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G'day all,

I've just ordered the new 40K box set, and looking at throwing together a Dark Angels army, as I've almost finished painting 3,000 points of Orks in 10 months, and I need a change from highlighting flesh over and over...

I had a dig around and looked at some of the successor chapters of the Dark Angels, as this would essentially let me use Dark Angel models, but paint them a little differently. specifically the one that caught my eye was the Angels of Redemption second founding:



Does anyone have any experience of painting 'split colour' marine armour like the above? Is there a technique above and beyond being REALLY REALLY CAREFUL!!!

Answers greatly appreciated!

you would basecoat in white, add your highlights and washes and such, focusing on the white half. Then you could divide the model with a fine detail brush and some steady strokes, after the fine line, you can fill the side of the model using a regular brush, highlight, wash etc... then a final wash of either black or brown over the whole thing

Alternatively, you could try to mask half of the model with Silly Putty, but the line would probably be far from straight.

 Squidmanlolz wrote:
you would basecoat in white, add your highlights and washes and such, focusing on the white half. Then you could divide the model with a fine detail brush and some steady strokes, after the fine line, you can fill the side of the model using a regular brush, highlight, wash etc... then a final wash of either black or brown over the whole thing

Alternatively, you could try to mask half of the model with Silly Putty, but the line would probably be far from straight.

Sounds like exactly what I was thinking, base coat white, airbrush bone, and from there paint the green. It'll be slow, but IF it works, then it'll look pretty good.

Basecoating in white and working on each half separately will probably give you the best results.

Trying to mask something this small with this much detail will cause you more stress than doing push-ups over a bed of hot coals.

Otherwise, my only other input would be to basecoat white, and dip half of it a couple times in a green wash. Take a dry brush to it to remove the excess, let dry. Repeat until appropriate shade?

Nah, not a great idea, but it could be a quick fix for a bind.

Get a fine tipped green magic marker to draw you dividing line

Best method is to be careful. Do the light colour first, then rebase for the darker colour. Masking at that scale just isn't effective, so the quickest easiest method is just to freehand the division.

I would paint the white half, then tape off and spray the green base coat, and work up the highlights again on the green side to suit the depth of highlights already done on the white side.

Edit; I'm noticing people already advised against masking off at this scale. I can't say I've tryed to do it on a Space Marine yet, but I've been airbrushing things for about 3 years now and feel pretty confident that it can be done with relative ease provided the right tape gets used. It would be no more finicky that carefully painting a nice line with a brush is, just in a slightly different way.

After thinking about this a second I have a totally weird suggestion. paint them white, stick them to the bottom of a pan with a little bit of GS laying on their side. Fill the pan with water until the figures are half submerged. Freeze it. Then spray the above-water half green while they are still in ice. It might not work at all, but it might be genius if it does lol

You could use blu-tac or silly putty for masking, its quite common and popular. Silly Putty is usualy prefered becasue it doesnt have much tac to it, and is very easy to shape and manipulate.

 pistolepete wrote:
After thinking about this a second I have a totally weird suggestion. paint them white, stick them to the bottom of a pan with a little bit of GS laying on their side. Fill the pan with water until the figures are half submerged. Freeze it. Then spray the above-water half green while they are still in ice. It might not work at all, but it might be genius if it does lol

you sir, are a master of out of the box thinking...

and you know what, that might just work. though it would be very messy

HairySticks wrote:
You could use blu-tac or silly putty for masking, its quite common and popular. Silly Putty is usualy prefered becasue it doesnt have much tac to it, and is very easy to shape and manipulate.

Edit: Woops, meant to quote the water freezing suggestion there, not the blu-tac one, sorry! Edit ends

That sir, is lateral thinking! Genius!

HairySticks wrote:
You could use blu-tac or silly putty for masking, its quite common and popular. Silly Putty is usualy prefered becasue it doesnt have much tac to it, and is very easy to shape and manipulate.

It wouldn't give you a clean, straight line. Masking with something so small would be more frustrating than actually taking the time to concentrate on painting the line regularly.

Despite all the responses regarding methods of masking are not a bad idea, and in some cases, strangely ingenious (freezing them in water!) I honestly think the best way to do it would be careful painting.
The masking ideas simply aren't a good option for the reason that, they would only work on a marine that is in a perfectly static, forward facing pose. Any models with twisted torsos, or heads looking in a different direction, would mean simply masking them straight down the centre of the whole model would simply not work.
You need to paint each piece of armor (head, chest, legs, backpack) in half seperately, so that it's actually half of that piece of armor.

JBrehaut wrote:
Despite all the responses regarding methods of masking are not a bad idea, and in some cases, strangely ingenious (freezing them in water!) I honestly think the best way to do it would be careful painting.
The masking ideas simply aren't a good option for the reason that, they would only work on a marine that is in a perfectly static, forward facing pose. Any models with twisted torsos, or heads looking in a different direction, would mean simply masking them straight down the centre of the whole model would simply not work.
You need to paint each piece of armor (head, chest, legs, backpack) in half seperately, so that it's actually half of that piece of armor.

Yup, agreed, I'd realised that after thinking seriously about the the ice idea for a minute or two. I think this will take a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time to paint.

 pistolepete wrote:
After thinking about this a second I have a totally weird suggestion. paint them white, stick them to the bottom of a pan with a little bit of GS laying on their side. Fill the pan with water until the figures are half submerged. Freeze it. Then spray the above-water half green while they are still in ice. It might not work at all, but it might be genius if it does lol

Interesting idea, though I think you'll struggle to paint the other side because as soon as you take it out of the freezer the ice is gonna start melting and even the non-ice side is gonna be damp with condensation so actually *painting* it will be quite hard as the condensation and melting ice will massively water down the paints in some areas.

Also as mentioned, you couldn't just do a whole marine like this, you'd have to do the legs, torso and head separately and then glue them together at the end.

I think the quickest way is just white undercoat, do the bone, then use a fine detail brush or fine marker to paint a green dividing line, and then paint the green part as you normally would with a regular sized brush.

Not to mention that given water expands as it freezes getting it to freeze exactly at the halfway mark is going to be hell.

I'm currently working on a Howling Griffons army, and doing split colors on the infantry isn't that difficult to do freehand. There aren't many big flat areas to worry about, since the chest eagle breaks that line up nicely, and the backpack is usually divided by rivets. The line running down the middle of the helmet is a little tricky at first, but it's not so big that a little bit of unbalance will be visibly unless you're looking up close. As suggested, do the light color first, and you should pick it up pretty quickly.

Manual painting of each mate.... It's been mentioned, each pose will be different, so each one will need special attention. I also painted a quartered theme. In all honesty , it seems like more work, because it is, but my god switching between the paints to do the quartering kept me sane... If I had to stick to the same colors and stages of painting the army would never be this close to finishing. But to each their own. All told, it's not as much work as you expect, it's not as hard and you learn brush control crazy quickly with this painting.

Anyway, you,ll want to prime white, paint the green, and then wash it all down.