I had a little painting time over Christmas, so I decided to paint up a box of Space Marines. With so many chapters to choose from, I decided to paint each in a different chapter colour. The idea was that they’d be a good opportunity to practise shading and highlighting different colours! To the photos:
I decided to go with an Ultramarine for my first attempt. I don’t use the official paints, as I already have the full range of Vallejo paints still left from when I used to paint a lot. I’m afraid I didn’t take WIP photos for these, so only have the finished results.
I don’t like metallic metal paints on small fantasy models (I do use them on historicals, though), so this guy gave me the chance to try gold non metallic metal. The NMM steel on the gun ended up looking more like some kind of polymer/resin, but I quite like this look.
I painted each major part separately before assembly, which was a mistake, as the highlights don’t match up. This is most noticeable on the shoulder pads. I still do that a bit now, but pay more attention to this issue.
Overall, I’m happy with how he turned out. The shades and highlights are still a little clunky, but I’ll only improve on that with practice. My brush skills are slowly improving, and I think my colour choices got pretty close to what I was looking for in the end result.
I’m still finding photography to be an issue, and I’m struggling to get a decently exposed image. I’ve boosted the brightness a bit in post-processing to help, but that’s the only alteration I’ve made. Any suggestions on that are more than welcome, as are any on how to improve in the paintwork!