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Monday, June 14, 2010

Step-By-Step Dark Angel

I painted this veteran sergeant for a friend. He's an accomplished painter himself, so I hope this is up to snuff.

Step 1: Basecoat

Step 2: Dark Angels Green / Knarloc Green mix
This serves as the base that will be darkened with a wash. It took some fiddling to find the right mix, and Knarloc is in there to make it thicker and easier to apply. The mix is 2 parts DA Green to 1 part Knarloc.

Step 3: Goblin Green
This is for the edges. I had previously used Knarloc for this, but I like the added brightness that Goblin Green brings.

Step 4: Badab Black
Yeah, there's our Dark Angel. Before this step, I'm always afraid I'm painting a Salamander.

Step 5: Dheneb Stone
For all cloth, bone and parchments.

Step 6: Mechrite Red
This is for the gun casing and the lining of the robe.

Step 7: Blood Red
Covered all areas based in Mechrite (plus a sword icon on the shoulder cloth as well as the eye-lenses).

Step 8: Fiery Orange
Edged out the gun casing.

Step 9: Shining Gold

Step 10: Mithril Silver
This was lightly drybrushed over all the gold bits.

Step 11: Vermin Brown
For the sword handle and the waist rope. Ignore the old pot, this color has been renamed Vermin Brown.

Step 12: Bronzed Flesh
I like to drybrush Bronzed Flesh over all leather and rope areas that I based in Vermin Brown.

Step 13: Devlan Mud
Ok, several areas are ready for Devlan Mud; The cloth, parchments, all red areas, gold bits, and the leather/rope.

Step 14: Bleached Bone
I'm building back up the mid-tone for the parchments and cloth.

Step 15: Skull White
Highlighting the parchments/cloth.

Step 16: Gryphonne Sepia
I'm not coating the parchments/cloth here. I applied it only in the recesses, where there was still some Devlan Mud to bring some more depth to the cloth. Basically, stay away from the white areas and you'll be fine.

Step 17: Boltgun Metal

Step 18: Badab Black
Applied to the metal. Do not apply this to the sword though. I'm going to apply a power weapon effect to it.

Step 19: Skull White
I'm laying out the lightning/power arcs along the blade sides. I've drawn them specifically to have the lightning hug the edges to better accentuate the blade's shape.

Step 20: Asurmen Blue
This sergeant's power weapon will be blue. However, feel free to exchange this wash with any of the other washes for a different color power weapon.

Step 21: Skull White
I pulled the Skull White back out to pick out a few edges and corners in the lightning to make it pop just a little more.

Step 22: Skull White
I still have the Skull White out. This time to get the chapter icons on his shoulder and his helmet.

Step 23: Chaos Black
Parchment writing and gun barrel holes.

Step 24: Calthan Brown
My friend's armies are based in brown dirt with patches of static grass and a brown rim ... similar to how a lot of the GW staff do theirs.

Step 25: Basing Sand
Glued down with PVA (Elmer's White) glue ... then after it dried I added a layer of watered down glue over the top to seal it in and keep the sand from falling off.

Step 26: Devlan Mud
To darken the sand.

Step 27: Static Grass

And there it is.
Yeesh, last time I try taking these pics at dusk. Lightbox or no, this is attack of the sepia tones.

13 comments:

  1. A great tutorial, as always. Your stuff has made my DA army look loads better, thanks.

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  2. Very nice tutorial. I have a friend who wants to start Dark Angels. I shall forward him a link to this post.

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  3. He looks great! Especially his sword's lightning effects...

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  4. Great walkthrough! I like the power armour dark shading without too bright highlights -- often the case otherwise with DA. A tip back: have you tried ogryn flesh on gold? The red note gives a really deep and vibrant shading, but you still have some brown in it too.

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  5. Amazing tutorial. I don't have an DA marines, but I loved your method of doing the Power Weapon. That's alot simpler than most of what I've been trying and it looks great.

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  6. In the grim dark future there is no bleach for the Dark Angels:) Looking good and an interesting and useful step by step. I like your heavy use of washes and the way you painted that power sword might finally push me over the edge to try it myself:)

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  7. If they had bleach, the future wouldn't be grim darkness, it would be color-guard brightness. ;)

    Man you need to hop on the wash train, they've made my life so much easier it's ridiculous.

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  8. I will have to give Ogryn Flesh a try, didn't think of that. Thanks for the tip!

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  9. I'm already on the wash train:) I just need to get better at it and your tutorials tends to give me ideas:)

    I've also considered painting a mini in B/W and then use washes/glazes to give it color, but I fear that it might not be as easy as I make it sound like:)

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  10. I find the way you paint the power sword to be so amazingly straightforward and easy that I found myself banging my head on a wall in frustration at how I couldn't think of this.

    Please do make a tutorial on this technique. It will be incredibly useful to a lot of peope, believe me.

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  11. i love him, although my only advise is to do a little more to the sand on the base next time, and after doing the wash on the cloak to go over a bit with some more bleached bone. otherwise, awesome =)

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  12. i love him, although my only advise is to do a little more to the sand on the base next time, and after doing the wash on the cloak to go over a bit with some more bleached bone. otherwise, awesome =)

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  13. Here's how it kind of looks, though the color-rep of my mobile cam is not exactly world-class: http://www.omghobby.com/2010/06/shading-gold-dark-angels-objective.html

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