New Jawaballs Blood Angels!

I finally found my battery charger and am back in blog business.  Sorry for the long delay since my last post!  I will start today by showing you all some images of my newest Blood Angels infantry. Behold, the Jawaballs MKIII.  Sorry for the quality of the pics.  I am using a little canon pocket cam to shoot close up high def macro pics with no tripod.  :)

What is the difference between this and my old guys?  Well lots!  To begin with, I am now using Army Painter Dragon Red as my base.  My MKII BA used a modified version of the method presented in White Dwarf when Space Hulk came out.  Army Painter made this method much easier with their new fantastic spray.  

So again, what is the difference?  Well I begin with a black undercoat, then a light application of Dragon Red, almost just a dusting.  Army Painter spray has the unfortunate habit of filling in details, so the least amount as possible should be used.  

Here is an example of a model that has only been primed with Dragon Red:

I went back and painted the details black, but notice the black showing at the cuffs of the armor on the legs, on the codpiece, under the chest piece... all of that black showing throw the red creates a nice shading effect. This marine will be holding a meltagun when I am finished.

So on to the next step.  I begin layering Blood Red onto the edges, and working it towards the insides of the armor plates.  If you use it little by little, you can get a nice blend from Blood Red to dark Dragon Red. A nice example of where this happens is at the bottom of the lower leg. I fade the BR from the bottom up to just below the knee pad where I leave DR showing.  In the next picture I have a model almost completely finished with this step.  You can see the effective blending and highlighting using just Blood Red and Dragon Red. This model is already good enough to be on the table and an army painted to this standard, with finished details of course, could easily compete for best painted.

Then I use Red Gore to reinforce the dark. Now doing the reverse of the first step, I work from the other end of the armor plates and blend red gore into the blood red.  Again, the lower part of the leg of the model in the pic is a great place to see what I mean. 

From here I paint the spaces between the armor plates with black and/or a dark mixture I have of dark flesh and blood red and black.  (from White Dwarf)

Then I start working the highlights with Blazing Orange. But I do not want to "orange" my Blood Angels out too much, so as I finish the highlights, I use a mixture of Blazing Orange and Vomit Brown. (also from White Dwarf.)  The brown is sufficient enough to mute the glaring orange without taking away the brightness of hue. In this marine you can see the stages all coming together. I have not used any washes yet.   

So on to the near finished marine!  Here is an example of one almost complete, with all of the above steps almost finished. I did the helmet using the same technique, but I used Iyanden Darksun painted on as my base over black. Then I used Valejo Deep Yellow on the edges, followed by GW golden yellow, and finally Valejo Lemon Yellow with a white highlight.  I did the eyes using Catachan Green, Snot Green and Goblin Green.  

I did the studs by leaving them Dragon Red, then just layering on blood red, blazing orange and the mixture of BO and VB.  I need to finish the details and weapons and rebase him, but he is just about complete!  End result will be a squad of marines that matches my new tank painting recipe which looks much more dark and most importantly crisp on the table. My previous style was very messy and artsy. With this method I am taking a much more graphical approach, from the point of view of a designer. 

I will be posting up more pics as I finish the squad. Hope you enjoy! Feel free to ask questions. I will try to answer them in video form.  

More to come.

Jawaballs