With lockdown easing, it’s time to get back to something we haven’t seen here for a while – badly painted Space Marines! Having finished the previous box up, this time they’re the new generation models, starting with an easy build one I got with a painting guide.

This space marine is painted in the livery of the Crimson Fists. I particularly like the colour scheme for this chapter of marines. I’d been playing around with the GW approach of edge highlighting a bit in the previous batch of old school marines, and wanted to follow that approach completely here. I was pretty surprised and pleased with the end result.

On to the photos:

I’m not sure why clicking on the images doesn’t allow them to be enlarged any more, but I’ll look into it and hopefully get that fixed for my next post.

Overall, I’m really happy with the way this turned out, and am going to apply myself to this method for the next few models in the regular box of this guys that I got. In the interests of full disclosure, I painted this before lockdown, so don’t remember any of the issues I might have had while painting it (it’s been 3 months – I’m lucky if I can remember what I did 3 minutes ago…).

Looking it over, I’m impressed by how quick this approach is (mainly in removing the time I spend agonising over where to place the highlights…), and how effective it looks. I think it’s definitely one worth practising and having in your toolkit of techniques. It involves 6 steps in its basic form:

1. Laying down a base colour.
2. Shading the recesses with a carefully applied wash.
3. Painting in any details like symbols, equipment etc.
4. Touching up the base layer for any mess made shading or detailing.
5. A thicker mid shade edge highlight over all the edges.
6. A thinner light shade edge highlight over the upper/light catching edges.

I also started using decals here, something I’ve never had much success with before. With the help of some youtube videos and a bottle of micro-set, I actually managed to get it on, pretty contoured to the surface, and not torn anywhere. Still far from perfect, but this is the best result I’ve had with a should pad transfer to date, so I’m hopeful I can get better again with the next one.

Next week will have a post-lockdown painted Space Wolf, and sadly 3 months away from the painting table have taken their toll. Hand steadiness and ability to be neat has definitely declined, but hopefully that’ll come back to its usually high (cough) standard quickly!