How to paint Deathwing Terminators, Part one.

If you would've asked me a week or so ago, 'Glen, What are the two things you've always struggled to paint?', the answers would've come to me easily.

Firstly, I've never, EVER, been able to finish an elf/eldar army of any type. I don't know why, there's something about them I've never been able to get quite right.

My second answer would be 'Deathwing Terminators'. For years, I've never had it in me to get their bone armour right. None of the painting guides I could find ever helped me, it just couldn't do it.

With the release of, to start with, the dark vengeance set, and now the new dark angel's codex, I knew now was the time to confront my deamons. Naturally, that means finding a cheats way of doing things.

I knew I couldn't get the cream armour right. So I decided to do them grey-white. I've seen this done a few times, and I quite like the finished product. The key to getting it right, involves getting everything else on the model that's not the armour looking neat and correct. A healthy dose of weathering too, and I hopefully can come up with a convincing version without having to tear my hair out over cream armour.   

A good couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon, and this is how the test model for the squad turned out. You can see a couple of issues that I'm not overly happy with, but bearing in mind I don't normally get deathwing terminators this far, I can live with it on the test. Lets just hope the rest of the squad can match in.

The obvious one, is that the face is over highlighted. In reality, it doesn't look quite as pronounced in real life as it does on the pictures, but it still needs addressing.

The other minor gripe I have, is that I didn't tip the feathers with green, like they always were in the 90's. I can probably fit this in later on.

Next up, I'm going to try and do a painting guide for all those who struggle as much as i did.

The first thing to do, is to prime your model with a medium grey. Being in the U.K, I used Halford's car primer. Cheap and cheerful, and I had a boat load left from paint forgeworld models(it covers resin well too).

Next up, Grab a little sponge, mix some medium grey(I used codex grey) with some white. about 75/25 grey to white. To thing to remember when painting white(or black, for that matter) it that being at the extreme ends on the spectrum, a little bit changes your base colour a lot. Start sponging the mix on, trying to get in all over the armour, even in the recesses to a degree. Leave some shadows showing through, however.

Next up, add a splash more white to your mix. Carry on sponging(with a clean sponge this time) and hit only the higher parts on the armour. It's worth noting, it doesn't have to be to neat, it is sponging after all, but we're just trying to catch the higher parts of the plates. Repeat this process, creating finer and finer highlights, I think I did 4 coats to get to the stage about. At the final layer, you should have 75/25 white to grey in the your mix. 

For now, put your feet up, have a brew and that, because the first job coming up in part two its a right bitch...

Til then, 

Gonders