully Judgment will be wrapped up this month.
Testing to see if the pick-and-pluck KR Multicase tray I chose will hold this beast (it does!)
I can’t paint the sponsons and front turret if they’re glued in place, so I started with them and then moved on to the main body.
Side bits base-coated, tank coming alongAnother dead soldier: the second bottle of paint to fall to this army, my “liquid talent”Sponsons and turret washed, now getting highlightedAll the bits in place to dry, and the body coming along (albeit messily)Trying to stay consistent with my Rhino, so he’s out there as a reference while I work on details
Painting Judgment has me even more excited to tuck into some of the vehicles I have waiting in the wings once my initial army is done. If I had to pick one right now, it’d be down to a Redemptor Dreadnought, Repulsor tank, or the Stormtalon Gunship I’m going to convert to use the sealed cockpit from the Stormhawk.
I painted my first Dreadnought, the Librarian Narses, back in April, and it was a lot of fun. Work-wise, he was about somewhere between one model and a five-person squad of Space Marines; I was curious to see how my second one would go.
It felt like it went more smoothly this time around, although with no prospect of a face-to-face 40k game by the end of summer — a real motivator, as it turns out — it still took me a long time to paint him. I finished him on July 19.
Lightbox shots
Turiel, 2nd Company Furioso Dreadnought
Immediately after uploading the photo above, I noticed that I’d forgotten to add the lens flare to the green lenses in his torso. I’ve since dotted that in and re-varnished those two spots (visible in the final shot below).
Right side view, Frag Cannon (I knew I’d be building that version the second I saw it; Rule of Cool, baby!)Rear view; Blood Angels backpack and Ork scrap debris up frontLeft side view, Furioso Claw and Storm Bolter
The kit includes a complete alternate right arm and it seemed silly not to paint that one as well — especially since if I paint it months/years later, the style and skill level (hopefully!) won’t match where I’m at right now.
Spare right arm installed, Furioso Claw and Heavy Flamer
And finally, I’ve learned that while the lightbox is lovely my inexpensive one tends to leave the front of the model a bit shadowy — especially when the figure is a big box like Turiel. So here’s a final shot in natural light.
STOMP STOMP STOMP
WIP shots
Over the course of the 2-3 weeks I spent painting Turiel at a leisurely pace, I tried to remember to snap a few WIP shots.
Base done, lower body mostly done, starting on the upper bodyUpper body base-coatedWhole body done, trying on the armsAll arms washed (Narses, on the right, is wearing the spare) and ready for layers
Turiel color guide
I wanted Turiel’s base to stand out from Narses’ base, and to emphasize that Space Marines have fought on Armageddon many times before. While painting it, I decided I liked the idea that the Blood Angels had fought there before and painted the Marine debris accordingly.
Unlike my previous bases, which applied layers only through drybrushing, Turiel’s is a mix of drybrushing and layers/highlighting. Ceramite can’t rust, and Space Marine stuff is just “made better,” so the Flamestorm Cannon and Backpack got the highlights I usually would have applied followed by some drybrushing to make them look (I hope) dusty and weathered — like they’ve languished on the plains of Armageddon for years.
His body colors are primarily the studio colors (which notably use the Dante/Sanguinary recipe for gold, rather than the mainline Blood Angels version):
Red: Mephiston Red > Agrax Earthshade > Evil Sunz Scarlet > Fire Dragon Bright
Frag Cannon tubing: Averland Sunset / Macragge Blue / Castellan Green > Agrax Earthshade > Yriel Yellow / Altdorf Guard Blue / Moot Green
My to-build stack includes another walking fridge of death, which I’ll be building as a Death Company Dreadnought so that I can have a full complement of the Blood Angels’ unique Dreads. I love big ol’ doom-walkers, so I’ve also got two Redemptors, a Contemptor, and two “near-Dreadnought” Invictor Warsuits in the queue.
By default I don’t think there’s a way for folks who follow Yore to get notified — or even easily notice — when I create a page (not a post), so this quick post is a heads-up: I’ve created an omnibus page for all of my Blood Angels progress to date.
Someone over on BGG suggested I update my army to 9th Edition point values, since that would likely shrink my short-term painting queue, and it was a great idea. In the course of doing that I discovered that BattleScribe had erased my “favorites” section…which is where I was storing the names of sergeants, each squad’s place in the Chapter (2nd Company, 1st Squad; etc.).
I needed a home for that info here on Yore, where I decide if/when it goes away, so I made one.
I added a running list of every unit I’ve painted, linked to every blog post showcasing finished Blood Angels, posted my current army list, and threw in all of my color guides to date — hopefully making that page a one-stop shop for my Blood Angels.
My painting pace has slowed a bit because based on the current COVID-19 status here in Seattle it seems pretty clear that I don’t need to be working towards the possibility of actually playing 40k by the end of summer — but I’ve still been quietly working on my army every day.
The points values will almost certainly change as soon as they’re updated for 9th Edition, but as it stands now under 8th Edition rules this is 1,034 points of WYSIWYG Blood Angels (photographed on June 21).
My current Blood Angels army
There are elements of the 1st, 2nd, and 10th Companies here, as well as the Chapter Master and characters from the Librarius and Reclusiam. I started building my first Blood Angel on March 11 and finished my most recent mini as of this photo, Commander Dante, on June 20. I’ve also built the rest of my army, and done priming and basing work on some of them, so there’s a bit of fuzz factor to the total time spent. Nonetheless, this represents about 14.5 weeks of painting.
June has been my slowest month so far, but I’ve still managed seven miniatures as of the date I wrote this post (June 21). By the time fall rolls around, I might just have a complete 2,000-point army for the first time in my life. It feels good!
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 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.
Base-coated and washed, so his armor is currently Warplock Bronze > Agrax EarthshadeFirst layer colors down, so his armor now has Brass Scorpion layered on top of about 90% of it.
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.)
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.
I’ve been watching the race between my two most-used paint pots, Mephiston Red and Astrogranite Debris, to see which one would have the honor of being the first one to expire in service of Sanguinius…and it was the texture paint!
My first dead soldier
Battle-brother Astrogranite Debris’s loyal service provided terrain for 33 Space Marines, 1 Dreadnought, and 1 little teleport homer — over half of my current army. That seems like a pretty solid performance.
Squad Amedeo and Chaplain Arrius
In the course of using up that texture paint, I finished my Sternguard Veterans, Squad Amedeo, and my Chaplain, Arrius, on June 12th.
Sergeant Amedeo, Chaplain Arrius, and my favorite battle-brother from the squadRear view of those threeThe remaining three brothers of Squad AmedeoSpace Marine booty
I have some WIP photos for these guys, but I’m going to forego them. It’s already been some time since I posted, and WIP when it’s really “work in progress, like, weeks ago” doesn’t hold the same appeal.
Wrapping up these lads brings me to 884/2,000 points — although given my current painting pace, point values may all change due to 9th Edition before I finish!
My Sanguinary Guard and Commander Dante are up next.
When I stopped posting hobby stuff — both here and on Twitter — on May 31, I didn’t stop working on 40k miniatures or building Gunpla. (I did take a lot fewer pictures as I went along, though.) Some time away has made me realize that I miss having this creative outlet and that spending less time on Twitter increases my well-being. So I’m coming back to blogging, slowly, and staying entirely off Twitter. We’ll see how that goes.
To catch the blog back up, here’s an omnibus of the few WIP photos I had backlogged.
Gunpla
MG Astray Red Frame Kai — finally done with the body!I picked up an MG ∀ kit to work on next (although it got leapfrogged by a cute little HG kit), and the difference in box size between it and my Kai is striking
40k
Squad Amedeo starting to take shapeAmedeo WIPNearly there with the Chaplain and the Sternguard!Chaplain Arrius freshly shadedMy Sanguinary Guard getting their base coats, and the Land Raider Crusader partially primed
I’ve got several posts queued that cover the stuff I’ve finished during my hiatus; those are up next, a couple each week.
On Saturday, I wanted to work on another character. As chance would have it I was just about to paint the black elements on my Sternguard, so I fired up my Chaplain, Arrius, and figured I’d paint everything but black — his dominant color — so he’d be in sync with the veterans.
Chaplain Arrius
I love this mini, and while I found resin to be a pain in the ass my guess during the assembly process was correct: That pain faded once I started painting him. It’s such a great sculpt!
I was feeling a bit down, and also a bit out of it, on Saturday — so much so that I completely forgot I always paint bases first. Nothing on his legs would make it risky to drybrush around them, so I wrapped up his non-black colors and switched gears.
Closing in on a finished base — and base coat
As I gain confidence as a painter, I’m also going off-book more often. I love his studio paint scheme, but that’s not a Blood Angel. (I mean, intentionally so; he’s a “generic Chaplain” by design.) I gave him a Blood Angels backpack, but he needed a bit more to tie him into the chapter; I figured a red knee pad with a chapter symbol would do the trick. He also has black armor, which means black suit gaskets aren’t going to read well — not to mention a mix of red elements that need definition and separation.
Which means it’s color guide time!
Chaplain color guide
Black: Abaddon Black > Eshin Grey > Dawnstone
Bone and parchment: Rakarth Flesh > Agrax Earthshade > Pallid Wych Flesh > White Scar
Metal and piping: Leadbelcher > Nuln Oil > Stormhost Silver
Armor gaskets: Mechanicus Standard Grey > Nuln Oil > Dawnstone
Leather and piping: Screamer Pink > Carroburg Crimson (skipped on gems) > Pink Horror > Emperor’s Children
Eyes and tubing: Moot Green > Agrax Earthshade > Moot Green
Book cover: Khorne Red > Agrax Earthshade > Wazdakka Red > 50/50 blend of Wazdakka Red/Kislev Flesh
Knee pad, gems, purity seal wax: Mephiston Red > Agrax Earthshade > Evil Sunz Scarlet > Fire Dragon Bright
Other hobby work swirling about
I also looked at my painting queue for May and decided I wanted to make my stretch goal the Sanguinary Guard — as planned — but that doing Dante and the Sanguinary Ancient (with his massive banner) might be too much of a stretch. Still, having primed Dante, I figured I’d take him through basing.
Commander Dante
…And get the Guard and Abaoz through basing as well, so I’d be covered no matter what.
Squad Remiel and Sanguinary Ancient Abaoz, curing overnightThe state of my painting area this weekendSquads Remiel and Adamo
I put in less hobby time than I thought I would this weekend, doing more other stuff instead, but kept my hobby streak up — Monday was day 93! — and laid the groundwork for what comes after my Sternguard.
Wrapping up the Chaplain and Squad Amedeo should definitely be doable before the end of May, and really going beyond that — 1x Rhino, 11x Marines — was a stretch anyway. But I won’t discount the possibility that a couple of banner painting nights sneak in, say, all of Squad Remiel by May 31, either. It happened last month, after all!
With Squad Dolos finally painted, it’s time to get my Sternguard, Squad Amedeo (1st Company, 3rd Squad), up on the painting handles! As always, I’ve completed their bases already (except for varnish and tufts, of course), and I’ve dabbed a bit of paint on them whenever I had extra on my palette.
One of the things I love about Blood Angels heraldry is that they use helmet color to indicate battlefield role — yellow for fast attack, blue for heavy support, gold for veterans, etc. — which looks great, provides variety, and is just sort of neat. (I also love that, in addition to regarding the Codex Astartes as a set of loose guidelines, they also break their own rules — like having Terminators eschew gold helmets for plain old red.) So when I built my initial army list I tried to squeeze in all of the special colors.
The battle-brothers of Squad Amedeo are my first foray into colorful hats. I love painting gold! And they’re going to drip with so much gold.
I love their little gold helmets!
So, so much gold.
Done with gold, I think
Although one thing I learned from painting Squad Ultio was that it’s also fun to lean away from gold, even when it’s my first instinct. Mix in some white, some silver, and some black where I might otherwise have put gold — and give each model a loose little theme based on those color choices. So while Squad Amedeo is going to get its fashion sense from the imperious, bling-loving Sergeant Amedeo, there will be some other colors in the mix as well.
I’m also diverging a bit more than usual from the studio paint scheme, as I’m not sure how to do the gold fabric (nor whether I’d like it), white on red doesn’t feel right for them, and I’ve probably used rather a bit more gold overall.
One night of base-coating
This was one of my favorite squads to assemble, and so far they’re an absolute joy to paint. They’re detailed without being fussy, with nice separations between their elements, and I just love them. I made great progress last night, laying down base coats in every color except Mephiston Red, Abaddon Black, and whatever I go with for their incidental wires and whatnot.
It took me longer than I’d like to take Squad Dolos from this state, where they languished for a few days:
Partially base-coated
To this one, starring the worst base-coating work I’ve done this year:
Fully base-coated
And then to the “starting to not look like shit” stage:
These are such simple models — look how few colors I’m using for layers/highlights!
And finally through the undocumented and quite frustrating stage where I discovered that the ~20-year-old knee pad decals I’d planned to use were — at least as far as I could tell, still being pretty new to using decals — too old to soften properly despite repeated applications of Micro Sol. I was hoping to avoid freehanding their squad markings; in the end, that’s what I had to do.
…But I finally got there!
Squad Dolos, 2nd Company, 3rd SquadRear view
I have to say that these weren’t my favorite models to paint. Their highlighting was fun, but they’re kind of basic — excellent sculpts and detail, but with so few ways to personalize or pose them that the end product was not all that exciting. I didn’t cut corners on them, but it always felt like a bit of a struggle; I suspect that’s why it took me so long. Ah well.
Thus far I’ve painted more troops than anything else, so my current point total of painted figures (730/2,000) is low relative to the number of models I’ve completed. I’m one figure shy of the 50% mark now, and it’s all characters, elites, and fast attack — plus one massive tank — from here on in.
It doesn’t look like I’m going to match April’s record month, but you never know. Next up I’m going to paint my Sternguard squad and my Chaplain, and fitting in one more squad of five after that — which feels like a stretch right now! — would match April’s tally.
