WIP Dark Angel Army Photojournal

[Vampyre69]

Well to go along with my son\'s Cadian Army I am also doing a sizable Dark Angel battle force! I have at this time amassed a large scale force in boxed and blister form and have yet to really get down into the weeds on putting any paint on them. Reason behind this is I am not very happy with my current level experience or in my outdated techniques. I have been the lurker here for sometime now and also read in depth tutorials on other pages and forums (including the ones here mateys, relax! )

What I have decided to do was to get my son started in his skills and to brush up on mine while working on his army with him. I think its a great plan but I am hoping to get some tips and help from his thread which is also posted here in the WiP threads.

But for a quick glance here is what I have to start with:

I am not working on modding a chaplain to fit on a older bike that has now just been redone in the RW sprue parts. And Im also putting some paint on 2 squads of scouts:

I\'m also hoping to keep this thread going with my ongoing work on my army and look forward to your comments and suggestions. I do have one concern and thats work related and it\'s, I will be traveling for the next 3 months starting next month and will have me away from brushes and my paint pots!

But I will continue to update as much as I can with what time I have available until my travels begin.

Cheers! And again thanks for any comments.

Vamp69

 

[Undave]

Eeep That\'s some start I bet you made some GW employees day when you bought that lot lol

 

[Yetie]

I could\'nt do it, I\'d love to buy all that for my slow building DA army. But if I saw it all sitting there I\'d be a nervous wreck of I want to paint this that and tuther and get nothing done!!!
Fair play to you if you can keep your self to a game plan

 

[Vampyre69]

Indeed!

I was lucky to walk into a store who had all of their GW at 60-75% off due to their not stocking GW products because of the continued price hikes. I spent just under $500 and walked away a very happy gringo! I then started looking at FW.com and got robbed for another $200 but happy with what I got I just hate the damned exchange rate across the pond.

And it does look rather daunting all setup like that but trust me it doesnt stay that way! I have it all stored nicely at the bottom of the closet and only pull out what I am needing at the time. Majority of the deathwing wont see the light of day till next year since I am focusing my attention on most of the tactical troopers. I will be working on my sons IG as well so I have my hands full for the next several months! I really need to get the ravenwing squadron boxed set so that I can have my 1500 points locked down but I think I will go with your advice and wait till I get paint completed on the tactical boys.

But I will continue to post my progress here on this thread as my photojournal continues.

Cheers!:beer:

 

[danny77]

I just got the new Chaos army deal, and have got loads of stuff for chaos already, i feel the same its very daunting i have finished 1 model from the possesed squad, good luck with your project, it will look fantastic all lined up really dont fancy the idea of facing all those deathwing
:|~

 

[DaN]

Holy F:cussing: S:cussing: !!!

Rather you than me I hate doing squads

 

[Roger Bunting]

Yep, my \"to-do\" draw of minis looks something like that. Some 450 skaven models and roughly about 2500 pts of Tau, possibly more. And that\'s after I\'ve done my daemonhunters. Christmas is heading up fast and my next army will get a start then. And this isn\'t counting the 15mm DBA armies I\'m going to buy or the Rackham stuff I bought last week, or...you get the idea.

 

[Thunderhawker]

I am a member of this exclusive club. On the up side all my Templars are primed

But I have Grey knights and Daemonhunters on the shelf mostly with a few painted. I have most of my ogres assembled and some painted. I have all my wood elves assembled (Except for my warhawks as they are a pain in the butt). And I have a full Eldar army still in the shrink wrap (3 Falcons, A fire prism, 4 jetbikes, 3 wraithlords, and troops and HQs out the wazoo). Add to this the pretty ones I find in my LGS that are just cool or out of print, and the other GW stuff that just intrigues me, I have alot to do over then next, well, forever. I am glad I never pay full price.

 

[Larre]

OMG! one thing that I\'m very bad at when it comes to mini painting is painting amies...I get restless, I don\'t want to paint \"half good\" minis, I want to paint great minis, and when I do that it takes too much time... la di da la di da... however.. I emvy you who can xD good that I painted my armies when I wasn\'t as serious about painting xD

Edit: also... I think you have something great coming here! great to see some FW minis aswell!

// Larre

 

[Vampyre69]

Hello here are a few updated WiP shoots of a converted standard bearer that is being retooled into a veteran sergeant for a HQ squad.

First 2 are using the darker base coats followed by the next 2 shots of the blending of the next few watery layers of highlights.

Question I am asking is does it look right or am I missing something?

Thanks for the input and comments.

 

[Countersunk81]

First off, I think that\'s a cool use of the old Standard Bearer... I might have to follow your lead with the one I have!

I think the robes need some work though - first get that base coat alot more solid, its much easier to work off a uniform colour. Second, the transition from light to dark is a bit harsh. Try applying another colour thats in between those two in tone first.

Look forward to seeing more...

 

[SteadyEdd]

Hi, I got a question for ya. Im looking at the first picture you posted of the converted standard. How many coats of paint had you done on the cloak and gun?

Im asking because im trying to get my paint consistencies right and I water my paints down but still get a pretty much solid colour on the first coat. Id like to see what I should be aiming for as \"milk\" and \"soup\" doesnt help me much. This is the first pic ive seen that actually shows it on a model.

 

[Edimasta]

Tip for the Robe:

Get a more solid basecoat, then overpaint that with a lighter paint like what you want to have... and then shade that again smoothly

Or you can try highlighting, but then you must do that very smoothly, step by step.

 

[never knows best]

Originally posted by Yetie
I could\'nt do it, I\'d love to buy all that for my slow building DA army. But if I saw it all sitting there I\'d be a nervous wreck of I want to paint this that and tuther and get nothing done!!!
Fair play to you if you can keep your self to a game plan

Haha I\'m with this guy. I\'m building a DA army box by box. If I had more than that I\"d get overwhelmed and not do anything. haha.

 

[Vampyre69]

Originally posted by Countersunk81
I think the robes need some work though - first get that base coat alot more solid, its much easier to work off a uniform colour. Second, the transition from light to dark is a bit harsh. Try applying another colour thats in between those two in tone first.

Look forward to seeing more...

I went with what you mentioned and applied a very watered down flesh wash and then attempted to build up from there. I still see that there are areas that need to be smoothed out where the wash dried and left its stain. I will fix that tonight.

Also the green lining came out brighter with the flash from the camera. Odd.???
It is rather subtle when looking at it in normal light. There are still more areas that I am working on but I think the basic feel of the mini is getting there.

Any more comments are always welcomed and many thanks!

 

[never knows best]

One thing that was suggested to me about doing the green edging on DA power armor is to use a mix of DA green and Bleached Bone. It gives a much more muted, not so bright green color. My marines aren\'t that great, but here\'s one where I used the suggested mixing for the final highlight.

It turns out to be much more subtle which I found desirable. If you want the really strong highlight add yellow to the dark green instead of offwhite. Hope this is some help. I mean the overall effect is up to you.

 

[Vampyre69]

Originally posted by never knows best
One thing that was suggested to me about doing the green edging on DA power armor is to use a mix of DA green and Bleached Bone. .. Hope this is some help. I mean the overall effect is up to you.

I really like that suggestion! I will be trying that on my Asmodi on his Ravenwing bike tonight! I was having some serious troubles trying to find the right mix to get the line of highlight correct. And of course, , I never tried that!!!

With the final matte done I am now putting Betor away and moving on. I\'d like to say he is complete but I think I got to the point where I was just grinding layers on layers and it was a little tweak here, then a little tweak there...

I just had to walk away to focus on some other project! I am satisfied with the final outcome and I was able to correctly (I hope ???) to get the muted shadows on the robes correctly.

What do you think?

 

[Jericho]

I think he turned out great. You\'re mixing old and new models in interesting ways here, and when the final army\'s done it should look great. Bloody huge but great Currently I\'m sitting on about 50 Marines, 15 Scouts, 40 Termis, 14 Bikes and 4 Landspeeders. Plus a couple of tanks that need painting. And I\'m thinking about buying the Company of Marines once they come out in October. I need more Assault marine running legs and Devastator bits... not to mention command squad upgrades. So I know what it\'s like to be buried in models, keep chipping away and try not to put too much pressure on yourself.

I hate to add to the big pile of suggestions for robes, but honestly I\'d consider investing in Foundation Paints or P3 paints for bone/khaki kind of colors. They are just so much stronger in terms of pigmentation. Khemri Brown is very close to Graveyard Earth but it covers much much easier.

Another good route to take is to paint all the robes Khaki or Dheneb Stone and then paint some watery Graveyard Earth into the cracks. If you really want to, you can hilight the robes by mixing white or bone into the basecoat. This should make for a much smoother (and faster) set of robes than doing it the other way.

 

[never knows best]

Originally posted by Jericho

I hate to add to the big pile of suggestions for robes, but honestly I\'d consider investing in Foundation Paints or P3 paints for bone/khaki kind of colors. They are just so much stronger in terms of pigmentation. Khemri Brown is very close to Graveyard Earth but it covers much much easier.

Another good route to take is to paint all the robes Khaki or Dheneb Stone and then paint some watery Graveyard Earth into the cracks. If you really want to, you can hilight the robes by mixing white or bone into the basecoat. This should make for a much smoother (and faster) set of robes than doing it the other way.

I would like to add that I used a similar method to paint the scout cloth parts on my latest snipers, and used the Foundation paints for the first time. The only two I bought were the Knarloc Green and it\'s either Dheneb Stone or Astronomicon Grey.

The main idea behind me using the Grey was to completely cover all of the black, so that none of it shows through, and then use the light Grey color as a base for shading the cloth from Graveyard Earth up to a mix of Bleached Bone and Skull White.

Point being, Foundation paints are great to use for undercoating, especially when you need to put a light color on top of a black primer.

 

[Jericho]

But Khemri Brown is so incredibly close to Graveyard, that would\'ve been quite a bit easier I think

P3 paints would do the job too, I am absolutely loving P3 paints right now. They are somewhere in between regular Citadel and Foundation paints. Best of both worlds if you ask me.