Navarre is done!

so, this is Black Templars' Marshall Navarre finally painted and ready to kick some xeno scum. the armour has been painted with a black undercoat, shining gold drybrush and burnished gold highlight (on the edges).

the claws are painted with: scab red, blood red, fiery orange, golden yellow.

do you like the cape? it represents the space marines' old wargear piece: the adamantine mantle. i undercoated it with gore red, then painted the polygonal scales, most of them are quite hexagonal, with blood red and then the final highlight on the folds with blazing orange.

Veterans' sergeant

i always thought that for veterans squads the standard sergeants are unsuitable so i've planned to use for mine any miniature that represents upper levels officiers like lieutenants or commmissars. in this case i think i'll strip this amazing commissar miniature in order to paint it with the veterans' scheme. by the way it really deserves to be unpainted since it really sucks in my opinion.
what do you think?

more Navarre progress

i've finished the red, white and gold parts. got to finish the base, the leather, the iron halo and the metal.

do you like the claws?

and the adamantine mantle? it is now complete with a really soft highlight of the blood red made with Vallejo's equivalent of blazing orange.

Navarre progress

i've painted the adamantine mantle for this black templar war machine, quite nice in my opinion

Giving the veterans a more veteran feel

how can you make some classic metal guard miniatures look like really hardened veterans? simple! glue on them a bunch of space marines' pouches! above i show you a small selection of what i did yesterday

First batch of veterans finally painted!

this is the first part of my imperial guard mixed Valhallan/(classic) Cadian veterans. their scheme is a bit lighter than the testpaint because i made a softer highlight. i really like the combination of olive greens and greys. if you like, i'll post a tutorial about painting wood.

look at the meltas' muzzles: i've managed somehow to get a burned effect with a nice method explained on Citadel's "how to paint Citadel tanks" book: after painting metal, wash with watered down snakebite leather and then with bestial brown (and also with schorched brown if you want. i didn't), finally wash with very watered down black in order to merge the previous layers of paint. i find this method quite successful.

final goodie: a better pic of demo-charge dude.
that's all for now!

there's nothing better than a democharge ready to be thrown

this is the valhallan democharge veteran finally painted! the scheme is the same of the other veterans previously shown... what else? i really like this mini!

what's your regiment, soldier?

in the next imperial guard army list i'm gonna deploy 2 veteran squads each with 3 melta gun so, as my veterans are quite heterogeneous (classic cadians & valhallans mix), i've planned this: both squads will have 1 cadian and 1 valhallan meltagunner, the remaining 2 will be a converted catachan and another model i have not yet chosen (is this sentence correct? sorry for my english). this time please check out my former catachan guy!

first thing i did was putting those shoulder pads (from plastic space marines scouts box) to make him look like a muscular cadian, then i've filled the gaps of the vest with the dear old milliput and lastly i added details: cadian backpack (from cadian weapons team) and the pistol holster on the backpack (tank crew kit) after having removed with a modelling blade the knife on the left side of backpack. last but not least: the eagle on the chest is from space marines captain sprues. so? waddayathink?