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Hi everyone this will be the progress log of my chapter the Crimson Tears. They look a little bit like Black Templars with red trim and borrow iconography from the Blood and Dark Angels for a martial, Angels of Death look. I've been painting them on and off for years but it's only in the last couple of months that I feel I've really gotten a handle on them and their paint scheme. Ultimately I want to paint enough models for a full second company of infantry plus a few extra bits like scouts, bikes and terminators.

For the moment I have around forty models done, though the majority need major touch ups so I'll lead in with what I'm currently working on/recently completed.


The current company commander is my kitbashed librarian:





He'll soon be accompanied by this Chaplain (I have parts for some kitbashed ones that I'm excited to build, but I really like this model):


A more recent picture of his tabard:


The first tactical squad plus close ups on pad work, specialist back packs and the sergeant's robes:






They are waiting for me to get paid so I can prime all the weapons from my ebayed devastator box and give this chap his missile launcher:

Searching for a new target or surveying the destruction wrought by his missiles?

Somewhere deep in the forges of their fortress monastery a Techmarine is being trained (read: painted very slowly) who will end up looking a bit like this:

Currently he looks like this:




Comments and criticism are welcome. The main thing I'm already aware of is that I need to highlight the black armour a bit. I've never done that before so I'll wait to get a few more marines finished tio the level of the tactical squad before I start trying it out.

Hey there, I really like your paintjobs! They are very accurate and look good! I'm waiting to see more! Keep it up!

I like the left arm on your ML guy. The Scrach build Techmarine is nice too, a bit wide, but they are usually solo.

Those are some cool looking marines, with a great paint scheme, cannot wait to see more!

Thanks guys! Must confess I'd kind of forgotten that I'd signed up on here. I've been doing crazy shifts at work lately (just started 3 weeks of 9 and 12 hour night shifts) and after 4 months of post-graduation unemployment hthe radical change has made keeping on top of my life a bit tricky. Nevertheless I have been finding the time to do some painting.

The main thing is I've finished the Techmarine and done some more detail work on the Chaplain.






Mr. Angry, the Chaplain, finally found time to stop hitting enemies with his magic stick and ask the Techmarine for some paint so some details have been filled in.


(perhaps 75% of the studs are done)






I've also started assembly lining some shoulder pads for the next squad, tidied up an old command squad member, started legs for various veterans (Stern- and Vanguard), my Tech-marine's first servo skull and some icons for back packs.

I'm not sure about the more ornate pad for my sergeant. The single blood drop (tear drop for my purposes) suits the chapter down to a tee, but the Sanguinius emblazoned on the guard plate is far too suggestive as to what their origins might be. I'm not sure I want them to be a BA successor (not least because BA's are far too numerous these days). In my head they are of largely unknown origin, like the Minotaurs. This is in no small part due to the fact that I want to paint other marines at some point and have thought about creating a squad of delegates from chapters like the Black Templars, Ravenguard, Blood Angels etc. who may lay claim to the Crimson Tears genetic ancestry.





The laurel needs some highlights and the white of the Angel's wings require some care, but this is a vast improvement on his previous incarnation from two years ago (his head was also swapped out for one of the amazing Sevrin Loth's Honour Guard helms).




Got some Vallejo paints and Army Painter detail brushes too. The brushes are brilliant particularly the Insane Detail one (it's what I used for the skull on the Techmarine's pack.

Hope this is a worthwhile update for you guys and that you'll stick with me as I build this company.

*GASP* you have looted form ORKS?! I can see eet!

But seriouly, The techmarine looks very good! Keep it up!

You're off to a solid start here but you really need to do something about those mould lines imo

After six soul-crushing days of night shifts my boss decided to give me a couple of days off, I spent yesterday sleeping and today, among a million other things that I needed time to get done, I finished some legs and started work on the Sergeant for the squad I'm going to start working on. He's a fair way away from being done but I was trying out some poses and couldn't decide which one I wanted.

To me pose #1 looks like he's singled out someone to kill and he's not even thinking about raising a weapon until he gets there. Pose #2 is very neutral, like he might just have finished killing something. Pose #3 is 'I'm going for a walk, try and stop me.'









So which one do you all think looks best? I'm leaning towards 1, but 3 obviously has appeal. 2 is just kind of there for another view.

Your minis are very nicely painted the white is so crisp, how do you achieve it?

As to the Sergeant, I like version three. It looks like he's casually walking forward shooting someone in the face.

MrMerlin - Indeed! The plasma cutter and flamer on the servo harness always looked a bit weird to me so I, uh, borrowed this from an Ork to create something that looks like it could actually weld tank plates back together/melt any enemies of the Imperium that try and stop the battlefield repairs. But, shhh! As far as the Inquisition are concerned the techmarine built it all by himself. Cheers for your comments, I hope to keep impressing.

A Kvlt Ghost - thanks, I'm painfully aware of the mold lines now. I undercoated these guys ages and ages ago, once I started painting I hadn't the heart to ruin my work (particularly on any white areas). Anything new I acquire gets cleaned up so they shouldn't be too much of a problem in the future.

GiraffeX - thank you very much. The white... ugh. Layer upon layer of thinned white until you're happy with it. I've shifted from GW skull white to Vallejo model colour white which has sped up the process a little, but it does take hours.

It could be simply that you used the words 'shooting' and 'in the face', but your opinion on the sergeant is duly noted.

I'm quite liking these. The white is beautiful and your minis look really good. I agree with GiraffeX and vote for pose 3.

pose 3 for me too.....

and let me share my way of doing white; get astronomican grey, and you will need only two layers; astro grey and white on top. the grey being a foundation paint makes it very good at covering!

I'm back! My run of back to back 12 hour shifts is up and I've had some time to sleep and recharge before starting normal night shifts again. There was also some time to paint, which I've not been able to do for a while. As a result the new squad has a sergeant and a few rookie members in various states of completion.








With regular shift lengths looming and a couple more days off in the near future I'd like to think I could get this squad fully assembled and more or less fully painted by the first week of 2012.

Anyway, I know this isn't the biggest update ever, but after the last few weeks I'm just glad to get anything done at all.


Mr. Merlin - 2 layers you say? I must try this at some point, maybe some of the money I've been getting after doing so many hours can go towards some new paint.

Can you give me a step by step for the parchment between the chaplains legs? got loads of it to for my army and love how yours looks.

Yeah sure, I'm pretty proud of it to be honest.

it's a pretty simple recipe, firstly get the area coated in bleached bone as if that was all you were going to do to it. Then wash liberally with gryphonne sepia. Re-paint raised areas with bleached bone whilst also putting more sepia wash into the recesses. It kind of helps to think of it as a mountain range: there are peaks and troughs. Peaks should basically be pure bleached bone and troughs should be washed in as much sepia as you see fit.

Hope that helps.

So, my aim to have this squad finished looks to have been a bit ambitious.The bulk of the squad is done, though, and I've attended to a few other Crimson Tears related things when perhaps I should have been painting.

The squad:
seven of the nine marines are now more or less constructed (though several still look like they might need to visit both the apothecary and the techmarine for some bionics to be fitted) and a few have had some detail work done (mainly some freehand on the pads and the wax bit of purity seals).







I'm having a bit of a dilemma over the last two squad members. I've got a couple of Death Company chainswords (the ones with winged blood drops on the guard area) that I would quite like to use because the poses they lend themselves to would be awesome. But, at the same time, these two weapons would stand out quite a bit from those the rest of the squad have. They're a bit 'bling', I guess. I was just wondering whether people thought they might stand out too much from the dull metallics of the squad's weapons?

The other stuff:
With my bumper Christmas pay-cheque (I knew there was a reasons for working those horrendous hours) I splurged on some bits

Quite a lot of time was spent trimming and filing everything so there should be no mold lines for any of you to point out!

I also acquired these wonderful OOP Ravenwing torsos, an amazing city ruins base for my company's Captain (if I ever get around to building him) and some of Pig Iron Production's System Trooper heads to use on my upcoming sniper scouts (because scout heads are awful)



You get twenty heads from PIP, so I'm sort of obliged to build twenty scouts at some point. I already have enough parts for at least ten.

I'm back with some fairly significant progress:

The chainsword-wielding tactical marines have reached their full compliment of ten and three of them aren't amputees anymore!I'm currently batch painting pads and pistols so that the rest of them no longer suffer taunts in the fortress canteen.


You might be able to tell that I went with the Death Company chainswords in the end, they look a lot better than thought they would.



Mr Angry has been sitting around half finished for a couple of months now and (aside from finding a suitable back pack) that shamed me a little so a couple of days ago I set about polishing off all the details. I'd like people's opinions on his right shoulder pad, do you think it looks alright? The position of the skull on the pad meant that doing a white pad with red trim or the opposite was out of the question, I came up with the solution of writing a litany of hate/faith around and beneath his bling, feeling it was suitable for his office.





While polishing him off I decided to have a go at making my plasma weapons look a bit more 'glowy'. Plus, I was getting slightly bored of painting white at this point and wanted to do something more colourful.


Now, you may notice that there's a plasma cannon in there. While dabbling with all things plasma I realised that I still hadn't furnished the previous squad with a heavy weapon specialist; what better to compliment their plasma gun than the super charged version of that weapon? The rainbow wiring is also a reflection of my yearning to dabble with some colour.





C&C appreciated as ever.

Woh, nice looking minies there mate. The white is perfect imo, I can never get mine looking that great. Nice concept, nice colours, keep it up.

The plasma-cannon marine looks great! I'd really like to play against these marines, i think they'd look awsome on the table!

Update!!
Warning, this is quite a long post with lots of pictures.


crimsonfist832 - thanks a lot, praise is always nice to receive.

Mr.Merlin - cheers my friend, it's nice to see you keep coming back for more. I checked out your Orks the other day, truly great stuff you're doing there. If I ever come to Germany with more than a rucksack and a sense of adventure maybe that could happen. I'm a little way off having enough for an army though.


Assault/Tactical squad:
These fellows are now complete. Each marine now has all of his arms and armaments as well as his pack, pads and various markings.
Group shot

Sample group to give an idea of the finished product





The tactical arrow obviously denotes them as basic troops of the chapter whilst the accompanying sword indicates that they've proven their close quarter prowess and have earned the right to serve at the forefront of any assault, never being held back for the duty of providing covering fire. As you'll see on the Devastator marine in the previous update, specialist marines have a tactical arrow as rather than forming dedicated specialist units the Crimson Tears second members of their Tactical squads most proficient in certain tasks to such units as Devastators I've selected these three squad members to demonstrate a disparity in inscriptions on the models. Some have very blank pads featuring only their Chapter, Company and Squad markings whereas others have records of their deeds on campaign recorded; some members of this squad are vastly more experienced than others.

Close ups of the assault weapon marine, I rejigged his pose a little bit .



I've decided that the blast symbol usually reserved for Devastators will be used to denote those marines who have shown prowess with the company's assault weapons, the more traditional inverted V will be reserved for marines bearing heavy weapons.



Sternguard -
These guys were one of the first things I started when attempting to get back into my army properly, but I soon realised my skills were too rusty to do such a unit justice and so the parts and some half assembled models have sat around for a little while. My idea of Sternguard is that, by virtue of being veterans with huge amounts of battle experience, they are trusted by their commanders to be given a broad objective and left on their own to achieve it.
3 rules for my Sternguard:
1. Kit. Lots and lots of kit. Ammo, grenades, pistols, combat knives, packs, stowage boxes, cloaks, auspexes etc. etc. It's all going on there.
2. Augmentation .Excluding the sergeants, who are primarily there to stab or hit anything that gets too close, these guys will have some sort of targetting/optical bionics on their helmet. I have scoured the entire space marine range to find (I think) 18 different helmets like this.
3. Resin bases. I might eventually get around to doing this for the whole army but for the moment this next step in my modelling and painting will be for specialist units only.

Here is the beginning of a unit that will be decked out with two 'heavy flamers' (that might not look that heavy...)

Close ups










Some of the white will need touching up to match my current standard.

On the production line: sergeant and two vets.



Resin bases!! I bought a few as an experiment and because the plain grey bases aren't really giving off the city fighting vibe I'd hoped... I was deadly scared of ruining these, but I feel like they've turned out pretty well.



Some might be curious as to why veterans are in the second company, I'm going with the Chapter is too young for a first company and so at the moment each company has it's own core of veterans.
C&C appreciated as ever.

I'm liking the contrast between the black and white, but the faceplate just seems a bit off with only half being white. The bases are pretty well done.

hey there

have you tried highlighting the black? It'd give them more depht I think.
apart from that, its great stuff as always

"If I ever come to Germany with more than a rucksack and a sense of adventure maybe that could happen. I'm a little way off having enough for an army though. "

as you can see I currently have a danish flag on my profile. I travel a lot with my family, and chances are that I'll visit england again this year.If that happens, I'll def bring my orks (alot of 40k players in engand i hope) and then i can pm you, If i end up in your area. Might not be very likely, but if Im there, why not have a battle?

btw where in UK are you?

Why hey there, Dakka! Long time no see. Real Life has been punishing lately. Should get better soon though, a combination of anti-social hours (in terms of shift duration and when they are worked) and 6 day weeks have denied me my ambition to teach for at least a year or so now but have made me realise how unhappy I am where I currently work and I've resolved to quit. Thus, there should be a bit more time to devote to the Crimson Tears!

As it is I haven't been completely idle over the last few weeks. Having finished the foot-slogger assault squad I decided to do two things:
1. Actually finish a Sternguard squad. I have two half started ones lying around and I'm going to finish one if it kills me.
2. Use those wonderful Pig Iron Productions helmets and build my Sniper Scouts.


Progress?

Well, a test scout got done:


Here he is posing on what may become home to multiple scouts or a dreadnought, not sure yet.



The base on its own


I have purchased a fair few resin bases now as it became apparent to me that plain grey bases are quite poor considering the amount of time I've put into these models. I was incredibly scared of messing them up but I think I've done ok.




For the Sternguard:
One finished marine (bar basing and a bit more equipment, but I'm awaiting a pinning drill before moving him to one of my resin bases):






Basic equipment for the squad to make them both WYSIWIG and laden down:




Some armour pieces have also been started, a couple have even been finished:





Swordwind - The contrast of black and white is exactly why I' tend to only paint part of the face plate white, I think it looks a bit more imposing, like the rest of the face is in shadow.

Mr. Merlin - I don;t know when I'll highlight the black. Like with the resin bases I'm scared of screwing it up. I bought some Vallejo Heavy Charcoal specifically for the purpose and I've saved some sprue coated in black primer to practice on, so it will happen, I'm just not sure when. Probably when I feel I've made enough of a dent in the mass of primed plastic I have lying around! As ever your compliments are gratefully received.. My (in)famous skills of observation (among friends and family at least) let me down a bit there! That's cool. I live in the South East, the lovely county of Hampshire to be precise, Yeah, if I had enough models, it suited your travel plans etc. that sounds nice. You'd be my first opponent in about 7 years as since restarting these guys I only model and paint.

I really like the scout on the dred base - I really want to know what you'll do with it!

Keep it up!

Incoming! Another member of the Sternguard more or less finished.






He needs a scope (why are they always sold out when I'm doing a bits order?) for that bolter and something else to go on that pack, but other than that he is done (awaiting base).

What else makes this post update worthy? Five more of those city bases. I feel I'm starting to get the hang of them now.


And here's a sneaky peek of another future project (for when I eventually finish this Sternguard unit and the scouts...)



Mr Merlin - I've pretty much decided to make it a scout base, the dred will have to find something else to stand on and plan destruction. Thanks for the encouragement, sometimes the heap of unpainted or half started things can demoralise you into inactivity but positive words like yours help to overcome it.

The new bases look very nice!

Love it all looks great keep up the great work !

So I've made enough progress over the last few days (notwithstanding the weekend's rugby) to feel a small update is in order.

Sergeant Terry "Pain train's a-comin'" Tate (kudos if you get the reference) is ready enough to fight the Chapter's enemies, though he could do with some pads, a pack and a few more bits. Not that he thinks so.





Being the most senior veteran in the Chapter not to become an officer he has some of the nicest gear: Ferrox bolter and bionic powersword arm from Forgeworld. I particularly like the little buttons on the sword hilt which makes it look like you can turn it on or off, perhaps even alter quite how powerful the blade is. Whatever, they're a nice touch. I tried something different with this sword, my attempts at power weapons in the past have been an all over coat of ice blue, just something to indicate it's not a normal sword, but as I've started to improve a bit (and after looking at the hundreds of threads on here and other forums) that seems inadequate. It didn't quite come out like I'd hoped as I wanted a lightning pattern in there somewhere but experiments on a couple of other swords in my bits box proved that I really can't do that yet. Despite that I'm warming to the way it's come out and I'd really like your opinions on whether you feel it works. Some close ups to help (the, uh, background is a t-shirt and it was the best way I could ensure the edges of the sword were properly displayed):



Sergeant Tate is accompanied today by Marine Deckard. Again, he's not quite done but he's getting there.




So, yeah, C&C welcome as always.



Mr, Merlin - Once again, thanks for your words. I'm super-happy with the bases now, I definitely have a process worked out and I'm looking forward to doing a few more.

ghostmaker - Cheers, buddy. Encouragement is always appreciated.

More cool stuff! I love that sword!

Btw, this song fits very well to your marines (or any Marines for that mater):

I love listening to that stuf when looking at cool minis, it makes them feel alive!

It is time for a long overdue update. While viewers have been away: Sergeant Tate has received new recruits to his Sternguard squad and the original members can now enjoy watching someone else get screamed at for wasting Vengeance rounds on Guardsmen, my lone scout now has a friend (with better looking combat fatigues, oh snap!), I accidentally made a sacrifice to Khorne, the unnamed tactical sergeant got a new toy and the first assault squad start training a new member.

First of all Sergeant Tate's new recruits: Two regularly equipped marines who are a little bit scared of their squad leader and frequently mix up their various ammunitions thereby incurring his wrath and leading to more fear. It's a vicious circle.








2 things about this guy:

How does that lense look? It's the first time I've tried doing one properly.

How does putting his combat knife on the back compare to having it dangle off the belt, as with many of the others?

The other two recruits have no such problems; heavy flamers only have one way of making things crispier than they were before.
This fellow is the closest to completion, he just needs an extra pad and a few more accessories.



This chap is in a similar position but he needs his arm to be pinned on as I doubt superglue will hold it for long. He's supposed to look like he just saw something while on the run, has turned his flamer wildly to meet the threat whilst reaching for a grenade. Does it work?


Sergeant Tate in all his finished glory




And the squad so far

Eventually all of these guys will be based properly and two more members will feature, however after an irritating saga with a supplier I still don't have a pinning drill almost a month after ordering one so that's going to have to wait a little longer.


The original scout was looking a bit lonely all by himself on that massive base so I painted up another one to give him some company. The only thing is I think I did much better job on his fatugues than his predecessor's, could be a bit awkward. Here he is sans rifle for an unobstructed view



And with rifle


Now then, part of my chapter's future will be an objective marker of trophies. For the Crimson Tears this means the heads of their enemies, consequently I ordered up a few Chaos helmets among other things and went to work on them. While doing some trimming it appears I slipped into chaos worship...


But shhh, no one tell the Inquisition!

Some of you may remember the sergeant from my tactical squad on the first page of this thread, but he's a little different now. After some discussion with the armory staff he was persuaded to part with his axe for a nice new power sword.


There is another still available for whosoever should next ask.



Last, but by no means least, comes the new member for the first assault squad. They've been complaining that one meltagun isn't providing quite enough melty goodness on the battlefield and that the Sergeant gets a bit out of puff having to hit all the things the current meltagunner misses. Once he's fully trained (read: I find a cost effective way of stripping paint from my old misadventures with a brush and transfer a meltagun accross) this chap will join the squad and hopefully sort everything out





A lot of the week or so since GW announced the new paints has been eaten up by trying to find out how it affects my paint scheme and devouring all the nuggets of info I can find about it. It seems like I might be losing Scab Red for my pad trim and weapons which is annoying as despite trying a couple of different options from vallejo and coat d'arms I haven't found anything that yet matches it closely enough; guess I'll just have to see what Khorne Red looks like. On the plus side, though, the Ceramite White base paint sounds like it could remove my need to spend hours painting millions of thin layers of white over black undercoat which would be great. Getting the motivation to paint shoulderpads, legs etc. is the biggest factor in slowing me down.

Anywho, this was a bit of a long post so congrats to anyone who made it all the way through. Thoughts?



Mr Merlin - cheers man, I'd always felt my old method of doing power weapons was rather underwhelming and having had the confidence to try something else I'm glad it's turned out pretty well. That is good, it certainly lends a heroic vibe to viewing.