WIP Angels of Retribution Sergeant

This model is the third one I have ever painted and probably the very first one I built. You'll notice that the weapon loadout I gave him is actually illegal but how was I supposed to know? The Devastator Sergeant on the box had a bolter and a chainsword so why couldn't mine have a bolter and a giant fist? Oh well.

I guess you could say I'm fairly ambitious when it comes to what I want to do with my models and this particular model represents that perfectly. The loincloth is my very first attempt at using greenstuff so fingerprints and messy little marks aside, I was pretty chuffed at the time. The Dark Angels icon on his left shoulder, which I realize only now that I failed spectacularly to get in any of the photos, was my first attempt at making a greenstuff duplicate. Again, very messy but the blind enthusiasm is there. It's also my first attempt at painting anything except green. So overall, a lot of firsts for me on this model. One thing I am very proud of is how much I learnt from painting this guy.

Unfortunately I didn't take WIP shots the whole way through so you'll have to forgive me for that. I also tried to take better photos towards the end with what meager photographic equipment I have.

Beige. Beige, bone, cream, whatever you want to call it. It was the bane of my existence while I was painting this model. I had looked up how to paint it but as you all know, there are a lot of different techniques out there and they can have radically different results. It all depends on what you like the most. I picked one technique that I thought would suffice and bravely tried my hand at it on my favourite model. He was 'primed' black. I say 'primed' because I just painted him Chaos Black with a brush because I was afraid of my spray primer that I hadn't yet used. I then base coated the beige half with Graveyard Earth.

Now this is where my first lesson became clear. Graveyard Earth is a fairly transparent paint. Painting low-opacity paint over black requires a lot of patience because the black will show through and you need to apply several thin coats to get a solid colour. True to my 'n00b' status I slopped on heaps of paint really thick all at once. Gross.

A very similar thing happened when I tried to paint the loincloth red but having already seen what sloshing on the paint achieved, I restrained myself and tried to use thin layers. I probably could have done with more but once I got to the dark red you see in the photos, I decided it was good enough.

Next step for the beige was Kommando Khaki. Despite the name it's actually kinda...well...beige. Another low-opacity paint, the Kommando Khaki gave me just as much grief and I ended up just roughly brushing it on as you would with drybrushing only with way more paint. Not my finest moment to be sure but even my sanity has a breaking point. I then did some fine highlights with bleached bone on the legs to try it out.

The beige was looking a bit anemic looking so I gave it a wash with Devlin Mud. This did fix it in a way but also made that side of the armour look dirty. Adding 'mud' to armour makes it look dirty? A bit of a 'no duh' moment for me.

A first-time colour that was actually successful was the gold. I started with a 50/50 mix of Scorched Brown and Shining Gold. Then I worked up through pure Shining Gold, Burnished Gold and finally a 50/50 mix of Burnished Gold and Mithril Silver. I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to use the different layers of gold on such small parts of the model without totally covering up the previous layer but I think it turned out alright.

I've still got to paint the purity seals, highlight the rest of the beige side and base him. The purity seals will give me a good chance to try different painting techniques for both red and beige. I've got some GW foundation paints now so I'll try those as a base coat.

Stay tuned for more.

 - Dugatron