Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I used to paint marines a couple months ago, and now I'm painting cadians and eldar. Last night I picked up one of my fresh AoBR marines and painted it ultramarines (notice my sig...) and I have to say, that was one the most boring experiences of my life.

I'm convinced that marines are the "newb's best friend". There's barely any skill involved with painting them up tabletop-quality. It could be that my ultramarines are really easy (no washes or highlights are really necessary to get them to look good), but almost all marines I've painted are super-easy(including my word bearers and black legion spiky marines anda couple random plague marines)

Anyway, I'm just venting because I really don't want to paint these marines. They're boring. They're not even close to challenging. I want to practice a lot of techniques, and marines just don't offer any help. Kroot and eldar help you learn how to paint,not marines...

I find marines fun at first and then I tend to lose interest.

I've only painted Space Marines so far, and now I'm beginning WoC. It was a pretty damn big shock in difference in difficulty, I'm telling ya.

You aren't wrong. I've had my chaos army for 11 years, probably 1000 points are painted. My eldar (I started playing with them last year) are almost all painted. I've painted nearly 3 times as much eldar in 1/11th of the time, just because they are more interesting.

I'm not disagreeing they are easy, or a good place to start, but you are ignoring some of the potential. Don't aim for just table top, they are also easy to take beyond that. Add the highlights, a wash, some dry brush, and now you've got some great looking minis that were no more work than getting your other guys to table top standards.

I've got 80 some Ultramarines that I painted up for one of my kids and I really appreciate the relative ease of making them look good. My other son went orks and those take way longer to get to a similar standard.

If you don't mind going beyond tabletop quality, try using some techniques that shade from an imaginary light source facing the model from a certain direction. Or you could try some NMM ( way beyond my ability right now ), or just use more levels of shading.

For less effort, you could model battle damage, put mud on their boots with pigment, use various squad markings, try weathering, etc.

I agree with the rest of the posters here. I'm not a huge fan of marines myself, but they could be useful for painting practice if there is something new you want to try.

At the same time, and because of the very quality you mention, they are actually quite challenging to paint if you really want to push your skills to the next level, at least in my opinion.

I actually paint my ultramarines with enchanted blue rather than ultramnarines blue, and I like the look of them more. Ice blue is a terrible highlight though, and it's the only highlight color I have right now, so I'm staying away from it :3

If I had a good highlight color, they would all be highlighted in a second. I can't really think of a good highlight for enchanted blue though.

Washing is kind of silly to me. I wash all of my other models, just not marines

enchanted blue is a great color.

Another thing you might try, if you have the talent for it, is to sculpt on little accessories or clothing items. You can also shift some focus to basing.

Grignard wrote:Another thing you might try, if you have the talent for it, is to sculpt on little accessories or clothing items. You can also shift some focus to basing.

Ah,basing. That's a good idea. I used to get excited about basing,but I stopped doing it for some reason. I honetly just leave plain modelling sand. I see no reason to paint sand :3

Then don't stop at sand! Add flock, make snow bases, or get creative. Use bits of office tiles or somesuch to make slate bases, or chop up fantasy bases and search through your bitz box to make urban rubble.

And you've got a point about Marines. My Marines are easy to paint versus, say, my Guardsmen or the Orks/Tyranids I've painted for others in the past. (but then, I'm painting 3 different camo patterns on different kinds of Guardsmen, and one is MARPAT. So yeah, that's gonna be harder than just two shades of blue).

Samus_aran115 wrote:
I'm convinced that marines are the "newb's best friend". There's barely any skill involved with painting them up tabletop-quality. It could be that my ultramarines are really easy (no washes or highlights are really necessary to get them to look good), but almost all marines I've painted are super-easy(including my word bearers and black legion spiky marines anda couple random plague marines)

There are some ways to cheat a wash, but it's so easy to do and makes models look so much better that I can't fathom why people don't do it. The almost universal response when folks put up their work asking how to make it better is "Add a wash".

Marines do seem to be pretty easy. I'm painting guard for my 2nd army (Chaos Marines are my first) and they are a LOT more finicky to get looking "decent" than the marines. Biggest problem I have is it's SO much more difficult painting a face compared to a helmet.

I'll also chip in that it's probably harder to bring marines to the "next level" after table-top. They've got an awful lot of broad surfaces that need blending.

This topic doesn't really belong in this section.

Moved.

Samus_aran115 wrote:I honetly just leave plain modelling sand. I see no reason to paint sand :3

It's out of scale. That's why you should paint it. Normal sand on a warhammer miniature looks funny as-is. Paint it a solid color, then dry-brush it.

Well paint something other than ultramrines blue. Go with a cool paint pattern-- quartered, for example, or differing knee/elbow pads for squads to represent the various companies, and so on.

kronk wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:I honetly just leave plain modelling sand. I see no reason to paint sand :3

It's out of scale. That's why you should paint it. Normal sand on a warhammer miniature looks funny as-is. Paint it a solid color, then dry-brush it.

Like graveyard earth and then bleached bone? That's what GW always advises you to do..

Thanks alpharius.

My marines are necron abyss, fat badab black wash, lots of detail painting (four colours per lens, etc) and a highlight of 1/1 necron abyss/ferns grey. I could of course stick to necron abyss with simple details and save me lots of time. But they look so much better with some extra effort that it's definitely worth the time.

Marines have a lot of potential for added details. Free hand some iconography onto their armour. Add paint chips, weathering... Anything is boring to paint if you let it be. Aim higher.

One of the reasons I'm excited about painting my Deathwatch Marines is the opportunity to try freehanding about 15 different Chapter insignia, as well as their respective colors.

Also, I've never been great with metallics, so the silver left arm/shoulder is going to be good practice for me.

Do something like that to keep it interesting. Maybe put together a Crusade force with Marines from various chapters all in one place. Mixes it up a bit when it comes to color schemes as well as Chapter-specific iconography and insignia.

Hasdrubal wrote:At the same time, and because of the very quality you mention, they are actually quite challenging to paint if you really want to push your skills to the next level, at least in my opinion.

I agree with this... while I sometimes find marines tedious to paint, they are certainly not easy. I think power armour is one of the most challenging things to get right because of its inorganic nature. Highlights have to be razor sharp and smooth and consistent on every surface, and black lining around knee pads and joins has to be perfect. Then there are chest eagles which are notoriously difficult to do cleanly (even if you remembered not to stick the bolter on till later). And don't get me started on painting shoulder pad insignia by hand and not getting it sloppy.

I actually find marine ICs easier, because they have plenty of robes and stuff covering up the armour.

Marines can be pretty boring to paint, especially AoBR ones. The best way to make marines more fun to paint is to add some random thing like giving the bald sarge a tatoo on his head, warning stripes (iron warriors and iron snakes ftw!), battle damage, etc. I do have to say the most fun type of marine you can paint would be a nurgle, since you have to convert them slightly.

Not compared to guardsmen D:

Yeah, let me tell you, quartering the paint scheme makes chaos marines a challenge...my modified Sons of Malice
were a fun go...

It looks like you halved that paint scheme rather than quartering it.

This article should be useful.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?aId=9800023a

SaintHazard wrote:It looks like you halved that paint scheme rather than quartering it.

More like 1/6th'd it. one upper half, then hips, then back to legs ...the fun part was mixing silver and white for a luna wolf white color that was close to the ref pic.

Boss Grabnutz wrote:

SaintHazard wrote:It looks like you halved that paint scheme rather than quartering it.

More like 1/6th'd it. one upper half, then hips, then back to legs ...the fun part was mixing silver and white for a luna wolf white color that was close to the ref pic.

Well regardless it looks cool as hell. And I normally think halved or quartered color schemes (at least when GW is behind them) look doofy. But not yours.

Props, dude.

Anybody that can take marines 'to the next level' can also get the same challenge with any other race by doing the same stuff and, at least in my eyes, actually accomplish something besides making 'yet another marine'. Quartering or 'sixthing' marines? Yeah try the diamond pattern on a Harlequin.

Wash, details, sculpted stuff? You can do that on any other race as well. With IG you're dealing with faces, not masks, cloth in places and armor other than 'flat or curved sheet #23' and it's an actual challenge.

I'm also partial to customization on Tyranids. The biological look can be quite difficult to sculpt and paint properly.