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I finally finished my first Blood Ravens squad, made with older second hand SM parts - saved all the nice new stuff for when I had the scheme and assembly sorted. It's my first time trying the Buypainted part-assembly with full airbrush highlighting and shading. I learned a lot doing this, most especially to not let a project last 3+ months sitting on the table gathering dust that interferes with the paint job and scrapes paint off, but also to get a smoother overall wash, needing smoother and stronger highlights/shades and a that complete part-assembly (not even torso glued to legs) is overkill. Any other pointers for improvement you guys can lay on me? I'd appreciate it all ; )

They're Blood Ravens, based to be on the planet Calderis, a Desert world they recruit from. They're the chapter from Dawn of War series of video games, red with bone accents, black trimming and can make good use of Blood Angel iconography (imo). Pics taken on a very quick assembly of a tiny portion of my new Battle Systems terrain... which clashes with their basing and is making me question not basing them on clear acrylic disks ; p

Process from memory:


List to improve on:
- Better basing, ie. sandstone blocks rather than sand coloured rocks.
- Taller grass too
- Varnish the base -_-
- Don't take 3 months and start getting impatient, rushing steps that end up looking dodgy
- Smoother wash
- Stronger and smoother (ie. more thinned?) highlighting
- Airbrush or edge highlight the guns
- Decals on wrong shoulder? Or doesn't matter? No squad markings? (not full-ball on SM markings)
- Take better photos!

Clicky dakka gallery links:

Seems like you nailed all the key points. They look good though! Technically the Blood Ravens chapter symbols goes on left shoulder pad.

Looks good. I hate painting reds myself, unfortunately painting blood angels now.... Ugh. Keep it up though

 Joyous_Oblivion wrote:
Seems like you nailed all the key points. They look good though! Technically the Blood Ravens chapter symbols goes on left shoulder pad.

Cheers, yeah I try to be as critical as I can with what I do so I can improve... grinds my gears how good other painters are hehe. One day! Thanks for the iconography headsup, I thought I checked but iirc I checked after I shaded the shoulders so thought screw it ; p

 Loken31809 wrote:
Looks good. I hate painting reds myself, unfortunately painting blood angels now.... Ugh. Keep it up though

Red is a pain with brush but easy peasy with airbrush, thankfully there are minimal red details I need to do with brush. If you don't have one and will be doing blood angels, you'll probably find it saves your sanity!

Yeah even going over a nice smooth white undercoat red usually takes me a minimum of three coats and sometimes way more. Airbrush makes it stupid easy.

The overall effect of the scheme as seen from the thumbnails looks to be spot-on for what I know of blood ravens (which isn't much, I think there was one in the space marine game? ).

The paintwork looks pretty clean, and they have solid poses. I like the drum-magazine bolter, though the strap might need something. It's kind of rough to highlight a color so light as that, maybe a wash or two and then hit it with that same color again to give it some pop?

I agree that the guns would probably benefit from some kind of highlight.

I can't do NMM for anything, but I like to do black and not-metallic weapons/casings. I usually do them either like yours with a single stark extra-light-grey-that-isn't-white edge highlight, i start with a dark grey maybe 25% white to black (guessing) drybrush, wash, edge highlight, OR I start with black, drybrush coal (almost black), drybrush badger fur (dark but obviously grey) then really lightly drybrush or edge highlight with extra light grey, then teeny white edge highlights. For yours, just get a really light grey and hit the edges extra carefully and they should pop quite a bit.

The silver looks good though as a matter of personal preference I would make it darker myself. But that's just me, I'm not happy if it hasn't be dipped in Tudor or at least black-washed

I can see the highlights on the chest eagles and such, though they are pretty subtle. That one's your call, if you want them to pop from the standard playing distance, you may need something lighter, but they look fine up close.

It sounds like you put a lot of time and effort into these, and they look good. I wish I could see them in person, I think the images (and especially my junky old temporary monitor) are washing out some of the subtler details.

Lookin good though, and I'm jealous of your backdrop

I like them.

Solid paint job. Bases have room for improvement, but look fine as is. Not much else to add really.

Maybe throw down a black wash on the metal parts. Can't really see any highlights. But to be honest I think red looks fine without highlights.
I personally would add squad markings. But that's because I like SM squad markings. More to the point I like free handing squad markings. I think it gives a nice personal touch. But as you said, you're not all for them.


Overall solid squad of marines.

same as above, and year the symple is on the wrong side, and the red is mabye to bright, almost definantly, the colours are about right but it depends on your source and which dawn of war you look too,

i paint mine from dawn of war 2, so sometimes gold on the backpack, dark red and cream shooulder pads, i like that better personally
http://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2014/7/3/626737_md-.jpg,

Thanks for the feedback guys, helps a lot! Some things I can work on to touch these guys up and keep in mind for the next lot. Better detailing (ie. straps, metal bits), highlighting and basing.

Yeah Vale the shade of red changes for them, verging on the bright red/orange I've gone for here to the dark red, ie. brighter compared to darker.. I like the weathering/chipping you've done, looks a lot like how you see it in the game which I'd like to get the hang of.

Blood Ravens are looking pretty awesome. Did you freehand the chapter insignia or were they transfers?

Really nice dude, the only thing I could give as criticism is to do a black oil wash over the top.

Check Jaro/buypainted - his edge work is pretty sloppy, but the oil wash is so ridiculously forgiving that they look flawless.

The starkness of the sand shoulder pads to black trim highlights anything that isn't dead straight.

Overall though, man they are beautifully done - I am pretty jealous

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Blood Ravens are looking pretty awesome. Did you freehand the chapter insignia or were they transfers?

I printed them from these on $2 A4 printable decal sheets from ebay. Was nice and easy actually. I have a bubblejet so had to varnish the sheet after printing whereas you don't need to with laser ones but still happy with my first attempt at it. A couple of the decals didn't go on that great... rough edges and a couple not quite centered. Think I need to get a good pair of small scissors or use a fresh blade to do the cutting for them. No way in hell could I freehand them, I lack the artistic skill and the fine motor control ; p Also, thanks!

kb_lock wrote:
Really nice dude, the only thing I could give as criticism is to do a black oil wash over the top.

Check Jaro/buypainted - his edge work is pretty sloppy, but the oil wash is so ridiculously forgiving that they look flawless.

The starkness of the sand shoulder pads to black trim highlights anything that isn't dead straight.

Overall though, man they are beautifully done - I am pretty jealous

Huge fan of Buypainted - I paid $25 to subscribe to his stuff as soon as he launched the service last year. If I could paint like anyone it would be him and I'm hoping to learn his techniques on these pretty simple marines. I've seen his oil washing but the three times I've tried have definitely not been successful hahah. I should get some proper oils and not use the old ladies 20 year old oils or the $3 tube I picked up at red dot -_- Bad oil is I hope the reason mine have come out poorly but could also be the thinner, forgetting to varnish or just having a brainfart while doing it. It's definitely one of the skills I want to master asap because yeah, it gives an amazing result. I too thought that wasn't ideal on the shoulderpads... I was leaning towards trying to paint the inner edges black but that was just painful to try, ended up doing a wash with light brown which is what I used to airbrush shade the shoulder pads, which was an improvement but still far from ideal.

He recently put up another video specifically on his oil washes, which ones he uses and how, mixing 2 oils for a better effect and so on.

First up they look great.

As an aside. Pick up all of the new GW technical paints, except maybe the cracked earth. They're just handy tools to have on hand.

For the requested C&C, some of it will depend on what you want for these figures.

The reds could use an extreme highlight if that's the look you're going for - though you'll also have to experiment with the colours if you do so - yellowish, orangish, pinkish all give different looks. If you decide to go this way, I'd experiment on a couple of individual models and see what you prefer.

As others have said, the guns look a bit bright. Easily toned down with either a black or brown wash. I again recommend experimenting to see what works best for you. The obvious choices are AP Soft, Strong and Dark Done washes (not the dip). Though if you want to get creative, you could try the Blue wash to give a blued steel look - which could look real good with the bright metal look that you have - the others give various versions of "worn". I'd also darken that shoulder strap a lot as well. You can go for any various shade of brown, or decide that it's a synthetic material. At the very least I'd paint the connection points and the ferrule on the strap a different colour - probably metal.

If you want to keep the chest eagles real dark, I think they're fine as-is. You could lighten them, but then you're going to end up with grey eagles. You may or may not decide to pick out the skulls and crossbones on some of them in bone. I tend to do that myself, but it doesn't mean that you have to - like so much of this stuff it's personal preference. Or just do it for Sergeants/corporals so your battle squad leaders are further picked out with that kind of small detail. The gold filigree, such as on the BA pad needs some kind of shading. I can see you've got some silver in there, but you might want to look at a touch of sepia for a pin wash (the GW stuff is decent) or even burnt sienna or nut brown ink. (though I'm moving away from straight artist inks these days, since the pigment doesn't set especially well with acrylics. It would also be a good spot for a play with oils. You can also use a touch of green with golds as well. - again, it's a place where you can experiement - either on individual models or by setting up a few bits or figures and giving them different treatments and see which works for this army. (I've been using the new GW Verdigris wash on the golden metal on my wife's undead with a nice effect - queue edit above about tech paints.)

I'd personally shade the shoulders a little more, but then, personal preference and they do look fine as-is. I'd use Snakebite Leather (or XV-88?)/ VG "Leather Brown" and make it a bit starker, but that's just how I'd do it personally.

That's all the C&C I can get from those pics! Hopefully some of it is useful.

Great stuff, thanks Azazel exactly the stuff I needed to hear.

- I have the AP washes you mentioned and the armour wash, I'll try all 3 and see how each looks.
- I did oil wash the gold shoulder pad but it didn't do much... I have a poor selection of oils. I'll pick up the ones Buypainted mentioned recently, a mix of a reddish brown and a blackish brown that works great on gold iirc. Or if I slack off I have ample washes and inks to try ; p
- The strap yeah I didn't like but couldn't think of what to do. Wanted to stay away from leather so I'll try and get a synthetic look going for it. Will also do the connection points too. Damn little details... so fiddly yet so important.
- I'll definitely shade and highlight more, what little I did was muted too much by the SW ruby wash so I'll need to crank it up substantially next time.
- Same for the shoulders they do need more shading, but some was obscured by the wash I used to try to blend the bone into the black which didn't work too well. Also will try to mask off and airbrush highlight the black on them too.
- I do like the darker chest eagles but it is hard to see the highlighting, so I'll try to add a little more on the outer edges, and look at differentiating the skull and crossbones.

Very useful, and thanks for saying they don't look bad. I know they have a lot to improve still but I was still pretty happy with them. First models I've been happy with actually I think. Yay learning!

For highlighting slightly black without going to grey either go to a Payne's Gray (Black with a bit of blue) OR just highlight with a brown: it is neutral enough to not detract from the black and is a nod toward the cream/tan shoulder pads.

Flesh colored paints work great for highlighting reds and again would tie-in with the brown elements of the model. I usually like using the a "flame orange" for the most extreme edge highlights (corners, points, top edges).