Apocrypha Project VII- Imperial Fists

Another day, another dude. Here's an Astartes of the Imperial Fists Third Company (I think), painted with mostly cheapo paints-

He was primed with Testor's Model Master white primer, then given two coats of PFA Turner's Yellow (1.5:1 water:paint). Next up was a wash of Citadel Carroburg Crimson. If you ever need anything to look like it's made out of red clay, this is where you stop. It's a perfect match.

But, since that's not what I wanted, I moved on with 2 coats of 1:1 PFA Medium Yellow, avoiding recessed bits. Once that was dry, I hit the more raised areas with two more coats, and once that was dry I did some highlights with some Coat d'Arms-era Citadel Sunburst Yellow. Black areas were painted with 1:1 PFA Licorice (my go-to black) and areas that would be metallic were basecoated with the same. Gunmetal bits are P3 Pig Iron, washed with Citadel Badab Black, and then highlighted again with Pig Iron. Blacks are highlighted with a mix of Citadel Hawk Turquoise and VGC Cold Grey- not the perfect mix, but I think it looks better than straight grey. Reds are VMC Carmine Red- the chest-aquila, backpack-skull, and helmet-laurel are washed with Citadel Thrakka Green. There are no red highlights.

The main reason I wanted to paint a Fist was to try out the MicroSet/MicroSol I ordered a while back. It works as well as everyone says it does, but there is so much extra transfer paper on the standard Fists decal that even MicroSol couldn't smooth it down completely. But the decal itself looks like it's hand-painted it blends in so well. I'll never use waterslides without this stuff now.

Lessons learned- Trim as much excess transfer paper off of decals as possible, even when using MicroSet and MicroSol. Also, yellow is nearly as big a pain as white. If I was going to do any more Fists, I'd try priming yellow and then glosscoating before washing (and then dullcoating again), and try to get away with a single coat of an extra-opaque hobby-grade yellow and white edge highlighting.

Here's the 7 guys for this project so far- only about a ton left to go. I think I might get one of those golf ball cabinets to display them in.

Dark Vengeance Deathwing

Done... finally. For some reason the sergeant took forever to finish.

I'm still not happy with the armor. Not only is it a total pain, apparently Vallejo Model Color Ivory is not very resilient- even minor handling seems to rub, scratch, gouge, dent, ding, and otherwise mess up the finish. A glosscoat/mattecoat would probably help that, but I'll be looking for another white moving forward.

I also tried to do a blue fade on the sergeants power sword- I started with a PFA Ultramarine basecoat, and then glazed on about a gajillion layers of super-thin GW Hawk Turquise. It worked well, but it looks like I spread it out too far- I should have restricted the fade to the last 3/4 of the blade to make it a more dramatic shift to turquoise.

As far as Dark Angels go, now I've got another DV tac squad to paint, as well as the 3 Ravenwing bikes and the headquarters models from that set (a Captain and Librarian. I recently got a new/old metal Dark Angels captain off of eBay, also, so I'm trying to decide which one to use). And I can't forget the Rhino with the Forgeworld doors (that I suspect are counterfeit- but that's neither here nor there).

It's getting there. Slowly, but it's getting there.

Damn Your Eyes...

A little liquid courage,  and voila.

Eyes,  done.

The Right White

I. Hate. White.

I really, truly hate painting things white. I tried painting my Deathwing dudes mre of a bone color (leftmost below- base color is Citadel Ushabti Bone, with a light coat of VMC Off White), but it just didn't look right. Then I tried straight Off White and Ivory (middle two- both from Vallejo) and settled on the Ivory as the 'least worst'. It's still a pain to cover up after the washes, though- so I'm thinking that after the sepia wash on the last guy dries, I'll try doing a thinned bone layer just to cover the spots where the wash was unruly, and then a couple Ivory layers.

But really- white sucks.

White paint. Black magic.

This is, like, the 4th white figure I've painted, and after all the tutorials and tips and planning this is the best I could come up with. Gah.

At least only a fraction of my army has to be white. All you White Scars and Menoth players are masochists.

Speaking of my army- 10 Tacticool Dudes completed. I have another DV set of these guys to go-

They're not great, but they've got a little pop on the table, and considering my long hiatus (and the fact that I was painting to get them done, and not necessarily to do them well), I'm not beating myself up over them. I'm at the point that if they look a little better than good from 3 feet away, I'm thrilled.

Cheers!