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Greetings Dakkites,

I'm seriously thinking about painting a marine army and I'm probably going to paint my own chapter colours, but to keep myself interested I'd like to add some nice touches like having a quartered colour schemes and/or adding helmet stripes and so on.

The only problem, thus this post of course, is that I've never done it before and desperately need some tips. My freehand painting isn't very hot - I can do the odd rune on a cloak and that sort of thing, but I don't think I'm good enough to get nice, crisp, clean lines for the things I mentioned above.

Anybody have any tips for this process?

Much appreciated.

Marines are actually easier than they look for quartered schemes, as they have a lot of detail hiding the centre line of their armour.

So the actual amount of clear, straight dividing line you need to paint is pretty minimal, particularly if you paint the helmet and/or backpack in a neutral third colour (which is a good idea anyway, as it helps to stop the colour scheme from looking lop-sided).

If you want to keep it easy, I would recommend going for two colours for which you can use the same base... The Howling Griffons scheme, for example, uses orange and yellow... which can both be built up from an orange basecoat, which saves you from having to do quite as much repainting to get te quarters.

Anything and white would also work, as you can build the white up from the coloured basecoat, which helps tie the two sides together.

Hope some of that general ramble was in some way useful...

bone and purple marines with a splash of ice blue for you