The Final Paintscheme. No, really!
Okay, I've been wrestling with the paintscheme for my Deathwing army that I am renovating. I really wanted to do a striking paintjob using the Sky-Earth Non-metallic Metal technique, which was a big stretch for me. While I achieved a lot in terms of stretching my painting, I eventually had to recognize that it was holding me back from getting the army done. It's beyond my capabilities for now, but I definitely want to revisit the technique later. I may do it on a small scale (like on individual items, not entire armies) or I may eventually progress with it enough to do it on a large scale like I wanted. We'll see. But for now, I want to concentrate on getting the Boys in Bone back on the tabletop, so I need to paint in a way that I'm already comfortable with.

After reading through the Space Marine codex, I realized that I really couldn't just choose any paint scheme that I wanted. If you want to use Terminators as Troops, you really have to play Dark Angels, which means the DeathWing Paint scheme. While others could theoretically put together large groups of Tactical Dreadnaught Armor (Terminators,) none of the others has the character Belial, which is the character that allows them to be counted as Troops. This would, in theory, violate the What You See Is What You Get rule. If a new opponent looks across the table and sees Ultramarine colors, he might be surprised to find that they "represent" the Deathwing. (It also complicates things that regular Space Marines and Dark Angels have different rules for a lot of common items. Deathwing LandRaiders, for example, can only carry 5 Terminators, while Space Marine LandRaiders can carry 6.) Thus, I went with the standard. Since the bulk of the models will be painted in Bleached Bone, I needed a very light primer color. (Bleached Bone is not the most opaque color out there, so making sure the primer doesn't show through is difficult.) I went with Dheneb Stone, a Foundation Color.

After the model was primed, I went over it in Bleached Bone. I had to do a couple of coats on a few of the larger areas, even over the Dheneb Stone foundation.

Next up, the Imperial Eagle (Aquila) and any other winged bits got some Snot Green.

For some added color and to simulate hardened equipment, I painted the Powerfist housing and the cowling on the Stormbolter in Blood Red.

For an accent color, I chose Boltgun metal.

Finally, I went in and did the optics (both the eye lenses and the lenses of the cameras/lights attached to the helmet.) I did these by painting the main part of the lens red. Then I did a splotch of black in the upper third of the lens, and put just a tiny dot of Skull White in the center of that splotch. I also went back and touched up any areas where I'd colored outside the lines.

I'm pleased with this paintjob, and it doesn't take me too terribly long to do. (About 45 minutes per model at this point, though I should be able to shave about 10 minutes off of that as I get more familiar with it. I may decide to take it up a notch or two later. If I choose to do that, I'll almost certainly do some blacklining to separate the pieces of Bleached Bone from each other and bring out more of the topography of the model. I'm also considering adding some banding in gold around the edges of each armor plate, but I'm less certain about that part. However, I won't even be considering those until I've painted the full army. At that point, if I do it, I'll probably start with Belial and my Sergeants, to limit the numbers for the trial run. On the other talon, I may decide that they are okay as-is. Now, back to painting for me, I'm hoping to get a chance to play next Wednesday, and these guys don't paint themselves, y'know!

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

Return to Warpstorm!