First, I hope everyone is healthy, and following all the guidelines on how to remain so! Space Marine Number 8 is a member of the Iron Hands, which means the colour of the week is black.
There are a number of different approaches to shading and highlighting black, with greys and blues being two of the most popular. I’ve also seen purple used to good effect. The main danger that I’ve encountered with black is how to highlight it without it ending up looking like it’s grey. I’ve never been a fan of the blue highlighting approach, so I went with grey.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out. He still looks like his armour is black, but the highlights have worked reasonably well at the same time.
The photos:




One of the changes to my approach on this member of the Iron Hands is how I approached highlighting the pauldrons. I went for a circular highlight on the top part, treating it as a sphere, and left it at that. I think looks far better than the approach I was taking of treating it like a combined sphere and cylinder.
Again, I’ve started to do a little more edge highlighting on this guy. This is a technique I’m liking more and more on these models. It’s also one I’m using exclusively on my next set of marines. It’ll be interesting to compare the two approaches!
As always, all tips, trick, hints, and constructive criticism is appreciated, so feel free to message me in the comments below, or over on Facebook. If you want to take a look at the previous parts of this series, you can find them at these links: Part 1 – Ultramarines, Part 2 – Blood Angels, Part 3 – Imperial Fists, Part 4 – Salamanders, Part 5 – Dark Angels, Part 6 – White Scars, Part 7 – Hawk Lords.
As a final note, for the quarantine, I made The First Blade of Ostia free for a few days. Today is the last day of the free run, so make sure you grab a copy while you can! Take care of yourselves!