First contact

My small squad of marines had barely emerged from the drop pod when they spotted their first enemy: a mob of orks!

That's right, after painting my first marine I just had to go buy some Orks!

But I don't want to get ahead of myself...

Here he is, my first Marine:

I am extremely pleased with my first 40k mini ever!  Of course, I have yet to do the backpack, but that will come shortly.

My basic technique is one I picked up from the Games-Workshop painting articles: prime, basecoat with color A, ink wash, highlight with A, highlight with 1/1 A/white.

Here's a blow-by-blow:

I brushed on black primer let it dry for 24+ hours and then painted the majority of it Moradin Blue.  I tried to not get blue on the details that would be highlighted with gold (trim, chest eagle, shin skull).  After that dried I washed it with black ink.  I have to admit I was not exactly pleased with the initial outcome (maybe I didn't do it right?), but after I painted the rest I was happy with the effect the wash had given the crevices.  After leaving him for a few days I went back and painted the trim with Shining Gold.  At that point I regretted having gotten even just a little blue on the parts to be painted gold, but with a few coats it came out okay.  ALSO, I did the white on his shoulder pads; white is hard to work with!  It takes a lot of coats and can sort of look clumpy.  I went over the icons a few times before moving on to the main blue highlight.  I repainted every flat surface of the model, being careful not to cover up the darker wash in the crevices.  I touched up where I had strayed with the gold and white too.  I pushed some Chainmail paint into his mouth piece thing and painted the eyes red.  Then I took the plunge, mixed 1/1 blue/white and started highlighting!  It wasn't as hard as I thought, I just kept in mind 3 things:

1. I copied effects I like from the "official" GW paint jobs
2. I picked a "direction" for the light I was imitating and stuck with it (coming down from above his right shoulder)
3. Keep a steady hand

I am very pleased with how the highlighting came out and I think that really made this mini look as good as it does!

A few comments:

• First of all, this is a lot of fun (even though it did take longer than I thought)!
• The black inkwash over Chainmail looks great
• Somehow my brand new brushes ended up frayed and don't hold a tip anymore...  that's a bummer, but I didn't see any other way to get paint into the little places... hmm...

Well, that's it from me for now!  I've got an Ork work in progress that you can see on my Flickr.  I'll post more after this weekend when I get some more Orks done (and hopefully Marine or two)

Here's a teaser: