Base/ink Instincts


The Drawing I presume the model is based on

Second post so I will try and talk a bit about the paints that I am using, how they have lasted and how I think they differ from the more modern Citadel or other brands. In keeping with the instructions I base coated in Blue Grey over the armour panel. The paint was still pretty liquid but I am not sure it was completely mixed up. Coverage was good but it ended up a little glossier than I expected! It'll be interesting to see how the lighter colours go over the top of it. Other details such as the chainsword and eagle were given a coat of shining gold/brown ink as instructed. This was a new concept to me and actually worked really well to depend the colour of the gold paint. I usually go for a brown base coat and then bronze or gold over the top. The coverage was impressive and it's something that I will experiment with in the future. 
The infamous Bolter pots, thankfully a flip top not a screw

There was no instruction for painting faces in the Space Marine Painting Guide so I turned to another period guide. Bestial Brown was a bit more of a challenge. I didn't have any in one of the taller round pots of Bestial Brown so had to chance my luck with a bolter pot of Bestial Brown. It was pretty sludgey but with some thinning using water on a palette it turned out ok. Again I have never tried basing a flesh tone with that colour so we'll see what the results are. 

Laying down some base coats

All the metal bits were given a coat of Bolt Gun Metal. The red trim had no instructions for the space wolf section but the Blood angels said to start with terracotta so I did!At this point I will admit that I cheated a little. There was no way I was going to try getting a flat Sunburst yellow finish over a black undercoat. The paint was so thin I feel I would have been doing this next month so I applied a base coat of snakebite leather to work over. It still took a good few coats of yellow to get a solid colour. 

Mixing up some Ink and Gold

The base coating step was reasonably quick and I think it matched the instructions pretty well. Thinking about the old paints they still hold up well. They thin down nicely and are a good consistency still out of the pot, the inks are incredibly strong though and only need a tiny drop which is hard to manage in dropper bottles. The ones I had to use in the bolter shells were just about salvageable and i still tend to use them in the odd mini here and there anyway. The metallics I have I am lucky enough to have the metal flakes still in suspension rather than clogged in the bottom of the pot. I think these are the most vulnerable to age and are unrecoverable (If I am wrong please let me know as I have a couple of pots I can't use). The main difference I spotted was that when I used them on my new fangled wet palette they tend to dry differently and are harder to recover after I have finished a session. 



Next up are the mid tones...


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