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Here is a step by step guide to how I paint my plague marines. It's pretty simple and i use the same technique on tanks, dreadnoughts etc.

First up spray white and touch up with skull white paint, then (using the foundation paint set, which I water down a little to help the paint flow) paint all the metal areas orange, armour trim green and bolters red. With the red and orange I'm not very neat because I use such heavy washes that it covers up any wavey paint lines or missed bits etc. Finally paint the eyes shining gold:
the first pic didnt upload fully (dunno why) but you can see all you need to:



Now we come to the washes all of which are pretty heavy and straight from the pot. First up wash with black aiming for the deepest, darkest parts of the model AND all the coloured areas:


Then brown covering the whole model:


Then green only covering the armour and trim:



Next we start on the stripey white. I have a pot of skull white that has a lot of water added to it. You want it to be thin enough that it flows easily (without pooling into drops like water does) and you can see the colour coming through the paint after one coat. Then it is simply painting little lines on the armour. I find that going section by section works best, going over the armour with one, two or three passes to get the effect I want. Basically it's up to you and gets pretty obvious as you go. A good tip is to leave little 'drip' marks under things like studs by simply painting white around the 'drip'. It looks cool. Here are two half way shots:


and two finished:



Next up go over the green armour trim with the foundation green to cover up any mistakes with the stripey white and then catachan green in the corners or peaks as a highlight colour. I like this as its subtle and I want them looking dirty rather than shiney...so a 'dull' highlight works best I think.

Now using the foundation orange again I go over the metal (washed orange) parts but this time i use a crappy brush and 'stipple' bright orange radomly. This looks pretty good, it's fast and adds extra depth to the rust effect. On hoses etc be careful not to over do it. Then you can (i dont always, again because I'm after dull and dirty) use the foundation red to highlight the bolter:



Once thats done the last thing is to paint on (NOT drybrush) some boltgun metal over the orange. This tip was given to me by Mabs and is a fab, fab tip. Think about what bits of the metal will be used the most and therefore have the rust worn off showing the bare metal underneath....like knife blades and where your marine will be holding his bolter..etc etc and then add some in random places so you dont have too uniform a look.
The finished guy:




All he needs now is his back pack which is painted the same way and he is done.

Oh the base i paint randomly in tin bitz and camo green. Then paint pva over the base, leaving some parts bare, and use the little slate basing material from GW. When thats dry mix water effects (from GW) with green wash and dollop it on in the pools you have made by leaving bits of the base bare and then over the slate where ever you feel like. You will need two coats of this to get the effect you want. Once thats done paint the base trim foundation green.
(Note, this guy has only had one coat of the water effects, the second makes all the difference-see below)
Once the whole model is completed (backpack added etc) I spray it in mat puity seal and then go over the water effects with a gloss hard coat.

Here he is fully finished:


Done.

Phew.

I like it a lot, those GW washes have changed the way a lot of us paint and really upped the standard.

Thanks fro all the hard work in making the how to. You should do it as an article?

Not sold on the orange, but the rest of the method is solid.

Good work!

Let's back up a bit to the lessons everyone can learn from this. You guide coated the mini, painted him green then drybrushed white over him.

Guide Coating is a word that should be as common as drybrushing, for all the people that use it. That's what you call it when you wash the undercoat with black like that. It gives you a sort of instant shading to any colors you put over it (provided you've got them thinned a little).

It seems the method has become more popular since the new GW washes have come out, but its been around for a while. There are even a couple painting studios that do this pretty much exclusively (mine does not).


This actually works fairly well with many minis, especially simpler ones (fewer areas to cover) or more organic ones. I've seen it make Tyranids look beautiful.

Great work!! Have you tried using a bone color or gray instead of white as the basecoat?

I ask because true white and true black are hardly ever seen especially if you are going to wash black over white. If you make the white not true white it will help keep your minis from becoming too bright. But then again the black wash is under so many layers it probably won't matter.

Looks like a quick and easy way to paint plague marines. Not to mention it looks fabulous.

That looks superb, and so quick and easy!

That is the look I tried (and failed) to get on my PM's. Thanks for the tutorial, I'll be using it to redo my current minis and for any future ones.

Cool. I am really pleased you guys find it usefull. It took a few 'batches' of PM's before i got the order right. now I am flying through them .
With the special characters etc I am going to try using more than just white for the stripey effect, like a rotting flesh or desert yellow to give them more depth. And I will try painting helmets, shoulder pads different colours to make them stand out a little.

Phill

ps. the suggestion that I should do this as an article....what does that mean?

Wow love the paint scheme and the step by step is ace i would try it out when i get the chance.

Nice work! Looks great

Useful and the model looks great, also not a fan of the red/orange, but it proves any color could work in it's place.

Very awesome. Makes me almost want to paint Chaos Marines. Almost. Maybe I can use this technique on my Warriors of Chaos for WHFB, however.

Looks good. I am using this technique at the moment but I only go up to the part where you apply the green wash (i.e. no skull white). I prefer the greeny look as it feels more organic and bubonic and pustulant to me, however each to their own!