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I've got this week off (along with a totally clear schedule - a first!), so I figured it's time to finally get round to painting my Space Marines, which have been sitting assembled since... well, my last week off (in July).

I'm painting them up as from the Iron Fists chapter - a successor of the Imperial Fists. Their primary colours are silver and gold For reference, here's a pic of a Vanguard Veteran painted in their colour scheme:



I was going to paint them up as Imperial Fists originally, but there's been a sudden increase in their popularity locally recently leading to several new armies being started... and, well, I'd rather do something different. Maybe I talked too much about my plans? Who knows!

The silver/gold scheme should be quite quick to paint to a reasonable table-top standard, so there was also that going for it

Due to the condensed nature of this project I may skip a few steps, or make several updates at the end of the day - once I get started on something I tend to get sucked into it and lose all track of time.

So to get started, here's a group shot of what I have ahead of me (minus Lysander):



I'll try to post the best pictures I can, but I've only got my iPhone - my DSLR is unfortunately still at my Ex-Wife's house...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So today was originally going to be just about undercoats and base coating. I had both some setbacks and some successes, so I've actually finished ahead of where I thought I'd be in some respects, but behind in others.

Undercoating was done in 2 batches, so I had enough room to get in at each model/part. I stuck with my tried-and-true GW Chaos Black spray.



(side note - I really wish I'd left the storm shields off the Terminators...)

I was feeling quite keen - this was done before breakfast.

After giving everything a few hours next to the window to dry out, it was time to basecoat. Given the silver colour scheme, GW Leadbelcher seemed the obvious choice from what I had to hand. For speed, I figured I'd spray them using the GW spray gun. It didn't turn out so good. With metallic paints I've learned you need to thin them a lot more for spraying, but try as I might, I could not get a consistent flow from the gun. What I seemed to be getting was random bursts of the metallic flecks hitting the undercoat, but none of the rest of the colour. The overall effect was a very, very dark metal, though somewhat patchy. After about an hour of trying every possible mixture/setting I could think of, I gave up.

I also had a disaster in that I dropped my captain. He's now lying in several pieces. I'll get round to fixing him tomorrow.

In the end I manually fixed up the basecoat by hand (well, brush).



Fixing up the silver basecoats for the Devastators, Terminators, and Dreadnaughts took most of the rest of the day (with a break for lunch, and a few interruptions from family and friends). Once done, I moved on to start the main gold areas - the arms and shoulder trims on the troops, and the inscribed armour plates on the Venerable Dreadnaught. I got these done on the Dread, Terminators, and one combat squad of Devastators.

Once the gold was done, any exposed ribbing, or cables on the troops were painted Mechanicus Standard Grey.



I stopped here for most things today, but I decided to press on with the Terminators. Next up for them was a heavy wash of Nuln Oil, over the whole model. This came out even better than I expected, so if I was really lazy I could have left it there. But no, I couldn't

I gave silver areas a couple of light drybrushes with Runefang Steel, with helmets also getting a very light Necron Compound. Gold was drybrushed with Golden Griffon. This ended up giving a very pleasing burnished effect, which my iPhone camera is totally incapable of picking up :(

The Crux Terminatus, and any similar ornamentation on the legs was drybrushed with progressively lighter greys over a Mechanicus Standard Grey base.

The hammer power cables were picked out in Stegadon Scale Green. I'll be shading these tomorrow.

Parchments were given a base of Zandri Dust. I'm not sure where to go from here though... I'm trying to keep the overall look very muted, and I'm worried the parchments might end up bright and standing out, if I use my usual techniques. Any suggestions?



Tomorrow I plan to:

finish up the major details on the Terminators. I'm undecided what to do for the designs on their sheilds - any ideas?

progress the first Devastator combat squad to a similar level as I got with the Terminators today

same with the Venerable Dreadnaught

get the gold areas basecoated on the other Devastators.

add minimal gold trim + wash the Ironclad

Shiny!
Good luck getting through them. Bit of a shame that the airbrush didn't work. They are so handy for base work.

Look forward to seeing more shinies!

Nice color scheme! I will be definitely watching for more.

Lucarikx

Thank you all for the kind words

Today wasn't as productive as I wanted it to be. I ended up having to run some personal errands in the morning, which meant hobby took backseat until mid-afternoon. I tried to turn it in to a positive by running past the hobby stores on my way, to pick up some cans of spray gloss and matt varnishes, but nowhere had any! Gutted! I'll find somewhere online tonight that'll do next-day delivery (so I'll get them on Thursday). One slight positive was the discovery that one of the stores has a large selection of the Vallejo Model Colour range. I've been dying to try out some of their metallics, after hearing nothing but glowing praise, so I picked up a couple relevant to this project: Gold, Natural Steel, and Gunmetal Blue. Natural Steel is a pretty close match to Leadbelcher washed with Nuln Oil, so I used it to touch up a few mistakes around the trim areas.



At the moment I'm thinking I'll paint either the Sternguard, or the Scouts in the much darker Gunmetal colour. The thinking for each is - mark out the Sternguard as wearing old, relic armour, or for the Scouts, the standard silver is probably a bit bright for troops who are supposed to be sneaking around.

But they're both for another day

Given the loss of time, I focussed on getting the Terminators more or less finished, and getting the Dreadnaught and first Devastator combat squad further along.

Yesterday I left the Terminators with their storm sheilds and a few details to paint. For the shields I went for simple silver and gold, with a muted red band. Although in the photos the red stands out a mile! You'll just have to trust me that it's not so bright in person. Eyes/lenses were painted Mordian Blue, highlighted with Ice Blue, dotted with Skull White. Parchments were washed with Riekland Fleshshade, then highlighted with the base colour again (Zandri Dust).





There seems to be a few red colour casts in those pictures, which give the illusion of splodges... I can assure you, they're not there!

The Devastators and Dreadnaught were painted much the same as the Terminators were yesterday. I gave the dread several extra layers of drybrushing, to give it an older, more aged look. The machinary areas of the Dreadnaught body were drybrushed with Leadbelcher rather than Runefang Steel, to make them slightly darker than the armoured areas. I'm probably going to have to get another tub of Nuln Oil soon, based on how much I used on the Dreadnaught

The Devastator plasma cannon coils were painted Stegadon Scale Green, highlighted with Sotek Green, then Sotek Green + Skull White at around 3:2 ratio.




I still have a lot of the details to finish on these guys, but if I can get a good crack at them tomorrow, I think I can be finished by lunchtime.

Two areas I haven't tackled on any of the models, are the bases (other than to give them a Badab Black wash), and the banners. I'm holding off on the bases until I get the varnish, as I'm going to be using weathering powders to represent soot, ash, and dust from a ruined urban warzone, and I want the colours on the bases to tie in with those powders.

For the banners, I need to decide on a theme. For now I've just basecoated in Mechanicus Standard Grey (more just to eliminate the results of the bad spray job) while I choose what I'm going to do. Being a 2nd Ed. player, banners were always a big thing in Space Marine armies, and I want to do my bit to bring that tradition back

The uniforms of the Imperial Guard are camouflaged in order to protect their wearers by hiding them from sight.
The principle is that what the enemy cannot see he cannot kill. This is not the way of the Adeptus Astartes. A Space Marine’s armour is bright with heraldry that proclaims his devotion to his Chapter and the beloved Emperor of Mankind. Our principle is that what the enemy can see, he will soon learn to fear...

But I need to weigh this against the muted, "Grimdark" style I'm going for with this army... decisions, decisions! Please feel free to weigh-in with ideas!

Tomorrow I need to:

Finish the Dreadnaught (I'll maybe skip the heraldry areas until I have a banner theme, so I can tie it in)

Finish ALL the Devastators (perhaps apart from their shields... I have something special in mind for them

Start the Ironclad (I'm hoping to make him a bit special )

Start the Scouts (should be quick - if they're not Gunmetal, they'll be very dark grey + black, to emphasise their sneakyness )

Really nice work so far, even if they are imperial

Cheers, Sir! Although they are Imperial, I have had one local hobbyist comment they're sailing very close to Iron Warrior territory... (minus the horrible warp mutations )

THESE ARE AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Right, so today started promising, up bright and early(ish), and straight into painting. My goal was to take the second Devastator combat squad from basecoat to finish by lunchtime, and finish off the Dreadnaught and first combat squad. All by lunchtime!

To try keep me focussed, I loaded a playlist with all three LotR Special Editions into VLC, and had them playing in the background. Normally I tend to paint in silence, for some "quiet time", but I found this worked quite well - so I might try to change my habit

Everything was going swimmingly... On the combat squad I basecoated the gold, ribbing, and any power cables their respective colours, before washing the whole model in Nuln Oil. While these were drying, I tackled the Dreadnaught. The Plasma coils were painted the same way as on the Devastators; parchments were painted differently to the method I used on the Terminators, by starting with Zandri Dust, then just drybrushing progressively lighter shades, without a shade wash. I think I prefer this method, as it's a bit more muted. Any Crux Terminatus were picked out in Vallejo Gold. To be honest, this was as much just to see what the colour was like as anyting. It reminds me of the very, very old version of Shining Gold, back from around '93. It's bright and yellowy, and covers really well. I gave it s thin Agrax Eartshade wash, and called it a day on that. The base was painted black, then drybrushed with a few shades of grey, and washed with Agrax. The idea being the Dreadnaught is standing on a ruined asphalt road. I tried painting on some road markings, but I was unhappy with the result and so painted over them. I may revisit this idea later. All the bases in the army will be properly finished off at the weekend. As I still haven't picked a heraldry/banner theme I left these areas of the model for now... meaning the Dreadnaught was finished (for the moment!) - here's a couple of pictures:





Once the Devastators were dry, I drybrushed them with Vallejo Natural Steel, then Runefang Steel. I then gathered all 10 Devastators, picked out any purity seals, and then painted the eyes and lenses. With that, banners and bases withstanding, they were finished for now, so I put them aside. Their boltguns need to wait, as they're still on the sprue, needing sprayed. Sadly it was raining heavily, preventing me from getting out to do this. The sheilds will be getting some special treatments later, but I'm waiting on some supplies to come in the mail. In the meantime, here's a few pictures:




The idea behind the shields is that the guys carrying them form a kind of mobile Aegis Defence Line for the heavy weapons. It has no in-game effect, I just did it 'cos I thought it looked cool

With all targets hit so far, (and it being just after lunchtime) it was time to move on to new things - namely the Ironclad, and the 2 Scout squads. I took a couple of hours for lunch, and to deal with an interruption from work, and carried on.

The Ironclad I want to make look like he's essentially a walking wrecking ball. He's going to be covered in soot, ash, grime, any paint work is going to be chipped to high heck, and the silver areas of his armour are going to look tarnished. I decided to skip giving him any golden trim for now (I'll probably pick out the details on the sarcophagus later though). To get started on him, I essentially gave him a bath in Nuln Oil, and left him to dry while I basecoated the scouts. I let the wash pool in a few places to aid the tarnished/beaten-up look later.



The scouts took me a while to settle on a colour scheme. I tested the Vallejo Gunmetal Blue I bought yesterday, but it was far too blue out of the tube for what I wanted here. In the end, despite my reasoning yesterday that the standard silver would be too bright for "stealth" troops, I remembered the quote I also posted and decided to go with the silver anyway. fatigues would be picked out in dark grey (basecoated Mechanicus Standard Grey), and the outsides of their camo cloaks would start out Steel Legion Drab, as it matches some long tufts of grass I bought specifically for their bases (they'll come up to the scouts knees or so). I'm undecided on whether to paint an actual camo print on the cloaks, or to leave them a solid colour.

Before I could get on to shade washing the scouts, Return of the King finished, signalling I should probably call it a day! They look a bit messy in these pictures, but it's all stuff which will be tidied up over the shading/highlighting layers:





Tomorrow I should be able to:

Finish the Scouts

Get the base metal of the Ironclad finished

Hopefully get everything painted so far varnished, in the hopes that weathering powders can be applied Friday/Saturday

Glue my Captain back together!

I'm probably not going to get as much done though, as I have a scheduled interruption from work in the morning, and have to meet someone in the afternoon to get my WHFB rule book back before they move out of the country...

So I've missed a couple of updates (my work doesn't seem to understand the meaning of "time off")... Thankfully it doesn't mean I haven't been busy

I'm not going to type so much in this update, just give an overview.

The scouts are finished. This means I almost have a legal gaming force to play with - I just need to get an HQ unit painted. 2x Troops, 2x Elite, 1x Heavy Support (2, when the Ironclad is finished).





Also done, bar a few little details, are the bases. I started with Vallejo Burnt Umber, drybrushed Skavenblight Dinge, then drybrushed Dawnstone. This gave a very nice, dirty, muddy, urban look - like a ruined city which had bee caked in mud from the ground being torn up by the fighting. No photos of this yet, as I can't get my iPhone to take a good enough picture to show it off.

Also partly none, are banners and heraldry. Banners ended up being painted in the same way as parchments, and trimmed with Red Gore. I'll be adding imagery to them shortly. I've decided on using a yellow/black "hazard stripe" pattern as a motif through the army. I painted the arched leg areas on the Venerable Dreadnought with this pattern, and I'll be extending it to most units in some way. Again, pictures will be added when I get some decent ones.

The metalwork on the Ironclad is done, but so far nothing else, so not worth showing off

Other than the painting, I received a few goodies in the mail, which I plan to make good use of:



And I bought a couple more things while running some errands, because, well, you can never have enough Dreadnoughts As you've probably guessed from the Aegis Line kit, this is going to end up a Rifleman.



I'm not likely to get everything I hoped for 100% finished by the end of Sunday (my original deadline), but I'll be so far along compared to where I was, it's a little scary I'll be keeping this log going as I finish off new units.

This morning I gave everything I've finished a coat of gloss varnish, ahead of starting on all of the "special effects". At this stage, the only squad getting anything done were the Devastators (just the ones with shields).

The idea is to utilise the metal already painted as the metal showing through the chips and scrapes on the shields these guys carry to cover the heavy weapons. It all sounded good in my head. But this is my first time "weathering", so it's all uncharted territory for me...

The basic plan was to use liquid mask around the edges, and in a few spots in the centre of the shields where bullets had struck. The gloss varnish would make it easy to remove later. With the mask in place, paint the whole shield a yellow tone, then use masking tape to help paint the black stripes - creating a "warning" pattern. Remove all masking material to reveal the metal, and Insta-Wear®!

It pretty much worked too

Step 1: Apply Liquid Mask. To say this stuff stinks is an insult to everything stinky. Crack open a window! Allow to dry for about 10 minutes



Step 2: Paint the base colour



Step 3: (No photo, doh! ) Apply masking tape, and paint The top colour.

Step 4: Peel off the tape, then remove any remaining Liquid Mask



There were a couple of places where I mustn't have hit the model with a good gloss coverage, as the mask took the paint off, right down to the resin. A touch up with Leadbelcher was all that was required.

Step 5: (optional) I thought the effect lacked something, so I edged the chipped areas with some thinned Vallejo "Transparent Colour" Smoke. You can see the finished effect on the group shots below.





That's all for today. The next steps will be to matt varnish and then start applying powder pigments for more weathering....

Wow, nice job! Great looking army. I love to see the lesser known chapters getting some well deserved love.

Thanks! Personally, I love some of the lesser known chapters. If I get bored of painting the Iron Fists, I'll start painting squads from some of the others and have a "crusade" C:SM army.

This is really my first attempt at "assembly line" painting (since my IG army 15+ years ago), so it's been a great challenge and change of pace to my GKs - which after almost a year still only has 2 units and 2 HQ finished... Given the speed I'm getting through stuff, I'm very happy with the level of quality and cohesion I'm managing to achieve.

Really liking the boarding shields, especially the idea of them being used to protect the devastators.

The boarding shields are brilliant. This is a really nice, gritty army. Can't wait to see more!

Soooo, it's been a while since my last update :-/ Work has been crazy busy since I went back, and haven't had a chance to get much done.

But I have a couple of small updates tonight

My Ironclad is coming along quite nicely. I've gone back and darkened all of the non-armour metals (pistons, etc) to give a clearer distinction between this "working" metal and the chapter colour scheme. You can't really see it in the picture below though. Also on the working areas, I've experimented with blending in glazes of browns and purples into areas where there would be friction and heating. It's really very subtle, but IMHO it makes the metal look so much better. Hopefully I'll be able to capture it in a photo when I get my new camera in the next few weeks.

I've also started picking out the details, starting with the eagle on the sarcophagus.

My plan is to apply the same heavily worn warning stripe effect as on the Devastator's shields, but I'm not sure where to add it - the main body armour plates, or on the arms. Any suggestions?



Next up, in a bid to get my army game-legal, I started work on my Captain. So far, I've only reassembled him after his fall during the spray basecoating, fixed the silver basecoat, and started the basecoats for the gold areas and the cloak.

Quick update, as much a reason to (very quickly) test out my new camera I've done some more work on the captain's gold and silver areas. I need to neaten some of the recesses, and apply a final highlight to the gold, then I can start detailing him:

I love the technique you used on the shields. I'm really liking the colour scheme and you are doing the 'eavy metal team one justice i think. A nice balance of shades

Young Logan