Painting Space Marines

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Thanks to Court Jester for this.

Over Sunday I sat and painted a few Space Marines and decided as I went to take some photos of the processes and someone did ask for a tutorial so I thought I'd go into it step by step.

Firstly, I have already noticed I missed the sergeant's hand until halfway through, it is all sorted though.

Also these chaps are for the gaming table so I have not gone to town on the highlights, the most being on the yellow. And even then the yellow has so many because of the style I paint it. If you want a quicker way you can just use Bleached Bone or Elf Flesh, give it one Skull White highlight and hit it with the Yellow Ink.

Step 1.

I assembled and cleaned the models fully and primed them white (please pretend the black is not there yet... those two models were started a few weeks ago.) I always try to get a really good undercoat, to make the base colours really easy to apply.

Step 2.

Any part of the model that will end up black I paint chaos black. I do this right now so I can paint without fear of getting black on already painted areas. Also because I paint fully assembled miniatures I can get into all the hard parts without worry.

Step 3.

I basecoat any part of the model that is going to be yellow in Fiery Orange. I water the paint down but not a huge amount, enough to ease the flow onto the figure, but still leave a good coverage. I do not have time to paint multiple layers of the same colour... ;-)

Step 4.

I then paint all areas that will be red in Blood Red using the same levels of watering down as above.

Step 5.

I then mix Fiery Orange and Skull White to about 50/50 (a nice peach colour) and apply that to all the yellow areas leaving Blazing Orange in the recesses.

Step 6.

I then add more Skull White to my "peach" mix and highlight with it in broad stroke across the obvious points of the armour - the arms, shoulder pads, knees and lower legs.

Step 7.

I then use a pure Skull White final highlight to all the previous edges. This does look quite harsh, but it is needed for the next step.

Step 8.

This is where the Yellow comes together. I liberally apply a Yellow Ink covering all the "peach" armour plates. It is very shiny at this point, but when I varnish it that will dull down very nicely. I also base coat the helmets and purity seal heads in Regal Blue.

Step 9.

I mix up a dark red ink that is 75/25 Brown Ink and Red Ink and I apply this into the recesses of the red armour plates. This is a very different way to how I use the yellow ink. I am very careful to make sure no large flat red plates collect unwanted pools of ink.

Step 10.

To highlight the red I create a 50/50 mix of Blood Red and Fiery Orange, and apply this to the most obvious plates as detailed in previous steps. I then finish that of with a pure Fiery Orange highlight.

You will also notice that the black on these figures has warn down as the pictures go on, I use the black areas to hold the figures and make sure I will have a steady hand, so they wear down, but it is not a problem and can just be touched up when I finish of the black.

When I left the squad they had all the base colours finsihed, so now we look at the details and weapons.

Step 1.

I will start with the helmets.

Firstly I paint Ultramarine Blue onto the Regal Blue making sure to leave the darker blue in the recesses. I then add couple of dots of Skull White and highlight with that blending the two colours together wit water and... Saliva.

I then add I then move to a 50/50 mix of Skull White and Ultramarine Blue and bled that through paying particular attention to the brow, eye sockets and mouth piece (the most focal points of a marine helmet). Then I add even more Skull White to my mix and apply even lighter highlights blended through. And Finally I use pure Space Wolf Grey to just make sure the detail is good.

Step 2.

I touched up all the black areas that had become worn and I painted the first highlight onto the gun casing. For almost all black areas in the entire army I use the same 3 step process as it is clean and not over the top, a nice subdued effect that does not stand out too much. It is nice and neutral.

The first highlight is a 50/50 mix of Chaos Black and Shadow Grey. This is painted onto the most prominent plates on the guns and chest eagles. I make the lines here pretty large, as I have one more highlight step to go after this.

Step 3.

At this step I finish the black highlighting by just jumping straight to Shadow Grey and painting lie highlights onto the previous highlighted lines from step 1.

I have also painted anything that will be metallic in Boltgun Metal.

Step 4.

To finish off the metal I apply a watered down Black Ink over the entire surface, and when that is dry I give the metal areas a light drybush of Chainmail Silver.

Step 5.

Now I have to start with the little details so I will focus on the symbols, purity seals, bases and eyes.

The symbols are painted on using very watered down Skull White. I slowly build up the shape and coverage, making sure I wait for layers to dry, to get the smoothes finis possible. I do not use decals for the squad markings as I find that without decal softener they will not work over a curved shoulder pad.

The purity seal strangely have the most highlights on any part of the figure. I work through the following colours to build the highlights:

Black, Scorched Brown, Bestial Brown, Snakebite Leather, Bubonic Brown and finally Bleached Bone.

The eyes.... Very easy this. I start with the regal blue base colour then I paint a stripe of Blood Red at the front of each eye, then a smaller stripe of Fiery Orange and finish them with a dot of skull white at the back of the eye.

And the bases. I wanted a base that looked good, but in no way at all detracted from the tri-colour scheme of the marines, so a nice dull urban grey and rust would be in order, and it helps make the bright marines look even better.

I glue sand to the base using PVA glue and then paint the sand with Black Ink while the PVA is still drying (I can be impatient at times...). When that is dry I drybrush the base up through the following colours:

Codex Grey, Fortress Grey, 50/50 mix Fortress Grey & Skull White, 23/75 mix Fortress Grey & Skull White, Skull White.

Then I paint a Chestnut Ink in random patches on each base.

Then I paint the rim Chaos Black.

The Sergeants Face...

I start with a base colour of Dwarf Flesh with the tiniest amount of Ultramarine Blue added. I then give it a Brown Ink. I reapplied a Dwarf Flesh highlight then an Elf Flesh highlight then added Skull White to the Elf Flesh, and finally to pick out the fine detail I use pure Skull White. I paint a Chaos Black stripe into the eye socket then a smaller Skull White stripe followed by a Chaos Black dot in the centre of the eye.

I then apply any decals I will be using, almost always the roman numerals, and the chapter badges (I cut them out along the design so it curves over the pad and does not just crease up). On the company champion pad I have to paint the cross on as the decal will not fit.

I am then ready to dull coat the squad... you can see how shiny the Yellow Ink has made the armour...

And after that as dried I have the four models finished.

And two of my tactical squads finished.

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Comment made by The_God_Rhys on 23:13:17, 22 August 2008
Hmm i must admit i just don't like the look of bright red and yellow space marines i can't picture them fighting anything

Comment made by insanetau on 08:01:04, 6 March 2008
my heart stopped when i saw how awesome that paint sceme is

Comment made by Asmodai on 10:41:45, 21 February 2008
WOW! That is soooooo cool!!! OMG your painting rocks!

Comment made by Rebel | Saint on 14:34:52, 23 November 2007
Awesome Scheme. And easy-to-follow step-for-step guide =)

Comment made by stonescold12 on 18:05:47, 12 November 2007
good paint job bad colour scheam

Comment made by Fasorith on 03:32:07, 2 October 2007
This was pretty good (well very good to be precise). I\'m sure it taught anyone out there alot about highlighting (incliding me). Thanks a lot

Comment made by Wargamingcircusfanboy on 09:30:39, 21 September 2007
lush...

Comment made by WWPeka on 00:06:38, 1 September 2007
exelent 10/10 nice highlighting and colour scheame

Comment made by Shas'ui T'au Kais on 08:23:52, 12 July 2007
very very nice cool colour

Comment made by .::cmd.Farsight::. on 15:46:07, 2 July 2007
i like it, u do a good job at keeping painting simple yet affective =]

Comment made by Vayne on 06:19:25, 20 June 2007
nort three bad

Comment made by drone-kid on 04:43:34, 14 June 2007
very good

Comment made by †Master of Puppets† on 05:02:58, 10 March 2007
Well done! I love the red, orange and blue mix.

Comment made by lightbulbhel on 13:24:35, 19 February 2007
good toturial bu like below mabye a scheme like Blood Angles death Company might be usefull to beginners. i like the scheme you doing

Comment made by Yummifoamycoffee on 10:52:51, 23 November 2006
Nice tutorial, helped a lot, but you could use a more easy scheme like Ultramarines, for Ze NOoObZ

Comment made by MechTau on 21:09:32, 5 August 2006
Oh, I forgot to add: amazing paintjob. I really like it.

Comment made by MechTau on 20:24:22, 5 August 2006
Very interesting. I liked how the wash was used to attain the color over a super highlighted but light undercoat. Definantly a way to paint I never had considered.

Comment made by AfterCresent on 12:12:27, 5 August 2006
Excellant article! This technique can be used in so many different ways!

Comment made by Tau Online on 07:09:45, 5 August 2006
Yeah I'd agree with that comment. This tutorial left me with no doubt how I could achieve the final product, and the overall colour scheme looks great in my opinion.

Comment made by Tom Norman on 05:07:52, 5 August 2006
Fantastic! So much depth to the article. I may use some of the techniques to paint my Imperial Fists.

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