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Excellent work!

Alright, back once again! A mere three months after I bought the damn thing, I'm pleased to say I've finally finished my Stormtalon. As with all good Imperial hardware, it has a nice pompous name:

Rage of Olympus



It comes across really badly in photographs, but the canopy is painted gold, like an astronaut's EVA visor (or a certain green power armour-wearing dude from the vidya games that are so hot with the kids). The tree comes from the citadel wood they put out a while back, the gravestones are from the warhammer zombies kit with a couple of imperial eagles stuck on the top and the main body of the base was made by mixing some of my gravel mix in with some water effects and then just spooning the mixture on top of the base. Before you worry, this thing is not precarious at all - the base weighs waaay more than the model.

As ever, thanks for looking at my stuff. Hope you enjoy.

Nervousness unfounded, these are lovely. I'd donate a small digit to be able to do writing on models like you've one here.

Gritty, smooth, and absolutely gorgeous. Among the most astounding and characterful Blood Ravens army I have every seen (up there with Roleplayer). The deep reds and freehand work really make the army for me. I have no idea why you would be nervous. You should be proud to have an army like this!

P.S. I love how you named each an every member of each unit! I plan to do the same with my CSM! Great minds think alike, I suppose!

P.S.S. These guys, for loyalists, look a bit Chaotic; which is very interesting. I would love to see some fluff for them! Hell, I would even like to write fluff for these guys. There's just so much going on with them, it's awesome.

Great job

Please keep posting pictures. This is one of my favorite armies to see pictures of on Dakka.

Great job, keep it up!

Wow! your army is just like marines should look!

Your stuff is amazing! I really love it, your much greater at it then alot of people I know (me included) so no reason to think your army is not cool cause it is! I did love to see how it does on the table top.

Dude just such an awesome army!

I especially love the librarian banner, a really nice nod to 'None Shall Pass'!

 LeetBix wrote:
I especially love the librarian banner, a really nice nod to 'None Shall Pass'!

I'm super happy that someone actually got that reference! Definitely a nice thing to find waiting for you first thing in the morning.

Thanks for all the comments guys!

First of all, I just want to echo all of the compliments you've recieved thus far. This is a simply stunning army. The from the overall look, to the endless tiny details and subtle conversion work, it's about as close to perfect as I've seen anywhere. So well done and keep them coming.

I just had one kinda simple question. What colours and mixes do you build up your red armour with (undercoat, base, washes, highlights, etc)??

It's just that I'm about to start an Angels Vermillion army and yours is exactly the red I'm looking for. Perfectly dark, not too orange, not too purple, not too sharply highlighted, exactly right.

Many thanks, and congratulations once again on a great looking army.

Did yo hand paint the Blood Raven Symbols?

Wow, those are some nice Blood Ravens

I just finished 3 test models for blood ravens, there is just something about the red, i think it might be a shade or 2 too dark . What red do you use?

Really like the storm talon's base

Enough people have asked me on here and via PMs about painting that I feel I should drop a quick note in here on reds and bones and whatnot, though I don't have any pictures that would justify making a full-on tutorial thread.

I start everything with a grey primer, then undercoat with brown - I've used GW's graveyard earth (discontinued), calthan brown (also discontinued!) and mournfang brown (you can totally still buy this!) but any kind of mid-range brown will do. I find that this is a nice middle ground between black and white that gives some warmth to the later colours.

So, the infantry got a base coat of GW's mechrite red (any dark crimson-y colour will do), then a wash of brown ink, then I layered up through mechrite red, Vallejo gory red and finally Vallejo bloody red. It's worth saying at this stage that I tried to do a bit of zenithal highlighting on these guys (emphasis on tried!) as well as trying to simulate the build up of battlefield dirt toward the lower parts of the models, so there's no edge highlighting involved at all - just follow the old drill of leave a bit of the last colour showing every time you add a layer of a new colour. This means, for example, that there's no bloody red at the feet, while on top of the helmets you can't see any of the washed basecoat.

The vehicles were ever so slightly different, because I substituted a mix of mechrite red, a little brown ink and a tiny, tiny bit of black for the original mechrite red basecoat. The reds are slightly different between vehicles and infantry, because inks don't work so well on big flat surfaces - you run into issues with them pooling and leaving a blotchy finish.

Bone-whites (shoulderpads etc) are the same all over - start with graveyard earth, blend through khaki to bleached bone. In most cases I would also add a wash of a colour that Vallejo helpfully refers to as orange-brown, which is descriptive - this is kind of specific to my guys, because it's a colour I also use on my bases and is meant to represent a build-up of desert dust, but if you want to reproduce the exact colour, that's the final step. Incidentally I didn't add that wash to the captain model posted a little while back, so you can see what the bone-white looks like unwashed.

I used a couple of transfers on one of the rhinos (those skulls with iron halos) and one on my sternguard sergeant (the little flaming chalice on his leg) but other than that all detail work, including all chapter symbols & squad markings, is freehand. Thin your paint.

Thanks for all the nice comments guys!

Your free hand work is crazy good. The whole army has a great gritty feel to it.

I'm really impressed with the overall detail of the army. The small details really make all the miniaures come to life in a stunning display of craftmanship. I would be honoured to play against this army.

This army is unbelievable! The attention to detail and the individual flair of character between your minies, even the ordinary marines in the tac squads, is fantastic! You really are good, you have no need to doubt how good you are. Want a show of bad painting? See my stuff hahaha Amazing work there mate.