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It is a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) army, and this represents about 2000 points in game terms.




Tactical squad, with my Company Master (HQ) in the middle (the guy with the giant sword, funny hat, and flag on his back)


Plasma cannon on the right.


Guy with a flamer on the left. Otherwise the Tactial Squad is pretty standard loadout with just bolters


A bit out of focus.




My first of two terminator squads. This one has ranged weapons (note the assault cannon in the middle of the front row) but also decent close combat. The terminator closest to the camera is actually an HQ terminator hero, Belial.





Belial


Now the second squad, the Assault terminators with lightning claws or thunder hammer/storm shield combos




Again, sorry the focusing wasn't great.


Next, the bike squad (Plus the Vindicator tank on the right). The bike squad has 6 normal bikes, one of whom is the sergeant with the sword, and there are a couple of guys with bonus weapons (one with a plasma gun, and one with a meltagun). There is also the two-man attack bike with multimelta.





The front-middle guy has the plasma gun, the back-middle guy has the melta gun, and the back-left guy is the sergeant




Land Speeder Squadron, all of which have multimeltas, and the one on the left has a chin-mounted assault cannon (hidden by the terminator, unfortunately) and the one on the right has typhoon missile launchers.


My dreadnought, with twin-linked lascannon and missile launcher. I'm pretty darn pleased with the paint job on this one



My two vindicators. One has blue on the front just to better distinguish it





Predator tank with twin-linked lascannon main turret and side-mounted lascannons as well. You can see where I tried to drybrush some dirt on the treads here. Its basic, but a nice little effect I feel.



Finally, just a bunch of pictures that don't particularly highlight one unit or another, but give you some good angles.



















So there you have it. Thoughts, comments, etc appreciated!

-Grorx

It's always good to see a minor chapter made into an army, especially an unforgiven one.

As a tournament army I would first ask whether your using the Dark Angels Codex of the Space Marine one, but it looks better than most armies that turn up at tournaments around my area, mostly unpainted, but could use a little bit of work. May I suggest using some washes such as Leviathan Purple on the red robes, Badab Black on the metal and Devlan Mud on the flesh.

Thanks! I've actually never used washes before, but maybe this will be a reason to give them a try. Are they hard to use/learn? Any good guides out there?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

I just bought my first washes today and did a once-over on all of the infantry and the bikes with the badab black and leviathan purple on the robes. Maybe its because I just did one coat, or maybe its because I'm not used to washes yet, but I don't see a huge difference. How many coats do people normally use?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, is there a benefit to using a wash on my vehicles? Particularly, the big flat parts of the vindicators/predator? Not sure what it would do, really.

It's not that hard, you can either put the wash all over or just into the recesses.

Most people seem to use 2-3 coats of a wash but even one is fine most of the time, especially with the Lev-Purple on the red.

You can use them on vehicles but drybrushing is usually better though, or highlighting even. The wash would mainly just pool to the bottom and only leave a little bit of wash-paint.

The army looks good but some washes would help and I'd love to see it on flocked bases.

Grorx wrote:
Also, is there a benefit to using a wash on my vehicles? Particularly, the big flat parts of the vindicators/predator? Not sure what it would do, really.

Yes, washes add texture. If you look at any vehicle that has been in the field for any amount of time, it'll get weathered. The paint fades in some areas, gets patched up in others. Dirt, smoke and gunpowder collects, then gets washed off by rain. Rust develops. Although there are elaborate techniques that can portray each of these effects, a dark wash (I use 30% scorched brown and 70% black) is a quick and easy way to weather a vehicle. It also gives the vehicle a sense of scale and realism by picking out bolts and seams, as opposed to the toy-ish appearance of a perfectly clean model.

for your other models, I'd highly recommend basing them. A bit of gravel and some drybrushing go a long way. If you're feeling adventurous, throw on some static grass or bits of cork stone. again, it does wonders to make the models less toylike and more real.

Excellent start in any case. They are clean, with a consistent and unique colour scheme.

Personally, I think there's a bit too much Dark Angels iconography on them, and they could use a little shading. Also, I think the silver color is a bit too black. They should be a bit more like this:
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/9/9d/Guardians_of_the_Covenant_miniature.jpg
Also the red should be darker. Sorry to be harsh....

Glad to see a chapter of these guys because they look really cool, and looks good that they're all painted. Again, washes, highlighting, and flocked bases do add a lot to the depth of the model. I would also recommend to try to paint the faces with more details (i.e. eyes and mouth) and also try and check out really thin pens or markers. You can write on the scrolls and such and it adds a lot. They're only around $3-$5 and should be able to be found at any general hobby store. Try like 005 tips. I use a 005 archival ink pen with a .20mm line width. Or you could use a really thin brush, but you can't write cool names on your guys shoulders.

Wow, thanks for all the great suggestions everyone! I have done a couple of washes on most of the infantry now, so I will post new pictures of that when I get a chance. I have never done washes before so hopefully it turns out ok! As far as basing goes, are there any good guides online on how to do bases for someone like me who has never done them before?

I will also try to get better pictures this time with more consistent lighting. A lot of things are a bit brighter in the pictures than how I think they look in real life.

I will also try a wash on the vehicles. I have the Badab Black and Devlan Mud (I think those are the names...) so I will come up with something. Thanks again, keep the comments coming!

I think they look great, plenty of work has gone into them, but i agree that basing & some wash would improve the army alot.

The thing I do for basing is a variation on what they do in the GW book How to Paint Space Marines. They use other colours but I'm not quite sure which (you may want to look that up for an Earth-like planet's ground.) I usually take any sort of sand that I take from Lake Ontario's beaches and either PVA or super glue it to a base. I then paint the whole base GW's Dark Flesh. Then, I'll drybrush Bleached Bone and then a very light Skull White. Then, I take static grass and super glue it in clumps to the base where I see fit. It gives a really space/wasteland/desert like feel to the model. Often times, I'll drybrush the feet and around the ankles of the figure to make his boots muddied or dusty, too. There are probably better ways, though, too.

There is no flock on your bases. Fix that and I will be a tournament worthy army.

I'm a painting judge for tournaments in my area and also a commision painter and as far as most tournament armies that I've seen you need to highlight more. Most of the colors are flat and it's hard to pull off a nice looking army by using a lot of metallic paint. You could help this a bit by using some washes on the red and silver, and any amount of highlighting or dry brushing would enhance the look.

Eek! Mold lines! But seriously these are nice, just a tad above average. If you wash 'em, base 'em and clear up the mold lines and this will turn out to be one hell of an army!

Can't thank you all enough for the feedback! I must admit, this is the first half-decent paint job I've done for any of my armies (You should see my Tau and Orks... I've come a long way) so I'm not really familiar with the techniques of highlighting and drybrushing. Any tutorials or guides you could direct me to online would be much appreciated! Thanks!

Oh, and on which units are there problems with mold lines and where? And what can I do about them? Thanks!

On most of the space marines' armour, pads and helmets and a few mold lines on the termie pads. To clear them up, go to your lgs and pick up a hobby knife or files.( I recomend the files, you can cut your self pretty easily with it.)To get rid of them with files, just apply a little pressure and scrape away. In a few strokes they'll be clear.

Biggest problem I have is with the Terminators.

They should have been painted with the same colors of the infantry, rather than that solid red.
And what the heck is up with the boltgun metal tabard?

Oh, there are mold lines on the bikes too.

Dry Brushing is the simplest thing to do. You dip a brush with stiff bristles (I use the Citadel Medium Drybrush) and then you wipe off 90% of the paint on a paper towel. You shouldn't see anymore paint when you rub it against the paper towel. Then just go back and forth with the brush in long strokes. The paint will build up on the edges and make a very nice highlight. Also, just to warn you, removing mold lines AFTER you paint the model will remove the paint that's on top of the mold line.

Very nice and clean but I think to really make them stand out is to do the bases.

Neat interesting bases always make models better looking.

Update with more pictures!

Things I did between the last set of pictures and this one:

-Dulled down the blue on the vindicator and other blues in other places

-Tried washes for the first time! Attempted a couple of layers on the tac squad, particularly the robes, and in most places that looked like they could use some shading. I also did a single wash of the Devlan Mud on the tanks to try and give them some more texture and make them a bit less shiny overall. I'd appreciate feedback on this.

-Bases: I have flocked all of my non-land speeder bases. Some of these new pictures were taken before that, but in the white-background ones you can see the kind of bases I have done, so just know that they're all there .

I apologize for the random quality (or lack thereof) of my photography. I couldn't get the lighting to be consistent, and so against the white background a lot of it looks to be pretty yellowed out... I will have to work on that in the future. I also used a smaller resolution picture this time to make scrolling through the post easier, though the quality probably isn't as good.

Without further ado!

Belial


Dreadnought. I decided my bases would have a sort of brown/green theme with some rocks/plant life, and ended up painting some water on some of them. Then I got to the dreadnought and decided to base him as if he were standing on a bunch of stones in a river. It was fun!


You can see the dreaded "yellowing" in this picture. Blast.


A wide shot, but you can see the vindicator blue has been toned down quite a bit




Hopefully you can see some of the evidence of the washing here, but again, its too yellowy. Sigh.


I think the washes helped a lot with the "wings" on the front of the ravenwing bikes








Ha ha, bases!


Deathwing squad, post-washes. I think it darkened the red down a bit, which is fine, and hopefully gave some depth to the cracks and whatnot.


Gave the terminators all green bases to help contrast the red armor


Vindicators and predator. This is after one full wash of the devlan mud, and toning down the blue details on the one vindicator. As you can see, they aren't actually yellow


Things I have not yet done:

-Mold lines. Yes, I know they're awful. I'll get to them sooner or later.

-Highlights: I tried using some Red Gore to highlight on the terminator armor and the robes of the tac squad, but I didn't really see much difference. Anyone have any good resources on how to highlight well? Perhaps I'm just not doing it right.

As always, thoughts, comments, critiques, etc are welcome! Thanks!

Well not to sound mean but they follow a case of Pretty from Far but Far from pretty. However the far is a little to harsh. Painting with metal can be easily overdone. For highlighting everything, find a flat brush and get paint on the flat side then run that down the edges making sure not to touch the faces of the shapes but only the corners and edges to that is a easy way to high-light.

Man, I gotta stop posting pictures on here. Its gonna ruin my self esteem

its dakka dakka.
It won't harm you.
Plus its a good army.

Yes, sorry if I came off mean. It takes a lot of persistence and patience to paint an army that big completely. And for what you have painted, it is still really really well done.

I like the washed tank very nice. The only problem I see right now is the bases. The rims should all have a consistent colour, and it will help make it look better. So if you have a blue base there and a green base over here, then it makes the army look unorganized which takes away from this beautiful army.

Yeah, I will probably end up going with a dark green for all of my bases. Unfortunately I painted a lot of them brown before flocking them, but I guess I will make due.

I'm totally leaving the dreadnought on the blue water with rocks base, though. I like it too much .

What I do for my Iron Warriors should work to improve the look of your metals. Over a black coat I paint:
Boltgun Metal
Badab Black wash
Drybrush of Boltgun Metal

It gives the metal depth and texture.

That sounds good. in my efforts to highlight thus far, though, it just seems like I don't see much effect. I will give it a try though.

Highlighting is tricky when most of your army is metallic. I recommend what a previous poster said about drybrushing over the top of the parts you've washed to add a bit more contrast, then maybe adding a few fine highlights with mithril silver to really pick out the brighter parts.

To get an army fully painted is no mean feat and i applaud you for doing it (My SoB still only have a squad of Seraphim and an Immolator done after 3 months). Your painting style is pretty neat and tidy which tells me that you definitely have room for improvement regarding shading, highlighting and details.

Pick out a tac sarge and try to spend a few hours really working on your highlighting etc... Great painting takes a lot of patience, so don't be dis-heartened if your first few efforts fall short of your expectations. Being your own worst critic is a good thing.

p.s. If you can't be critical of yourself, you can surely rely on the Dakkaites to help you