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Since I'm actually painting my armies now instead of gluing them together and rocking out the flat-grey paint scheme (NTTAWWT) I'm going to blog the progress. Should prove interesting.

I have a total of 25 Terminators glued and primered in various stages. I do have one model complete already, the gentleman who's responsible for winning my FLGS' painting contest. Have a Storm Bolter to the face.



(Two more pictures below the Spoiler-cut; there are also more pictures in my gallery.)

A friend gave me the model, and I went nuts with it. It was already put together and primered black, so really it was like half my work was already done for me. The details, as best I can remember them:

I basecoated the entire model in Chaos Black. Everything was given a couple layers of Devlan Mud at the end, and so I'm not going to mention it in every single step. Various parts of the model got varying amounts of DM.
The helm is a couple layers of Bleached Bone, and then the eyes are Blood Red, Reaper Explosion Orange, Golden Yellow, and a dot of Skull White.
The Crozius is Shining Gold on the head (with a crapton of Devlan Mud, looks sooo nice!), Blood Red on the handle which was drybrushed/highlighted after the wash, and the metallic bits in Chainmail.
The storm bolter has one layer of Blood Red (because I may have forgotten to actually finish it...), with the barrel, grip, and whatnot in Chainmail. The ammo trail is Chainmail with Shining Gold down the center. I never did paint the sight...
The right shoulder was given a couple layers of Dark Angels Green, and then highlighted at the last minute with Goblin Green. The raised part is Shining Gold.
The parchment hanging off his waist is a couple layers of Bleached Bone, with the edges and aquila in very watered-down Blood Red. The rest of the text is Chaos Black. This is my favorite part of the model, and took about half an hour to do.
The armor itself is just Chaos Black, with a Codex Gray highlight. The bones and wings were done with Bleached Bone; purity seals are just one layer of Blood Red.
Chains, Iron Halo, plugs, cables, armor joints, etc etc are Chainmail. The gems are Goblin Green; I may go back some day and add a few bits to make them less monochromatic.
The censer is Chainmail with Scorched Brown drybrushing.
The base is painted with Snakebite Leather, then PVA-glued sand from my backyard and some tan and mixed grass fluff bits. The basing was done about two hours before the painting contest, so it wasn't completely hardened -- hence the section that's sticking out. Some day I may even fix it, probably by shoving a small rock in there to make it look like I totally meant to do that.

I like a dirtier approach to Deathwing -- Codex Terminators just look too bright to me and I like doing things a little differently than the pictures in the books. I found an interesting tutorial on quick-and-dirty Deathwing Terminators on From the Warp, tested it on a model, and well... yeah. It worked out so well I decided my entire Deathwing army was going to look like this.


I already had about fifteen Assault Terminators that I assembled into Thunder Hammer/Storm Shields; between buying bitz online and getting some from friends (and finally using my DA sprue Terminator bitz!), I was able to assemble another ten in the form of five Lightning Claws, four Storm Bolters, and one Assault Cannon. Somewhere in my house are ten more AoBR Storm Bolter Terminators, and one of these days I will find them. For now, I have these twenty-five assembled, with ALMOST enough bitz for five more that will become Lightning Claws.

These are the eleven I'm currently working on.



The front left model is my Assault Cannon/Converted Power Fist. It's nothing close to what I've seen some folks do, but I'm rather proud of my first actual conversion. I like the look of the Chaos Terminator Power Fists better than the Imperial ones, which look really bland and boring to me. He also got the benefit of a bunch of Dark Angels bits: his legs, the Assault Cannon, right shoulderpad, and the little icon thingy on top are all from the DA Upgrade Frame. Hey, I got 'em, why not use 'em?



Primered White -- Since the scheme is fairly light shades, I opted for white primer so the actual paints will show up a touch brighter. Some of the models are primered using Army Painter white (I am not entirely pleased with its performance; I much preferred the P³ primer) and some are using a generic white primer at a friend's house. One model got Reaper Brush-On Primer on the Crux Terminatus because I was an idiot and forgot to add the shoulderpad before primering.

Basecoated in Codex Grey -- Most of the model gets a coat of Codex Grey. (Full disclosure: Almost all of my Citadel paints are watered down in the pot, and I often water them down further in the flip-top lid just before I use them.) I thought I might need to lay down a second coat, but I decided against it. I generously watered down the paint and gave all the grey areas a wash to help the color settle into the spaces I missed and to even the color over the model. Just about the only spots that didn't get (deliberately) painted grey are Crux Terminatus shoulderpads, weapons, shields, and small fiddly details.

Every now and then, I set out to paint something and end up painting something else entirely. I was going to work on a Terminator or two, and ended up (almost) finishing my first Tac Marine for my army.

I tried doing a power-glow effect on the plasma coil that turned out better than I feared it might, but not as nice as I would have liked. The barrel still needs to be drilled out, but I like the soot effect A LOT.

I adapted Catattafish's Thunder Hammer tutorial for the power mace. I still need to do the lightning effect; I'm waiting on my friend to return my nice insane-detail brush so I can do the tiny squiggles on it and along the edge of the robe. Once that's done, I may mud up the bottom of the robe somehow if I can find a good technique for it.

Since he's a sergeant, I wanted to make sure there was a decent amount of gold so I painted various details with it to compliment the green. Of course, EVERYTHING except the power mace got a layer of Devlan Mud (have I mentioned how wonderful this stuff is?) to dirty it up and add some depth. I like how the Mud mutes the gold just right.







This shot shows the robe's color most accurately. As you can tell, there are still a few touchups to do but I'm quite happy with him so far.

The only thing I'm wondering is what to do with the plain red on the power mace. I like it, but it lacks depth. (The same applies to my Thunder Hammers.) I thought about trying to get a power-glow effect but I don't know if it would be appropriate.

I am almost done with the first ten TH/SS terminators. I've got two with green 'Hammers, two with purple, two with blue, and one with red/orange. I have about twelve basecoated and highlighted -- I'm working on the details now.

And I know now what was bothering me about my Storm Shields. Something didn't seem quite right about them; I wasn't happy with how they looked but I wasn't sure what to do with it. On a whim, I painted over the brown section of one with WHITE, and it was like looking at an entirely different paint scheme. As I'd painted them, they were too dark! I immediately painted all of them with a couple layers of Skull White and they look so much better now.

Pictures are not forthcoming with this update; I lost access to the camera for a few days and now it's very cloudy and my inside lighting isn't all that. Also, getting the flu really really sucks and I highly recommend avoiding it.

The other awesome thing that happened today was getting a squad of five old-school metal Dark Angels Terminators, as well as Asmodai, Ezekiel, Azrael (minus Watcher and banner), and an all-metal Dark Angels Dreadnought with TL-Lascannon/ML. They're all either bare metal or primered black -- I cannot WAIT to break out my Venerable kit and go to town on that Dreadnought. It's even got a banner pole, and I may end up creating a cloth banner for it. Out of real cloth, if I can manage it.

For now, I need sleep -- too much excitement for one day, and I have to work tomorrow. Yikes.

That chaplin looks tastey!