Blood Angels Assault Squad

Here come the assault marines, the grunts of my Blood Angels army. I have painted about ten of these guys so far, but only took pictures of the last five because the first five were a disaster. Oddly enough, my assault marines have been the only red in my Blood Angels so far. This needs to change, because red is a great color to paint with. More pictures ahead..

As usual with painting these guys, I have a really tough time with lighter colors. I prime all of my minis with black paint before I start painting, so I have to build up to the lighter colors slowly I have found. This means I cant just paint yellow on the black coat and expect it to look good, it looks terrible! With practice I have managed to get a result that I like on a couple of these guys using light coats of Scorched Brown, then about a 2:1 mix of Iyanden Darksun and Scorched Brown, then a coat of Iyanden Darksun, and finally some golden yellow; all of that is washed in Gryphonne Sepia. As i'm still learning, they were not all done this way, but at least the guy above on the bottom right, top left with the flamer, and the sergeant were painted with this technique. 

I dont have any Citadel green paints, so I decided to use blue for the eyes. Eyes are one of the things that can make or break an entire mini's paint job. I'm not sure if there is a good way to fix mistakes either,  because painting over a mistake and trying again makes things look sloppy, and worse than if you had just left the mistake in the first place. I'm happy with the blue eyes, and after a few that didn't quite look like I wanted them too, I managed to figure out a good technique for eyes that you may notice on the sergeant.

I'm disappointed with how the bases look on these guys, but figured out something new for the future. I'm looking forward to showing off the bases I've made for my Sanguinary Guard, which I finally worked up the courage to paint. I'm putting the finishing touches on them now, and they should soon be ready for the photo box. Something I'm working on, but have not got a result that I like yet, is painting the exhaust for the jump packs. Below is a model that I did not paint, but is a good example of what I would like to accomplish.

What I want to do with my jump packs

So the assault marines are painted, ten of them anyway. I have five more to put together and paint, but they are not a high priority for me. Something I realized the other day is that I don't have an HQ for my army, i'm probably going to have to fix that problem if I ever hope to play the game. But the next post I make will be about my Sanguinary Guard, which I look forward to finishing. 

Messing with camera settings, I liked this one