Marine Stage 3

This is the first highlight that you can really tell.  This is the 50/50 mix of black and white.  At first, again I was making the highlight a bit too thick so as I went I thinned the lines down.  Also I need to decide if its an all over highlight of a point of light highlight.  I tended to mix the two over the model.  Either way, progress has been made.  I just need to highlight the heads then this stage will be done.  I’ll add an image then.

One thing, I remembered about half way about the eyes.  Really, they need to be done now.  So, at the moment I have also added two colours to the eyes.  Scab Red then Red Gore.  Next will be blood red then a spot of white.  I think.

Marine Stage 2

So, what I done first after I was happy with the priming was mix the paints as above and then paint each of the first five mini’s.  It was done using the dark shade, you cant really tell unless you look at the model closely and certainly not at first glance.

I do think I maybe made the area of this shade a bit too big so Ill correct that in the next five but, no big deal as its hard to tell anyway.  I also need to get my photo taking skills improved!  Just need to sort the focus when taking such close shots.  Should be easier to see as I add more details and progress through the stages.

Paint and colours

When considering the army, of course I knew it would be largely black, but I had to think of the shades and what colour they would be.  I’ve after thought that Codex Grey was to light to be a direct highlight to black so have often darkened it down somewhat.  Also, after painting my Space Wolves, I like the shading of the shadow grey and space wolves grey, it has a nice blue tint.  So, I had two things to bare in mind.  I wanted to add a blue tint to my black highlighting, and I wanted some darker shades to highlight from black before shadow grey.

After reading the net I came across a nice article that covered just that.  Here it is:  http://www.minivault.com/PaintingBT.htm

So that was it.  I liked how this sounded and decided to base my colours on this.  Id empty a white pot and fill it with chaos black to get the first highlight for the black.  Id also mix a pot of 50/50 black and white to get my next highlight.  From this I would use Shadow Grey (probably two stages) and finally very small spots of space wolves grey.  The reason I wanted to make the pots up is to get some consistency across the colours of the army rather than remixing each time.  Here they are:

Painting stage 1

So here we go.  Assembled and under coated.  The first step to take is to paint them all black again.  Black primer dries a kinda faded or dusty black.  Plus, there is always a couple of area’s on the mini that didnt get a good covering.  Usually in the small indentations of armour etc.  So, what I do is give them a quick going over with a 50/50 mix of chaos black paint and water.  Once its done, the difference is hard to see, but it does ensure you are completely covered.  Here is a miniature after I have added the 1st stage:

Reminds me, I must start setting up my photo area with some white paper!  I’ll be using this miniature as I go through the various stages.

What I have prepared now is two groups of five.  Thats the 5 Neophytes and 5 of the CC Initiates.  I’ll completely paint these before taking the next two groups of 5.  I’ve been in two minds when to base them.  I still need to think about that some.  Also, the shoulder pads need under coated and added, but I’ll leave that for the moment.

Back to bases

So, the bases from Australia arrived (bought on Ebay).  Have to say that was a prompt delivery.  I’ll definitely recommend them so I’ve added his ebay shop as a link on here.

Like any resin product (such as what you buy from Forgeworld), they should be cleaned before you use them.  So, I took 25 of the bases that will be used for the models I’m working on at the moment.  First I used my file to file away any flash around the edges.  Once done, I took a small bowl of warm soapy water and put the bases in it.  After 2-3 mins, I took an old toothbrush and gave them a quick clean over.  Then, rinse them in a fresh bowl of warm water.  Finally, I’ve put them face/top down onto some kitchen towel to dry.  The next step will be to undercoat them.  My plan is to undercoat them black, then drybrush them in greys upto a light grey for a stone floor effect.  The bottom rim of the base I’ll paint green as thats the colour of most of the game boards I use.

Whats in a name?

Well, I needed to give the Army an identity.  So, after brushing up on my Knights Templar history, checking out some existing Black Templar names etc I came up with “The Crusade of the 7th Flame”.  So, with that decided I needed a banner.  In comes Photoshop.  I took some existing banners from the net (mostly from Dawn of War or such) and then looked for a nice flame effect.  Setting the flame as the background, I then added some of the typical Templar icons.  This was the end result:

Additionally, at the bottom is the phrase “peregrinus of septumdecim flamma” which is supposed to be latin for Cruasade of the 7th Flame.  However, knowing how online translators work it probably says “Walk of the seven hotties”!

As for the application of the banner, sadly my painting skills are not really up to doing this from scratch so I was thinking of printing it out and gluing it with PVA onto a black banner.  Id then painting the edges to that it blended in etc.  I “might” try painting one from scratch if I have a spare to see how I do.  We’ll see.

Leg by leg

So, after a few days of gluing legs and heads (not to each other I must add!), Im almost done with the main assembly.  Squad one (10 man) is under coated and ready to be painted.  Squads 2&3 (5 man) and ready to be undercoated and the squad of neophytes (scouts) are still being assembled.  These will be armed with bolt pistol & CCW with a couple of shotguns.  I’m just deciding at the moment whether a young neophyte should be decorated in many chapter insignia.  They wont have seals as they can only be given to Initiates, but perhaps the odd scroll or draped cloth with writing on them.  I would like to make them different than regular scouts.

Anyway, by the end of today I expect thse also to be ready for priming.

Extras

Squeezed in a few extra bits tonight.  Filed down the backs and glued them on.  Also drilled the ends of each of the weapons.  I then snipped, cleaned and added a couple of accessories though not many.  Mainly a few seals, one banner pole etc.  The banner pole I drilled and pinned into the back of a marine using a short piece of wire (1mm x 8mm).

Thats about it for these 10.  These will now be ready for undercoating black.  I’ll not be adding the shoulder pads yet.  Those I will undercoat white given their final colour is largely that.  But, Ill get these undercoated and then assemble the next ten as well as the five Neophytes (scouts).

Troop Assembly

So, the parts Im going to use are chopped, filed and ready in what looks like a bunch of grey marines after they met a thousand genestealers.

So my first step is to sort these into models. I generally look at legs and the way the toes are pointing. that gives me a good idea to what the model is doing. Is he leaning back or in action moving forward etc. Then I’ll see what body I want to go with those legs. Then what weapons will it be having to suit that pose. finally, the head. Id usually choose the head with no helmet for any special character. In this case, the one with the power fist. Once this is done, I have them all lined up and ready to assemble (using plastic cement).

It was then disaster struck! I was looking over a few pots of paint deciding what I needed to replace when I dropped it. It was like a cannon strike over the miniatures who were at best, unprepared! I lost one head and one arm to the garage floor, never to be seen again. But, all was not lost, as I had used the Black Templar upgrade kit, I just found some replacements from the regular marine sprues. Phew!

But next, we had a bit of chopping and changing to do. I knew I was two bolt pistols short and also I needed an arm for my melta gun. First was the bolt pistols. I used one from the regular SM box so that was good, next I needed to make one. I done this by chopping a regular bolter off a hand and then adding the bolt pistol to it instead.

I had to do the same thing for my melta gun.

Next I chopped off the pistol grip and file the area down. Then take a bolter arm and chop off the bolter and again file the area down.

Then its just a matter of gluing the two parts together.  Once this was done and dried, I drilled the end of the melta gun with the pin vice ( I found the smaller one!).  so rather than have a flat end, it looks like this:  (I plan to do this with all the weapons).

Once I had these extra parts done. I’ve started assembly. First is glueing the two halfs of the chest together. Leave them for an hour and then add them to the legs. At this point, I check which way the model should be facing in general. Again these are left for an hour or more. This is where I left these for now.

Delivery

So, took delivery of the GW order. I’m not expecting the Forgeworld stuff for a while but I’m in no hurry for it anyway. After a quick check to make sure everything was right I made a start doing prep work. Just wanting to get some of the main bodies done for now, then I’ll add accessories on later. I’ll assemble 10 marines first. That will be 8 from the CC squad and 2 from the smaller ranged squad. The 8 will have 6 pairs of chainswords and bolt pistols, one power fist and bolt pistol, and one melta gun. The two will have bolters.

So, for the 10 I used both the standard marines sprue and the Black Templar sprue with the following parts:

Standard: Legs, Back, Jump pack
Black Templar: Heads, chests, arms/weapons

I unclipped each part from its frame and then went over each one with a file. This is to remove any flashing and mould lines. As mentioned, I’ll leave accessories for now and just get these parts assembled.

I also plan to drill the end of the bolters and bolt pistols. This is to get rid of the flat end and add more realism to the finish. Realised though last night that my pin vice doesnt hold the small drill bit I was going to use. So, Ill need to find another vice. I dont want to use a larger bit as I think that would be too big and damage the end of the weapon.

As an example, this is a leg with typical mould lines:

Then, after a bit of filing: