Space Crusade Reboot, part 2 : the Blood Angels squad

This post is part of a series where I log all the progress I make on rebooting Space Crusade with modern miniatures.

Now that my Ultramarines squad is complete, I’m focusing on the Blood Angels. That’s the remaining 5 marines I have from the Tactical box I purchased for the project.

I’m making good progress and I think the squad will be complete by next week.

 

 

Painting Method

Duncan Rhodes provides a great tutorial on how to paint Blood Angels, I used the « edge highlithing » technique, not the dry brush one which gives a darker result in the end. And possibly, a « dusted » effect.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9HzqHVg1uE]

The Squad

Here are the first achievements. I paint them with two thin coats of Mephiston Red, in order get a strong color. Then I paint with Agrax Earthshade all the deep areas of the miniatures and finally enlight the edges with a brighter red.

The chest is painted with Celestra Grey which is then inked with Agrax Earthshade and enlightened with Celestra Grey (edges only).

The Sergeant

I did good progress on the sergeant and tried an experiment: while reading Horus Rising, the first tome of the Horus Heresy, I came across a description of a power sword. The sword was « glowing when activated » and I got the idea to try to paint it « activated ».

Probably the light saber of Star Wars was somewhere in my subconscious mind as well!

So how could I achieve that? As the armor of the Blood Angels is a deep red, I decided to go for a glowing green, in order to get a very strong contrast with the dominant red color of the mini (using a glowing red would not strike out as much because of the lack of contrast). Blue might have been a good idea as well, but green is the best color against red.

The idea was to paint the sword with a base coat of Ulthuan Grey, which is almost white. When dry, I planed to apply successive coats of the Waywatcher Green glaze. Eeach coat applied should be shorter than the previous one, starting from the base of the sword. This should give a nice « dark green to white » effect.

At then end, I also applied a very small layer of Biel-Tan Green shade, in order to darken even more the sword’s base.

This worked pretty well, the sword looks almost white on its top and has a dark green base. The result is really stunning! On the table, this mini really stands out of the mass with its glowing green sword!

I’ll definitely do it again!

The shoulder pad has been painted in black and has its edges painted with Balthazar Gold, in order to make it look different from the rest of the squad.

Its clothe or Togas (I don’t know how it’s called!) is painted with two thin coats of Ulthuan grey and got an Agrax Earthshade layer afterwards. I tried to make a very thin layer of shade, avoiding the most exposed areas.

The result is quite pleasant and I’m really looking forward to seeing this squad in action!

 

 

Update April 13th: Squad is complete!

The squad is now complete, I added some edge highlighting with Ratskin Flesh and it really made a great difference. Sharper edges, better result!