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Recently I've started painting up some Space Marines for an upcoming Kill Team tournament.

I didn't realize at first but once I finished my first batch of models, the models looked a bit 'plain' due to the shoulder pad areas looking empty.

For chapters like Raven Guard in particular, I've noticed that their chapter transfers don't come in the ones GW sell and only available at FW.

How do you guys get around this?

Do you just buy from FW?
Do you free-hand paint the symbols? (Raven Guard symbol looks really hard to paint)

Or do you buy the shoulder pads with the symbols molded on them? (I see on the GW website they sell just shoulder pads for some chapters like Crimson Fists and Flesh Tearers etc.)

You can try to find the old decal sheets (pre-7e they had decal sheets with icons for most of the First Founding in all the Space Marine boxes), they pop up on Ebay now and again. You can also find the paper to print off your own decals with an ordinary laser printer, but they're a bit more work to apply than the GW ones (the backing is thicker and you need the right varnish to make it go translucent).

If you go freehanding you'll probably want to make up a successor with a simpler icon than the Raven Guard. The White Scars and pre-Heresy Thousand Sons and Death Guard are good examples of things that are relatively easy to freehand, they're blocky and mostly geometric, but if you want to try and do something like the Dark Angels or the Raven Guard with subtle parallel lines you're going to have to work at it.

For very simple designs, I just use a micro tip pen (a pen with a tip <0.5mm), typically in black. They come in all sorts of colors, and look great to line figures and to freehand simple stuff. I'm not much of an artist, but someone who's good could probably do wonders with one.

 pancakeonions wrote:
For very simple designs, I just use a micro tip pen (a pen with a tip <0.5mm), typically in black. They come in all sorts of colors, and look great to line figures and to freehand simple stuff. I'm not much of an artist, but someone who's good could probably do wonders with one.

Going to second this recommendation as well. This is how I got the forehead icons on all my Aspect Warriors.