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So i finally bit the bullet and decided to start a space marine army, i leveled on Ultramarines and bought the majority of my army from the swap shop. This left me with a very large number of marines in need of a new paint job, so i threw them in detol one squad at a time, and started to paint.

So far i have finished pretty much everything apart from the troops choices and the specialists, meaning not very much. And i still have to buy the 10 forge world early armour marks to make my sternguard...

But here is what i have so far, starting with the assault squad.


kind of a bad group shot i know, so here are the close ups:












I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, especially the white on the helmets, which were all painted separately on toothpicks. I plan to run them with my Captain, so i figure i should show him next.










When deciding which model to use for my captain i just had to use the Emperor's Champion, i love that model so much, and it just has so much character. It was pretty much my only finecast purchase to date that had no major flaws whatsoever, there were a few bubbles in odd and hidden places, but i'm not bothered about those too much.

The previously mentioned sternguard having not arrived (or even been ordered) yet, i decided to make things nice and ready for them by painting up their leader and transport. First, the leader, the right and honourable Darnath Lysander. I know he's a fist, but his rules make sternguard very mean indeed, and the SM book makes it very clear that the special characters are usable in any chapter.






not great, i know, but it was my first adventure into painting yellow, and the model is a bit busy for my liking, though i can't afford to buy the real Lysander because i'm saving up for his sternguard squad. The drop pod they travel in on the other hand, i am very pleased with indeed, as it was a steal on ebay, and broke down into lots of pieces to make airbrushing it a walk in the park.










That's it for now i'm afraid, but i will continue to add more as it gets painted. Please leave your feedback and feel free to ask any questions.

I really like these, except for Lysander, he seems a little meh

i know what you mean, but i'm really not sure what to do with him. it seems much too yellow, but i can't imagine where else shouldn't be yellow, he is a fist after all...

I'd change the skin tone to be darker and break it up with black and some other colors, like the lysander on the GW site

Perhaps some washes and the highlights over all of the models- there's no depth.
A good start though.
Keep it up.

WAAAAGGHH-god wrote:i know what you mean, but i'm really not sure what to do with him. it seems much too yellow, but i can't imagine where else shouldn't be yellow, he is a fist after all...

Well, seeing as you've not used the Lysander model you can make up your own UM character with Lysander's rules (which is incidentally on the same page). Having a random IF in an UM army is going to look drastically out of place IMO.

Regardless, the BA icons need removing too.

normally i would have painted him blue and removed the icons, but i wanted to practice yellow, and the difficulty to replace the model should i stuff up the conversion meant that i felt the need to leave him as-is.

However i have done some work on him, i added some warmth and depth to the gold, and some contrast to the shield. I also added some black panels in order to break up the yellow, as well as darkening the face.

Really liking that hammer.

That's looking a lot better.
You just need to do the black in the "armpit" on the hammer arm like you have done in the crook of the arms- you can probably see the bit I mean in the bottom picture.
I really like the skin tone you've achieved with the face- he looks really dark and menacing!