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Here are a few of the Vanguard marines I have painted in the Raptor Chapter colors. I thought I was done, but it looks like I need to go around the base with another coat after blowing up the picture and adjusting the light levels.

Oh, I have been asked a few times what paints I use for this army so here is the basic list:

The main color is Vallejo Brown Violet 70.887 or US Olive Drab 70.887 as it is currently called. Check the paint number as US Olive Drab 70.889 is an older name to a dark brown that also has a new name.
The joints/black carapace is Vallejo German Grey but black would probably work well enough since German Grey is a very dark grey
The belt, pouches, and straps are US Olive Drab 70.889 or Olive Brown 70.889 as it is currently called. Told ya it is a little confusing.
The white metal parts is Vallejo Gunmetal Gray which is a darker steel color metallic paint probably really close to leadbletcher
The yellow metal parts is Vallejo Old Gold
The green parts of the weapons is US Dark Green though I don't really know it is worth painting a slightly different color from the main armor in the long run as you can only tell close up.
The Black parts of the weapons are Vallejo Black
The purity seals and skulls are Vallejo Buff
The red part of the purity seals or some weapon lens is just some Army Painter Red (note: on vehicles with bigger lens I use Vallejo Model Air Fire Red which is a little darker)
The green optics is Vallejo Uniform Green but I would have used a brighter green if I didn't already have a bottle of this paint
The yellow lens are technically two colors depending on if the helmet is worn (Vallejo Lemon Yellow) and 'active' or on the hip or the marine is dead (Vallejo Model Air Canary Yellow I think, the bottle is really old).

Finally, I use Agrax Earthshade over the whole model as a wash going back and cleaning off the raised and flat areas. It still darkens the paint a little though.

Here is another group of some I just finished painting. I kinda hate to admit it, but I do sorta want to make a full Primaris army as these models and that color scheme make me seem like a much better painter than I really am.

Very dark and brooding. Good job.

Thank you very much.

What green did you use?

 thesilverback wrote:
What green did you use?

Vallejo Brown Violet 887. It is called US Olive Drab now. It is the color I paint my WWII American vehicles in.

Love them, they really look like Commandos with that colour. Very nice.

Looks fantastic

Those look very cool. Was thinking of doing the exact same thing, can’t beat realistic marines.

Nice they look awesome, love the simple color scheme, really works well. Great job!.

Again thank you very much for the kind words everyone. I started thread mostly to give other players an idea of how the Vanguard Primaris can look in more commando styled colors done at level I think just about anyone can reach. I always considered myself a so-so, no frills kind of painter. Which is fine. I watched a few of Rob Paints Models videos on his Golden Demon Raptors entries. While his make mine look like thin your paints marines, I am overall happy with the choices I made on mine compared to his (I like my darker green and the multi-colors on the bolters) as well as the fact that all of my models were painted in something like 5% of time it took him. There is always room to improve. I still need to get painting lens down. I am happy enough with final product.


Here are a couple more of the the Infiltrators. While I don't think they will be all that great, I am looking forward to trying of Kill Team: Elites using some of these models.

I finished the Infiltrators and placed them in their natural habitabt,





I also have a bonus Intercessor picture from the Know No Fear boxed set.

Here are the Eliminators. I didn't do anything particularly fancy with them. Part of me want to actually put camo on the cloaks but I never been particularly happy with camo on cloth painting so I have decided against it. Also, wanted to mention to anyone that happens to be looking at this before building theirs: be careful when drilling the barrels as the side vents on them allows for the plastic to split more readily than on regular bolters or pretty much any other 40k weapon barrel.

Here are the Hellblasters from the Know No Fear Box. The dry brushing on the plasma could be better, but I don't do it enough to be good at it. Same could be said for the wet blending at the at the end of the barrels. I don't practice either nearly enough.

Here are a few more of the Know No Fear Primaris.



There is something about my effort on the Captain in Gravis armor I don't like, and I can't quite put my finger on it. I can see some mistakes in the photo, but I don't think those are what has me not like this one. Something feels off. Maybe it is just the model itself that just doesn't fit right. I don't know.



As much as I have an issue with the Captain, I think I nailed the face on the Intercessor sergeant. Overall, I have been very pleased in the results of effort on faces for everything in my tacticool marines army.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
Here are a few more of the Know No Fear Primaris.



There is something about my effort on the Captain in Gravis armor I don't like, and I can't quite put my finger on it. I can see some mistakes in the photo, but I don't think those are what has me not like this one. Something feels off. Maybe it is just the model itself that just doesn't fit right. I don't know.



As much as I have an issue with the Captain, I think I nailed the face on the Intercessor sergeant. Overall, I have been very pleased in the results of effort on faces for everything in my tacticool marines army.

Excellent work my friend!

Regarding the captain, He looks awesome, all of your work does! However I sort of know what you mean. I believe perhaps it might be that the gold looks too much like yellow and with the white it clashes with the green? The dull silver on the marines work really well and doesn't seem t have that problem. Perhaps changing the gold trim to metal and a purple wash on the white eagle motifs?

 Argive wrote:

Regarding the captain, He looks awesome, all of your work does! However I sort of know what you mean. I believe perhaps it might be that the gold looks too much like yellow and with the white it clashes with the green? The dull silver on the marines work really well and doesn't seem t have that problem. Perhaps changing the gold trim to metal and a purple wash on the white eagle motifs?

You might be right on that. I was thinking of going with a gold aquila (or whatever ornamentation they have on the chest) for the captains so they would stand out a little more. I don't think it works as well as I thought it would. I am not so sure about the white. This is the same green I use when painting World War 2 United States tanks and they have a much of white markings on them. In fact, I am still considering putting role markings on the non-Phobos armors make them look a little more like those WWII tanks. Maybe it is the combination of green, white and yellow in the shades I am going with.

At the same time, I think you are probably right about my choice of wash. I basically only use two colors: earthshade and black. I mostly use earthshade which is what I went with these marines. Which works fine with everything but the white wings. Maybe the silver sword too, but I practically repainted over the wash on it. I think the brown makes the wings look too dirty. I am fairly certain black would have been just as bad since I really have like the results on white with it either. I think purple or maybe dark green could get around it. Ultimately, I don't think I like the model nearly enough to buy a whole bottle for it. Maybe if i get around to finishing my Space Hulk genestealers. I think the captain is probably staying as is since I don't know how often he will see the table, and I got more of a painting of other stuff. He is good enough for now.

I do appreciate the feedback though. It is always good to get a second opinion on these sort of things.

I think a flat white would work really well with the green.

Have you considered doing white shoulder pad arrows etc? I think maybe because of the texture and the wash the wings just seem a bit off , I dunno. Its hard to nit pick somethings thats good for the sake of nit picking lol.

I get what you mean. I have a boat of guardians Im not particulary excited about to do in order to make my army functional

 Argive wrote:
I think a flat white would work really well with the green.

Have you considered doing white shoulder pad arrows etc? I think maybe because of the texture and the wash the wings just seem a bit off , I dunno. Its hard to nit pick somethings thats good for the sake of nit picking lol.

I get what you mean. I have a boat of guardians Im not particulary excited about to do in order to make my army functional

I have considered using the role (battleline/tactical, support, etc.) marking transfers. At least for the non-Phobos armors, I tried it on the Phobos armor and the pauldron is kinda small increasing the radius preventing the bigger transfers from laying flat easily. Plus, they don't have the lip on them making aligning them a little tougher. The regular Primaris pauldrons are pretty close to (if not the same) size as regular space marine ones which should be much easier to place transfers on.

I switched gears for a moment from Shadowspear and Know No Fear mostly due to the difficulty I have having with the flying bases. They really are kinda terrible. I have everything worked out, it just is more of a pain that I wanted to deal with and requires more post wash clean up painting than I like. So with that and the fact, I think I want to play space marines in Kill Team this weekend, so I relatively quickly cranked out the First Strike Primaris.





Maybe it is the just past over-the-top nature of the skull masks, but I really like the Reivers save they didn't come default with chainswords. I look at this way: What's more terrifying? Leatherface with a knife or chainsaw. I say chainsaw. I think the Reivers look really good with the chainswords too. I was going to make the masks more white like how GW does them, but after getting the base color (Vallejo Buff) I typically use for bone, I thought that looked better.

Here are the suppressors. I just glad they are done. I had quite a bit issues with them mostly I think because I got fed up with the flying bases and that changing my painting process just enough to bother me. It should also be said that while I think the miniatures are better in person, I am still not that big of a fan of them which probably didn't help keep mistakes to a minimum.

With the Librarian in Phobos Armor this completes the Shadowspear set of Primaris marines. I decided to stick with the classic psker yellow power cables even though I couldn't find anything in the lore that explains why they are often painted bright yellow.

I have to say I really liked painting the Primaris half of Shadowspear. I actually bought the boxed set for the CSM stuff, but even now they remain only half painted along with the bulk of the new CSM stuff I have. While currently, I well on my way to having a full marine scout/Primaris army.

I tried the colour you recommened and used a black wash, but the green was a bit too dark and not really olive green.
So may I asked, what your approach was?

elfposer wrote:
I tried the colour you recommened and used a black wash, but the green was a bit too dark and not really olive green.
So may I asked, what your approach was?

I start off with a tan colored primer. One of the Krylon ultra flat camouflage series and I like to start off with a lighter colored basis to paint on to. It could be that you primed in black and just that alone with end up with a darker color even with several coats of paint. It can be really hard to not have the primer color not affect the overall shade of the miniature. That is why zenithal priming as technique works.

As for painting, I usually paint the entire miniature in US Olive Drab 70.887 giving them at least 3 coats of paint. Note, that the Shadowspear stuff was done with my remaining Brown Violet which is slightly darker than the current paint. Even in my photos you can see that the Know No Fear intercessors are a lighter shade as they only got two coats of Olive Green where as my First Strike Intercessors and Reivers are a little darker, but not quite as dark as the Shadowspear stuff since I put 4, maybe 5 coats of US Olive Green. And yes, that is a ton of coats of paint, but I paint very thin coats typically with over watered paint (almost to the point of breaking) to make sure I get adequate coverage. The paint color isn't so different that is people notice until I point it out most times and even then they might not see the slight shade variations depending on the lighting.

As for a wash, I use Agrax Earthshade. I find that Nuln Oil (a black wash) tends to be just too harsh of a wash color most of the time and often severely alters the paint color as well. I also treat the wash phase as a subtractive process. Meaning that once I have covered the entire miniature with the wash, I go back with the brush mostly free of wash and use the side of the brush to remove excess wash liquid from the miniature. Especially on high points or area where light would shine directly on it. Depending on the humidity this can be tricky as days with low humidity can cause the wash to dry very quickly and removing it leaves drying rings. I live in area where is it famous for being drizzly (near Seattle, WA) so humidity is often pretty high allowing enough time for me to work with the wash before it gets to that point.


If I had to guess, I would say the two likely things causing the darker color is that you primed in black and/or the black wash significantly darkened the paint after being applied. You may still be able to get the more olive color by highlighting miniatures with the US Olive Drab 70.887 painting the highlights a little wider that usual edge work. Also, Vallejo has a bunch of similar sounding paints and looks like they might have the same name ones beyond the number code. When I first started painting I picked up US Olive Drab 71.043 and when I used it I found it to be a dark brown. In fact, that is the color I used for the pouches, straps and belts on these miniatures. I also find that US Dark Green is pretty close (less olive colored) and if check closely is the color I use for the green parts of the weapons.

Not from any boxed set, here are a few more Primaris I have managed to paint up. There are a few previously shown models in there as I used them to bulk out my squads, but they are mostly new models. I really like the look of the six man squad. I think I will run them as such as much as I can.









I am super impressed with the Intercessor Sergeant with Auto Bolt Rifle face. That came out photogenic enough to change my profile picture.

Great job. Love the look.

 thesilverback wrote:
Great job. Love the look.

Well thank you very much. I have been really enjoying painting this army up. These models really seem like they are sculpted to make look like a much better painter than I am. I am constantly impressed how well they photograph.

Keep dropping in on this thread, get my vote for top marine army for sure. Can’t wait until the vanguard get a proper release.

Keep up the great work.

 xKillGorex wrote:
Keep dropping in on this thread, get my vote for top marine army for sure. Can’t wait until the vanguard get a proper release.

Keep up the great work.

Well, I appreciate the kind words. I am looking forward to the full vanguard release as well since they really are the core of what I want this army to be. At the same time, I am thinking of getting Warcry and still have Hellblasters (the full kit), Interceptors, Aggressors, a Redemptor Dreadnought and both flavors of Repulsor (the Bradley Repuslor still need magnetizing too) to finish painting. That's just a lot of painting. Fortunately, most of that paint list has the base coat on them, I just need to go back and do clean up and detail work to get them ready for a wash.

Edit:



Here are some of the easy-to-build Aggressiors. I don't know if they will see much table time, but they were relatively inexpensive so bought some.

Here is a picture of the whole army all together. I still have some work on a bunch of things, but outside the blurry Primaris Lieutenant stuff, this is pretty much everything I plan on getting for my army. Well, maybe I will break down and get a Primaris Chaplain, Primaris Apothecary and ten more Reivers.



It might to be a little while before I get more units done because I am pretty slow at painting vehicles (it is all brush work) and I have Warcry on the way which I will be working on instead once I get it. That's on top of if being summer which is usually pretty slow painting wise. I did want to give a sneak peek at the rest of what I have coming though.