It’s true I love painting orks but, like a lot of 40K folks, I have dedicated myself to a space marine chapter as well.  I went with the Dark Angels over a more codex astartes chapter because of their somewhat mysterious past, duel agenda, and their chapter structure.  Gotta love the Ravenwing…

Since I still consider myself a painting neophyte, I started painting my Dark Angels with something a little easier than even a tactical marine figure: a dreadnought.

With the big, flat surfaces and edges, and larger areas it was a simpler place for me to try out some of the layering techniques I’ve seen more expert painters use.  It also has lots of weapons and mixed colors (though still on larger surfaces) so it wasn’t just a single, drab item but required a bit of creativity.

I used the Assault on Black Reach dreaddy-nought since he’s relatively static and he’d be easier to clean off if I had any painting disasters:

I went with the Dark Angels color scheme recommended by GW: Chaos Black, Caliban base, Biel-Tan shade, Warpstone Glow layer, Moot Green layer 2, Underhive Ash dry brush, with Waywatcher glaze.  Pretty vanilla but I don’t feel ultra-confident enough yet to experiment!

I added the red sarcophagus front-plate and weapon details to give him a bit of character, but still retaining the Dark Angels general scheme.

I’ve decided I’ll have a lot of my DAs in 4^th Company, so I used the munitorium “4” and “IV” from the transfer sheet to detail him, along with some extra bits from the Dark Angels upgrade sprue (pretty good deal, btw folks.  It’s basically the DA veteran’s kit $14 cheaper!) to make him more Dark Angel-y.  I named him “Puriel” an angel described (by Wikipedia at least!) as “fiery and pitiless”

Again, I love basing models and tried my hand at using some of the Forge World weathering powders on his feet and leg armor.  The rest of the base is pretty much just stuff from the GW basing kit again.

That’s his big brother, Camael, the venerable dreadnought behind him.  He’s just primed (and yes, that’s part of an Icon of Old Caliban on his back…) I haven’t had the guts to finish completely gluing or painting him yet since, as a member of the Deathwing, he’ll be bone white and I want to practice that a bit more before I potentially mess him up!

Check out my previous ork painting posts for more!

Black Reach

Dredtrukk

Warboss with Attack Squig

Boss Zagstruk

Stormboy Nob on Flying Base

Bad Moons Nazdreg