Apocrypha Project I: Blood Angels

Well, after not much ado, here t is- the first part of the Apocrypha Project. I opted to start with a Blood Angel due to the overwhelming number of fantastic 'How to Paint Blood Angels' tutorials available now. Also, having an example of the flavor of the month such an astounding Chapter couldn't possibly hurt my traffic any.

I am nothing if not mercenary.

I paint at a snails pace. Ruining this Marine took about 3 hours spread out over a week. I just started a new job; and between that and my kids (all 4 of them) I was a bit busy, so painting was constantly interrupted (as usual). It can take me months to paint a single combat squad.

For what I hope are fairly obvious reasons, I chose to use a brown spray primer. In this case, Krylon Ruddy Brown Indoor/Outdoor Primer. And yeah, I always have sand on my bases before I prime. The few times I've saved basing for last like you reasonable people do, it... wasn't pretty.

Here he s after the 2 coats of very thin Plaid Folk Art (PFA) Cardinal Red. At this point I started thinking that I could have just given the primer a red wash and called it a day, but I soldiered on.

I continued with an almost-wash of PFA True Burgundy (roughly 1:8 paint to water). If I use a similar technique in the future, I'll be sure to add some flow improver and possibly a little red ink to the mix to make t behave more like the GW washes. The burgundy was followed with an all-over dousing of GW Devlan Mud and another coat of the watered down True Burgundy. I wish I had a picture of that stage; it was a gorgeous, rich red. Really made me feel like I knew what I was doing.

I was wrong.

Next the non-red bits were covered.. The blacks, the metallics, the eyes, all that good stuff. I was especially happy with his grenade, which I painted with a GW Chaos Black/Mithril Silver mix that I keep around (about 3:2), and the gave it 5 or 6 Thraka Green washes. It gave me an awesome look that would be great on larger areas, but kind of gets lost on such a small detail.

Then I highlighted the black areas with PFA Steel Gray. I got a little overzealous, and tired to correct it by dabbing on some Badab Black... and I got a little overzealous with that, and decided to quit while I was ahead.

I was, at this point, still ahead. That was all about to change.

I decided to very carefully apply Badab Black in the deepest recesses of the armor. I started low and worked my way up, being oh-so-careful, and using barely-most paper towel to dab up any excess wash.

It looked great. I was really proud of myself. Right up until the point that I set the Marine down, and realised that all the moving and twisting and flipping and gripping I had to do to get the wash into all the little nooks and crannies that GW has so thoughtfully detailed their miniatures with had caused the Badab Black to run and smear all over the figure.

I was beside myself. I really didn't know what to do. I panicked, and decided to try to 'fix' it by starting the highlights and pulling the up much further than I had intended.

I used a mix of GW Blazing Orange, water, and Liquitex retarder (to give me time to pull the highlights up) and went a little nuts. You can't really see it in the pictures, but the orange goes way too far from the edges, and really makes the miniature look kind of dusty. I suppose that this is one of the rare occasions where the pictures actually look better than the real thing.








I'm griping, but overall, I'm pretty happy with the results. You can tell it's a Blood Angel, and I stretched my skills and tried some new things to get there.

Oh... and if you're wondering about the lack of a blood drop, it's coming. I'm gong to be using Sol/Set and decals on this project, and I don't have any BA decals at the moment.

If you made it this far, thanks. Below are the notes I kept while I was panting. If you feel like offering any C&C, that's what to base it on. The 'recipe' is more complete than what I've written above.