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Morning all. So this is a first attempt for a good couple of decades! 3 of the 6 Primaris Intercessors I have (the other 3 are the same) currently unvarnished and unbased. They're the "easy to build" variety.





Primed with Halfords grey plastic primer, basecoated in Vallejo Black (all paints are Vallejo) with an airbrush (thinned with thinner, ofc). Guns were basecoated white then inked Red with the airbrush before detailing with Steel. Helmet, purity seals and imperialis were a base of Beige highlighted with Ivory then washed with Burnt Umber watercolour diluted to a wash and cleaned with a moist cotton bud.

A few learning points I've taken from this:
1. Get a magnifying glass! The zoom on the camera makes them look a lot worse than they do to my naked eye. I think this will help me get the untidy brushstrokes under control (e.g. the left shoulderpad and the imperialis on the central bolter). Anyone got any recommendations in that department? Looking at the £20 range.
2. Take it a bit easier with some of the wash. The imperialis on the marine on the right is untidy.
3. More crocodile clips and blu tack! I found the clips gave me good control of the smaller parts and they were ideal to plunge into a blob of blu tack to allow drying. Maybe even drill some holes in a strip of wood to stand the ends of the clips in...

So, what am I doing right and what am I doing wrong?

And a couple of questions:
1. Matt or gloss varnish? I'm currently thinking the black will be a bit nondescript with matt, but don't want it to be overly shiny.
2. How do you base these slotted models? I've got some crackle paint, but would mixing that with some of the umber work? Maybe prepaint the grey bases black? All advice on basing is welcome as it's something I have never done before.
3. Transfers! The ones I'm using are small because getting a transfer to lie flat on those shoulder curves was a right pain! Any advice on making the chapter badges bigger and the effective application of transfers onto those curves is very welcome.

Not so much a painting problem, but I would recommend doing something about those mould lines. Your colour scheme really highlights them. Regarding varnish, what about satin rather than gloss. Not so.shiny but not invisible either.

Also a going overly the black with a simple drybrush of dark grey, and/or some hard edge highlighting worth a somewhat lighter grey would do.wonders for contrast.

pretty good for a first attempt!.
However, the black colours are really flat, so an edge highlight would really help that.
The white shoulder pads look good but are slightly untidy round the sdges, but i'm sure this will soon be fixed once you have more practise under your belt.
to echo the above, is that it is very clear that you didn't spend much time at all preparing the models for paint, and that's a shame because the paintjob overall is pretty decent. Make sure to clean off all those mould lines and clip the stuff cleanly off the sprue before you start priming etc.

Personally i'm not a fan of the red bolters but thats just personal preference.
keep at it!

The best way to do the shoulder pauldrons, I've found, is to do the trim first. Then go in and do the inner layer.

Use the edge of your brush, too.

White paint is a pain in the ass. The easiest way to do this is use repeated thin coats. It takes me about 5 or 6 very thin coats to get it on smooth.

Thanks for the advice. I hadn't even noticed the mould lines! I can probably tidy up paint jobs of the ones in the photos, but I presume that it's a bit too late to get rid of the mould lines unless I want to strip them down. Given I have 5 Hellblasters, 6 Reivers, a Primaris Captain and a Dreadnought to prep and paint I might just tidy them up a little for the moment and then come back to them later for a strip and restart!

Satin varnish sounds like a good idea. I'll give edging a go on the black, but probably need to get that magnifying glass first.