Introduction

During the process of blogging the creation of my Raven Guard army – Shadow

Force Dragomir – on the Bolter & Chainsword I’ve had a few of requests for a

tutorial on how I paint my Marines.

As a result I’ve created this tutorial for those interested in how I paint my Raven

Guard. The aim for Shadow Force Dragomir has been to paint a playable army

within a year so our mantra is 'play, not display!' and our goal is a high quality

tabletop miniature to game with.

Now, being lazy and an aficionado of good painting/modelling tutorials I'll link you

to the B&C Moderator OwlandMoonGuy's excellent pre-painting primer article

posted to the Librarium there -Cleaning, Preparing (& Converting) Models instead

of taking photos of my preparation and building phases. My prep/assembly

process is essentially the same as OMG's so follow his guide and you'll have a good

base to work from. If you're new to modelling/painting also take a look at

OMG's Common Issues for New Modeller's thread, there are some great tips for

beginners in there.

Paint, Mediums & Brushes

Before painting begins I’ll run you through the basic colour recipes I’ll be using and

the paints, brushes and mediums that will be involved in the process.

Brushes:

Fig.1 Brushes

A Privateer Work Brush and a Kappel size 0 Kolinsky sable brush will take care of

our brush needs for this mini. For the base I usually just grab a beaten and

battered old brush for drybrushing the rubble and sand etc.

At the end of each painting session I wash my brushes thoroughly, change my

water and then use The Master’s Brush Cleaner to make sure that the brushes are

kept in tip-top condition.

Raven Guard Painting Tutorial

Mediums:

I use a range of mediums to help me with my painting process. The acrylic thinner

is used for thinning obviously, if you haven’t got acrylic thinners then distilled

water or even tap water will do much the same job. The retarder helps slow the

drying process and is great for doing really simple wet-blending whilst the flow

medium helps keep the consistency at the right level and helps the paints flow

smoothly from brush to mini.

Any good art store will have retarder and flow aid available and they should also

be able to provide some form of brush soap as well.

In addition to mixing these mediums with paint on the palette I often add them

straight to paint containers to thin them out and make them a little more usable

straight from the pot.

Paints:

Below is a list of the main paints I’ll be using during this tutorial:

Black

Citadel Chaos Black

Citadel Badab Black Wash

Citadel Black Wash

Citadel Foundation Adeptus Battle Grey White

Citadel Foundation Astronomicon Grey

Vallejo Pale Grey Wash

Reaper Dragon White Yellow

Citadel Foundation Calthan Brown

Citadel Foundation Tausept Ochre

Citadel Foundation Iyanden Darksun

Vallejo Game Colour Gold Yellow

Vallejo Game Colour Sunblast Yellow

Vallejo Model Colour 915 Deep yellow Green

Citadel Foundation Orkhide Shade

Vallejo Game Colour Dark Green

Citadel Snot Green

Citadel Scorpion Green Basing

Citadel Foundation Charadon Granite

Citadel Foundation Khemri Brown

MiG Weathering Powder Industrial City Dirt

Citadel Foundation Dheneb Stone

MiG Weathering Powder Industrial City Dirt

MiG Weathering Powder Standard Rust

Custom Colours & Micron Pens

I also use two colours that I’ve mixed up myself:

Raven Guard Black - approx. 1 part VMC German Grey to 3 parts Chaos

black with just a touch of Foundation Adeptus Battlegrey to tie it to the

highlights

Gunmetal Blue – approx 7 parts Boltgun Metal to 1 part Blue Ink

I also use a 0.5mm Black Micron Pen

Fig. 2 Mediums

Pre-Painting Assembly

Normally I simply glue the legs and torso of a model together to the base but for

this model I’ve also glued the helmet in place so that I can line up the arms &

bolter properly when I get around to gluing them on. I've done this so that the

overall pose of the model (carefully posed to look like he's stepped up to the

concrete bar in the foreground when in fact it's a pair of plain old regular Marine

legs) maintains the watchful, wary feeling I'm aiming for with the combat squad

he’ll be part of. The direction he's looking in is and the angle of the helm are key to

that so I've glued it in place right from the start to make sure I carry it through.

Having done my prep and glued the head, legs and torso onto the base I've then

primed the mini with Citadel Chaos Black spray. The picture to the right shows the

undercoated miniature with the arms/bolter tacked. They'll be painted separately

along with the shoulder pads and backpack. You can also see here that I've

included my basing as part of this prep work; I do this regardless of whether or not

the base is key to the pose (as it is here) simply so I can hit it with the black spray

undercoat so I can work up from there.

Tidy up the primer

Having primed the mini and let the primer cure thoroughly my next step is to tidy

up any areas the basecoat missed, like the joins and the underside of the mini (See

right) with Chaos Black and Badab Black wash.

That done I'll wait for everything to dry before moving to the next stage - the first

highlight.

Black Armour Recipe

The black armour is painted with 6 main steps:

1. Broad highlights of 'RG Black' Badab Black Wash

2. Fine highlight of 50/50 RG Black/ Adeptus Battlegrey

3. Final highlight of ABG

4. Black lining with Micron pen and/or Black Ink

5. Black wash as required to tone down anything too bright

6. Touch up highlights as required

That might seem like a lot of steps for a tabletop quality mini but they can all be

accomplished fairly quickly if you’re neat and even if, like me, your hands aren’t as

steady as they used to be it’s nice and easy to tidy up mistakes with the previous

step or just start over with Chaos Black if it’s that bad.

Fig. 3 Primed mini

Fig.4 Tidying up the primer

Body Step 1

For our highlights we’ll imagine a very bright light overhead is striking the mini.

This will allow you to just put the mini on the desk and place your painting light, or

even a torch, directly above it to figure out where to put your highlights. The first

stage in painting the armour is broad highlights of Raven Guard Black (‘RBG’) on

those areas catching the light under your lamp or torch.

As you can see, when I say 'broad' I mean it. I find it easier to 'backfill' with black

than I do to paint the initial highlights to be honest - it just seems easier to judge

where those initial highlights should be once everything is highlighted.

I’ve also taken the opportunity to begin blocking in the base colour for the eyes

here - thinned Calthan Brown. It will need another thin coat to get a nice even

coverage.

The next step will be a thinned wash of Badab Black to tone these broad strokes

down a touch. When the wash has dried I’ll touch up the broad strokes anywhere

they seem too dark or not quite broad enough. As with deciding where to place

the highlights this is much art as science, most painters get better with practice

and can eyeball these kind of decisions where you need to decide where needs to

be brighter and where darker.

Body Step 2

Figure 6 shows the black armour after it’s been washed, this has toned down

those first highlights nicely. I've touched up a few areas, the tops of the knees and

helmet for example, with the RBG mix and then given the eyes a second coat of

Calthan Brown and then one of Tausept Ochre.

The cables on the ankles have been done in VMC Cadmium Maroon Red and the

first stage of the metals, using my custom gunmetal blue, has been laid down too.

Finally an initial layer Astronomicon Grey has been painted on the Aquila. You can

see this is a little untidy at this stage, there's some white on the armour and the

parts of the Aquila needs at least one more layer to provide a nice smooth base to

highlight up from.

Fig.5 Body Step 1

Fig.6 Body Step 2

Body Step 3

You can see here that I've laid down the second layer of highlights on the armour.

Note that in general this is a 50/50 mix of RBG/but in some places I've added an

extra dab of one colour or the other to my mix to give the highest points higher

highlights and left the less obvious places with less highlighting. This is most

obvious on the back of the left leg in Figure 7B - the flared area above the heel has

a brighter highlight whilst the area behind the left knee isn't as obviously

highlighted.

All the work so far has been done with the Privateer brush, it's about a size 1, so I

have good control but plenty of paint so I'm not constantly going back to

pot/palette for more. That means I can work relatively quickly and keep the paint

moist (with the help of the retarder medium) so I can adjust the highlights as I go.

You can also see why I prefer to go back and fill in the black areas, my hands need

a lot of rest to be steady enough to do fine detail so I work the highlights quickly

and relatively roughly while my hands are OK but wait 'til my hands are good

before going back in with the Kappel brush for the teeny-tiny stuff.

So far I'm at about 75 minutes of painting for this guy and the main body of the

figure is now coming in to focus. He'll be left to fully dry overnight - the retarder

medium adds to drying times - and I'll come back to him tomorrow.

Once dry I'll lay down the fine highlights and then backfill the areas that need to

be darker/tidier. That'll help make sure that my black looks black instead of the

dark grey it appears to be now in some places. It's a balancing act but, provided

you have good light, one that isn't too hard at all.

The red cables have had a thinned coat of Red Gore painted over the base coat.

Body Step 4

Here we're at the final basic step of highlighting - Adeptus Battle Grey is added to

the highest points in a very fine line. Here you can see very fine lines of ABG on the

tops of the knees, the helmet ridge and the feet.

Again, this is a matter of personal taste and practice but it’s worth noting that for

this miniature we’re aiming for quite a subdued feel so I’ve been conservative with

this final highlight.

Fig. 7A Body Step 3

Fig. 7B Body Step 3

Fig. 8 Body Step 4

Shading Step 1

Shading a black mini sounds counter-intuitive but Figures 9A and 9B will show

what a difference some shading can make even to a black mini.

I've used both my Micron pen and Black Ink here. The pen has been used to

darken the panel lines; you can see the difference on the thigh panels quite well in

9A. I've also inked in some of the areas I'd over painted with my original broad

highlights, looking at the thigh panels again you can see how I've used the ink to

darken the panels but leave the highlights intact around the edges so they stand

out more.

From the back you can see the slight sheen left by the inking, that'll get killed by

the Dull Cote that is the last stage of the painting process. I've also tidied up the

whites, red and yellows at this stage, they're now at their base levels. They'll be

highlighted next and then we'll move on to the arms and backpack.

Detail Stage 1

Moving on to the first detailing steps the eyes have had some Iyanden Darksun

added to the front 2/5ths or so and the back 2/5ths has had two washes of Devlan

Mud.

The cables have had two coats of very thin Gore Red applied to the upper halves

and the metals have had Boltgun metal as a highlight. The Aquila has also been

very simply highlighted, Dragon White has been added to the tips of the feathers

and the upper half of the eagle body. I then used the Kappel brush to carefully

dark line the recesses between feathers with straight Black Ink.

You can also just see the blue and red detailing on the right leg and underneath

the helmet targeter respectively. The recipe there is simple, prepare your base,

mid and high tones on your palette, only a tiny amount is needed, be sure to add a

little retarder to each. The base colour is then applied all over the detail in

question. Without cleaning the brush add some mid colour from your palette and

paint on the top half of an imaginary 45 degree line across the detail. Finally, still

without washing the brush, add the highlight colour on the top edge of that top

half.

Total painting time so far is approximately 2 hours to this point.

Fig.9A Shading Step 1

Fig.9B Shading Step 2

Fig. 10A Detail Stage 1

If you work quickly over these small areas the paint will essentially wet blend itself

and give you nice simple details, here's a close up of the blue on the leg, you can

also see the metal highlights well.

This photo also shows that I need to straighten that panel highlight a bit too. I find

photos to be pretty useful for spotting this kind of thing I have to admit, it's easy

when you're painting a model to simply not see issues like this but when on-screen

they really stand out. Flash lines and areas of missed base coat also stand out in

digital photography for some reason, perhaps because the images are so much

larger than real life.

The recipes I used for these spot details were:

Blue

Mordian Blue

Ultramarine Blue

VGC Magic Blue (Enchanted Blue works just as well)

Red

VMC Cadmium Maroon Red

Red Gore

Macharius Solar Orange

Basing Stage 1

The base begins with Charadon Granite all over, following I paint the beam and

building rubble Adeptus Battle Grey whilst the sand/rocks/earth were painted with

Khemri Brown then given a light drybrush of Dheneb Stone.

The whole base is then washed with thinned Badab Black and straight Devlan Mud

to take the whitish edge of the Dheneb and make it look worn and dirty.

The final step for the base will be weathering powder and highlighting the building

rubble and beam.

Fig. 10B Highlights

Fig. 11 Basing Stage 1

Arms

The arms are a microcosm of the black armour. Same steps, same result

(hopefully), thus giving a uniform finish to the armour of the Marine. Cabling is red

to match that on the legs and the metallics are facsimiles of the leg joints.

Next up will be the backpack and bolter, followed by shoulder pads and markings.

The arms were done in 25 minutes including 5 minutes for the stage by stage

snapshots so all up we're just passing 2.5 hours now.

Arms & Bolter

Once dry the arms are ready to be added to the Marine. The joins for the arms

were lightly scored with some sandpaper before being glued in place and left to

dry.

With the arms done I moved onto the bolter - the first step is to tack it to a bottle

lid so I can paint it without touching it with my fingers and then to touch up any

missing areas of primer. I'm aiming to keep my RG deliberately dark so I've opted

for a black case for the bolter, painted the same way as the armour, with muted

metallics. The bolter is spiced up a little with a white RG symbol and some bright

cartridges in the magazine

From side on you can also see the very basic lens I've done for the sight, as I've

said before lenses aren't a strong point of mine despite years of trying to follow

GW's recipe and any other I can lay my hands on. For this lens I've kept things

simple and followed the same method as for painting the blue spot details listed

earlier.

Fig. 12 Arms

Fig. 13 Bolter & Arms

Backpack

OK, we're at the last stages of painting now, just the pads and pack to go. The

backpack receives the same highlighting as the rest of the armour.

Again, I've added just a touch of colour by painting the panel inset on the pack, it's

nothing overwhelming but helps make sure the mini isn't too dark and drab.

Painting the inset took just a few minutes and it's one of those things that fellow

modellers will notice you've taken the time to do, even for a tabletop force, and

will appreciate.

Shoulder Pads

I paint the basic details onto the pads before I add them to the arms simply so that

I don't end up splattering paint everywhere trying to reach those hard to reach

places that crop up once you put the pack and pads on a mini:

One pad is black so gets the standard treatment - my RG Black mix is the first

highlight. Again to save my hands I'm fairly liberal with this first highlight, we'll

come back and tidy it up later. The right shoulder pad gets a green rim to mark the

Marine as belonging to a Tactical Squad. This is achieved with two thin coats of

Foundation Orkhide Shade; this gives a nice dark green base to work from as you

can see in Figure 15A.

The second highlights were applied to the pads before they were attached to the

mini along with the backpack. I add the pack at the same time as the pads so I can

see where it would obscure the pads from our imaginary lightsource and make

sure I don't highlight those areas beyond the basic highlights.

You can see in Figure 15B that I've used thinned Snot Green over the entire green

rim not hidden by the backpack to brighten the colour up and help it stand out

more from the black pad without getting too bright and taking away from our

subdued look. The black pad has been hit with the 50/50 RBG/ABG highlight at this

stage as well.

Fig. 14 Backpack Inset

Fig. 15A Shoulder Pads 1

Fig. 15B Shoulder Pads 2

Final Highlight, Shading & Basing

In Figure 16 the pads have received their final, very fine highlight - straight ABG for the black pad and a 50/50 mix of Snot and Scorpion Green for the green trim. Note that these are applied only to the upper edges and those that would catch the light the most. After that I've shaded the black by using a Micron pen to ink in any panel lines and to give some definition to the area where the pad meets the trim. I've then used some Black Ink to tidy up the black trim on the left shoulder and some Badab Black wash to tone down that first highlight on the main areas of the pad. The green has been shaded by carefully painting two thinned coats of Baal Red wash down the centre of the trim, the red darkens the green without making it muddy or dirty like a black wash would. Finally I've added a very light dusting of MiG weathering powders to the base to give it some depth. A touch of Light Rust has been used on the beam, focusing on the bolts and Industrial Earth has been used more liberally on the rest of the base, including over the beam itself, to represent dust, detritus and debris swirling across the broken planet and settling on the little that remains of the city. This represents the completion of the paint job for our Raven Guard, only decals

remain.

Decals I use Forge World’s excellent Raven Guard decals for Chapter and Squad markings on my Raven Guard. First step is to brush on a gloss varnish over the area(s) to be decal’d, let it dry thoroughly and it will provide plenty of purchase for the decal to be placed there. I strategically cut my decals to help them conform to shapes like shoulder pads. For the RG that means using a fresh scalpel blade to slice between the head and wings on each side and also between the two 'outside' feathers of the wings and finally between the claws and tail feathers. I also trim any excess film from the decal where possible to help with the final fit. Next I soak the decal in plain old tap water for about 20 seconds. While that's soaking I use plenty of Micro-Set to wet the area the decal will sit on. Next I transfer the decal to the mini, use a piece of tissue to blot up the worst of the excess Micro-Set and get the decal in the proper place before a final blot to lock it down. If the decal isn't quite flat I use a scalpel to 'pop' any bubbles or folds and a nice soft brush dampened with Aero-Set to smooth the wrinkles out. Repeat as necessary to obtain a smooth finish. I then paint over the RG markings themselves with a few coats of thin VGC Skull White or Reaper Dragon White to keep them really nice and clean and ensure the best contrast with the black (which helps the black look really black as an added bonus). I also make sure to paint over any remaining transparent areas of decal with black, again, it's all to max out the contrast and make black black and white white. Finally I seal by hand with gloss varnish once more and when that's dry I hit it with the Dull Cote matte spray varnish that gives my RG their 'stealth' coating.

Fig.16 Final Details

Fig. 17 Decals

And here we have the finished product, decals, Dull Cote and all. Hopefully you’ve found this tutorial of some use and don’t forget to drop by the B&C to show us the results!

The Bolter & Chainsword would like to state that this tutorial is completely unofficial and in no way endorsed by Games Workshop Limited.

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The Finished Product