4 years of 40k painting in review, Part 3

Welcome back to 40k flash back as we continue to look back at 4 years of miniature painting. After playing my Tyanids for awhile I was still just not getting my head around the 40k rules. Yeah I know my own fault for picking Tyranids in the end days of 5th Edition, but I didn't know any better. So my next step was to pick up a Space Marine army and better understand the rules of the game. Having come from playing a lot of Confrontation Griffin as my favorite army, I choose Grey Knights. They had the overtly religious feel coupled with knightly appearance that really appealed to me. My local game scene had several Draigo star players. Not wanting to play the same as everyone else, I picked up a lot of the power armor Grey Knights. Having never played or painted up a power armor marine before I didn't feel the need to go all terminator with my Grey Knights. I opted for a Purifier Army with Crowe to allow them as troops. So I needed a lot of them, 30. Lastly to help them be visually more interesting to me at least. I went for black armor rather than metallic. 

A lot of detail work is picked out on these models, however I had yet to learn what "edge highlighting" is and did not have that tool in my box yet. I did want to use a diluted gloss varnish over the metal plates to create a sort of varnished, enameled look to them but ran out of time to get it done in time for our brand new Annual Hobby/tournament event the Standish Standoff during the first week of November. I did a lot of reaper tri color highlighting as I understood it at this time. Unfortunately the color depth on any of the larger flatter items just isn't present. However I did do my first free hand painting with these models putting both names on ever model as well as free hand flame icon to mark squads on the shoulder. You will see white flames on red, red flames on white and white flames with red inside, and red flames with white inside to mark the 4 squads. 

One handy painting tip I learned from painting all the gold on these models. Rather than using a base coating gold first or many many thin coats of gold (hard to get a metallic thin), I painted the base down with essentially an ochre color. This I could apply a couple thin coats of to get a good base down. With this down a single coat of the antique gold would go on and look great once washed. Considering the heavily religious feel of the army I wanted to use a dull antique looking gold to emphasize that the armor is baroque and ancient.

Another new technique I used was partially assembling the models. The arms and head where left off the model as I painted them. Allowing me to get into all the nooks and crannies of the model as I painted. I also had fun applying the names of many of my friends and family to the models along with the handful of known Grey Knight names. This made for some fun as I would take wounds on models named after my opponents first allowing them the "joy" of shooting themselves to death.

Next week Vehicles!