Raven Guard Painting Tutorial.pdf

Raven Guard Painting Tutorial Introduction During the process of blogging the creation of my Raven Guard army – Shadow Force Dragomir – on the Bolter & Chainsword I’ve had a few of requests for a tutorial on how I paint my Marines. As a result I’ve created this tutorial for those interested in how I paint my Raven Guard. The aim for Shadow Force Dragomir has been to paint a playable army within a year so our mantra is 'play, not display!' and our goal is a high quality tabletop miniature to game with. Now, being lazy and an aficionado of good painting/modelling tutorials I'll link you to the B&C Moderator OwlandMoonGuy's excellent pre-painting primer article posted to the Librarium there -Cleaning, Preparing (& Converting) Models instead of taking photos of my preparation and building phases. My prep/assembly process is essentially the same as OMG's so follow his guide and you'll have a good base to work from. If you're new to modelling/painting also take a look at OMG's Common Issues for New Modeller's thread, there are some great tips for beginners in there.

Paint, Mediums & Brushes Before painting begins I’ll run you through the basic colour recipes I’ll be using and the paints, brushes and mediums that will be involved in the process. Brushes:

Fig.1 Brushes

A Privateer Work Brush and a Kappel size 0 Kolinsky sable brush will take care of our brush needs for this mini. For the base I usually just grab a beaten and battered old brush for drybrushing the rubble and sand etc. At the end of each painting session I wash my brushes thoroughly, change my water and then use The Master’s Brush Cleaner to make sure that the brushes are kept in tip-top condition.

Mediums: I use a range of mediums to help me with my painting process. The acrylic thinner is used for thinning obviously, if you haven’t got acrylic thinners then distilled water or even tap water will do much the same job. The retarder helps slow the drying process and is great for doing really simple wet-blending whilst the flow medium helps keep the consistency at the right level and helps the paints flow smoothly from brush to mini. Any good art store will have retarder and flow aid available and they should also be able to provide some form of brush soap as well. In addition to mixing these mediums with paint on the palette I often add them straight to paint containers to thin them out and make them a little more usable straight from the pot.

Paints: Below is a list of the main paints I’ll be using during this tutorial: Black     White    Yellow       Green     Basing      

Citadel Chaos Black Citadel Badab Black Wash Citadel Black Wash Citadel Foundation Adeptus Battle Grey Citadel Foundation Astronomicon Grey Vallejo Pale Grey Wash Reaper Dragon White Citadel Foundation Calthan Brown Citadel Foundation Tausept Ochre Citadel Foundation Iyanden Darksun Vallejo Game Colour Gold Yellow Vallejo Game Colour Sunblast Yellow Vallejo Model Colour 915 Deep yellow Citadel Foundation Orkhide Shade Vallejo Game Colour Dark Green Citadel Snot Green Citadel Scorpion Green Citadel Foundation Charadon Granite Citadel Foundation Khemri Brown MiG Weathering Powder Industrial City Dirt Citadel Foundation Dheneb Stone MiG Weathering Powder Industrial City Dirt MiG Weathering Powder Standard Rust

Custom Colours & Micron Pens I also use two colours that I’ve mixed up myself:  Raven Guard Black - approx. 1 part VMC German Grey to 3 parts Chaos black with just a touch of Foundation Adeptus Battlegrey to tie it to the highlights  Gunmetal Blue – approx 7 parts Boltgun Metal to 1 part Blue Ink  I also use a 0.5mm Black Micron Pen

Fig. 2 Mediums

Pre-Painting Assembly Normally I simply glue the legs and torso of a model together to the base but for this model I’ve also glued the helmet in place so that I can line up the arms & bolter properly when I get around to gluing them on. I've done this so that the overall pose of the model (carefully posed to look like he's stepped up to the concrete bar in the foreground when in fact it's a pair of plain old regular Marine legs) maintains the watchful, wary feeling I'm aiming for with the combat squad he’ll be part of. The direction he's looking in is and the angle of the helm are key to that so I've glued it in place right from the start to make sure I carry it through. Having done my prep and glued the head, legs and torso onto the base I've then primed the mini with Citadel Chaos Black spray. The picture to the right shows the undercoated miniature with the arms/bolter tacked. They'll be painted separately along with the shoulder pads and backpack. You can also see here that I've included my basing as part of this prep work; I do this regardless of whether or not the base is key to the pose (as it is here) simply so I can hit it with the black spray undercoat so I can work up from there.

Fig. 3 Primed mini

Tidy up the primer Having primed the mini and let the primer cure thoroughly my next step is to tidy up any areas the basecoat missed, like the joins and the underside of the mini (See right) with Chaos Black and Badab Black wash. That done I'll wait for everything to dry before moving to the next stage - the first highlight.

Black Armour Recipe The black armour is painted with 6 main steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Broad highlights of 'RG Black' Badab Black Wash Fine highlight of 50/50 RG Black/ Adeptus Battlegrey Final highlight of ABG Black lining with Micron pen and/or Black Ink Black wash as required to tone down anything too bright Touch up highlights as required

That might seem like a lot of steps for a tabletop quality mini but they can all be accomplished fairly quickly if you’re neat and even if, like me, your hands aren’t as steady as they used to be it’s nice and easy to tidy up mistakes with the previous step or just start over with Chaos Black if it’s that bad.

Fig.4 Tidying up the primer

Body Step 1 For our highlights we’ll imagine a very bright light overhead is striking the mini. This will allow you to just put the mini on the desk and place your painting light, or even a torch, directly above it to figure out where to put your highlights. The first stage in painting the armour is broad highlights of Raven Guard Black (‘RBG’) on those areas catching the light under your lamp or torch. As you can see, when I say 'broad' I mean it. I find it easier to 'backfill' with black than I do to paint the initial highlights to be honest - it just seems easier to judge where those initial highlights should be once everything is highlighted. I’ve also taken the opportunity to begin blocking in the base colour for the eyes here - thinned Calthan Brown. It will need another thin coat to get a nice even coverage. The next step will be a thinned wash of Badab Black to tone these broad strokes down a touch. When the wash has dried I’ll touch up the broad strokes anywhere they seem too dark or not quite broad enough. As with deciding where to place the highlights this is much art as science, most painters get better with practice and can eyeball these kind of decisions where you need to decide where needs to be brighter and where darker.

Fig.5 Body Step 1

Body Step 2 Figure 6 shows the black armour after it’s been washed, this has toned down those first highlights nicely. I've touched up a few areas, the tops of the knees and helmet for example, with the RBG mix and then given the eyes a second coat of Calthan Brown and then one of Tausept Ochre. The cables on the ankles have been done in VMC Cadmium Maroon Red and the first stage of the metals, using my custom gunmetal blue, has been laid down too. Finally an initial layer Astronomicon Grey has been painted on the Aquila. You can see this is a little untidy at this stage, there's some white on the armour and the parts of the Aquila needs at least one more layer to provide a nice smooth base to highlight up from.

Fig.6 Body Step 2

Body Step 3 You can see here that I've laid down the second layer of highlights on the armour. Note that in general this is a 50/50 mix of RBG/but in some places I've added an extra dab of one colour or the other to my mix to give the highest points higher highlights and left the less obvious places with less highlighting. This is most obvious on the back of the left leg in Figure 7B - the flared area above the heel has a brighter highlight whilst the area behind the left knee isn't as obviously highlighted. All the work so far has been done with the Privateer brush, it's about a size 1, so I have good control but plenty of paint so I'm not constantly going back to pot/palette for more. That means I can work relatively quickly and keep the paint moist (with the help of the retarder medium) so I can adjust the highlights as I go. You can also see why I prefer to go back and fill in the black areas, my hands need a lot of rest to be steady enough to do fine detail so I work the highlights quickly and relatively roughly while my hands are OK but wait 'til my hands are good before going back in with the Kappel brush for the teeny-tiny stuff.

Fig. 7A Body Step 3

So far I'm at about 75 minutes of painting for this guy and the main body of the figure is now coming in to focus. He'll be left to fully dry overnight - the retarder medium adds to drying times - and I'll come back to him tomorrow. Once dry I'll lay down the fine highlights and then backfill the areas that need to be darker/tidier. That'll help make sure that my black looks black instead of the dark grey it appears to be now in some places. It's a balancing act but, provided you have good light, one that isn't too hard at all. The red cables have had a thinned coat of Red Gore painted over the base coat. Fig. 7B Body Step 3

Body Step 4 Here we're at the final basic step of highlighting - Adeptus Battle Grey is added to the highest points in a very fine line. Here you can see very fine lines of ABG on the tops of the knees, the helmet ridge and the feet.

Again, this is a matter of personal taste and practice but it’s worth noting that for this miniature we’re aiming for quite a subdued feel so I’ve been conservative with this final highlight.

Fig. 8 Body Step 4

Shading Step 1 Shading a black mini sounds counter-intuitive but Figures 9A and 9B will show what a difference some shading can make even to a black mini. I've used both my Micron pen and Black Ink here. The pen has been used to darken the panel lines; you can see the difference on the thigh panels quite well in 9A. I've also inked in some of the areas I'd over painted with my original broad highlights, looking at the thigh panels again you can see how I've used the ink to darken the panels but leave the highlights intact around the edges so they stand out more. From the back you can see the slight sheen left by the inking, that'll get killed by the Dull Cote that is the last stage of the painting process. I've also tidied up the whites, red and yellows at this stage, they're now at their base levels. They'll be highlighted next and then we'll move on to the arms and backpack.

Fig.9A Shading Step 1

Detail Stage 1 Moving on to the first detailing steps the eyes have had some Iyanden Darksun added to the front 2/5ths or so and the back 2/5ths has had two washes of Devlan Mud.

The cables have had two coats of very thin Gore Red applied to the upper halves and the metals have had Boltgun metal as a highlight. The Aquila has also been very simply highlighted, Dragon White has been added to the tips of the feathers and the upper half of the eagle body. I then used the Kappel brush to carefully dark line the recesses between feathers with straight Black Ink.

Fig.9B Shading Step 2

You can also just see the blue and red detailing on the right leg and underneath the helmet targeter respectively. The recipe there is simple, prepare your base, mid and high tones on your palette, only a tiny amount is needed, be sure to add a little retarder to each. The base colour is then applied all over the detail in question. Without cleaning the brush add some mid colour from your palette and paint on the top half of an imaginary 45 degree line across the detail. Finally, still without washing the brush, add the highlight colour on the top edge of that top half. Total painting time so far is approximately 2 hours to this point.

Fig. 10A Detail Stage 1

If you work quickly over these small areas the paint will essentially wet blend itself and give you nice simple details, here's a close up of the blue on the leg, you can also see the metal highlights well. This photo also shows that I need to straighten that panel highlight a bit too. I find photos to be pretty useful for spotting this kind of thing I have to admit, it's easy when you're painting a model to simply not see issues like this but when on-screen they really stand out. Flash lines and areas of missed base coat also stand out in digital photography for some reason, perhaps because the images are so much larger than real life.

Fig. 10B Highlights

The recipes I used for these spot details were: Blue  Mordian Blue  Ultramarine Blue  VGC Magic Blue (Enchanted Blue works just as well) Red  VMC Cadmium Maroon Red  Red Gore  Macharius Solar Orange

Basing Stage 1 The base begins with Charadon Granite all over, following I paint the beam and building rubble Adeptus Battle Grey whilst the sand/rocks/earth were painted with Khemri Brown then given a light drybrush of Dheneb Stone. The whole base is then washed with thinned Badab Black and straight Devlan Mud to take the whitish edge of the Dheneb and make it look worn and dirty. The final step for the base will be weathering powder and highlighting the building rubble and beam.

Fig. 11 Basing Stage 1

Arms The arms are a microcosm of the black armour. Same steps, same result (hopefully), thus giving a uniform finish to the armour of the Marine. Cabling is red to match that on the legs and the metallics are facsimiles of the leg joints. Next up will be the backpack and bolter, followed by shoulder pads and markings. The arms were done in 25 minutes including 5 minutes for the stage by stage snapshots so all up we're just passing 2.5 hours now.

Fig. 12 Arms

Arms & Bolter Once dry the arms are ready to be added to the Marine. The joins for the arms were lightly scored with some sandpaper before being glued in place and left to dry. With the arms done I moved onto the bolter - the first step is to tack it to a bottle lid so I can paint it without touching it with my fingers and then to touch up any missing areas of primer. I'm aiming to keep my RG deliberately dark so I've opted for a black case for the bolter, painted the same way as the armour, with muted metallics. The bolter is spiced up a little with a white RG symbol and some bright cartridges in the magazine From side on you can also see the very basic lens I've done for the sight, as I've said before lenses aren't a strong point of mine despite years of trying to follow GW's recipe and any other I can lay my hands on. For this lens I've kept things simple and followed the same method as for painting the blue spot details listed earlier.

Fig. 13 Bolter & Arms

Backpack OK, we're at the last stages of painting now, just the pads and pack to go. The backpack receives the same highlighting as the rest of the armour. Again, I've added just a touch of colour by painting the panel inset on the pack, it's nothing overwhelming but helps make sure the mini isn't too dark and drab. Painting the inset took just a few minutes and it's one of those things that fellow modellers will notice you've taken the time to do, even for a tabletop force, and will appreciate.

Fig. 14 Backpack Inset

Shoulder Pads I paint the basic details onto the pads before I add them to the arms simply so that I don't end up splattering paint everywhere trying to reach those hard to reach places that crop up once you put the pack and pads on a mini:

Fig. 15A Shoulder Pads 1

One pad is black so gets the standard treatment - my RG Black mix is the first highlight. Again to save my hands I'm fairly liberal with this first highlight, we'll come back and tidy it up later. The right shoulder pad gets a green rim to mark the Marine as belonging to a Tactical Squad. This is achieved with two thin coats of Foundation Orkhide Shade; this gives a nice dark green base to work from as you can see in Figure 15A. The second highlights were applied to the pads before they were attached to the mini along with the backpack. I add the pack at the same time as the pads so I can see where it would obscure the pads from our imaginary lightsource and make sure I don't highlight those areas beyond the basic highlights. You can see in Figure 15B that I've used thinned Snot Green over the entire green rim not hidden by the backpack to brighten the colour up and help it stand out more from the black pad without getting too bright and taking away from our subdued look. The black pad has been hit with the 50/50 RBG/ABG highlight at this stage as well. Fig. 15B Shoulder Pads 2

Final Highlight, Shading & Basing In Figure 16 the pads have received their final, very fine highlight - straight ABG for the black pad and a 50/50 mix of Snot and Scorpion Green for the green trim. Note that these are applied only to the upper edges and those that would catch the light the most. After that I've shaded the black by using a Micron pen to ink in any panel lines and to give some definition to the area where the pad meets the trim. I've then used some Black Ink to tidy up the black trim on the left shoulder and some Badab Black wash to tone down that first highlight on the main areas of the pad. The green has been shaded by carefully painting two thinned coats of Baal Red wash down the centre of the trim, the red darkens the green without making it muddy or dirty like a black wash would. Finally I've added a very light dusting of MiG weathering powders to the base to give it some depth. A touch of Light Rust has been used on the beam, focusing on the bolts and Industrial Earth has been used more liberally on the rest of the base, including over the beam itself, to represent dust, detritus and debris swirling across the broken planet and settling on the little that remains of the city.

Fig.16 Final Details

This represents the completion of the paint job for our Raven Guard, only decals remain.

Decals I use Forge World’s excellent Raven Guard decals for Chapter and Squad markings on my Raven Guard. First step is to brush on a gloss varnish over the area(s) to be decal’d, let it dry thoroughly and it will provide plenty of purchase for the decal to be placed there. I strategically cut my decals to help them conform to shapes like shoulder pads. For the RG that means using a fresh scalpel blade to slice between the head and wings on each side and also between the two 'outside' feathers of the wings and finally between the claws and tail feathers. I also trim any excess film from the decal where possible to help with the final fit. Next I soak the decal in plain old tap water for about 20 seconds. While that's soaking I use plenty of Micro-Set to wet the area the decal will sit on. Next I transfer the decal to the mini, use a piece of tissue to blot up the worst of the excess Micro-Set and get the decal in the proper place before a final blot to lock it down. If the decal isn't quite flat I use a scalpel to 'pop' any bubbles or folds and a nice soft brush dampened with Aero-Set to smooth the wrinkles out. Repeat as necessary to obtain a smooth finish. I then paint over the RG markings themselves with a few coats of thin VGC Skull White or Reaper Dragon White to keep them really nice and clean and ensure the best contrast with the black (which helps the black look really black as an added bonus). I also make sure to paint over any remaining transparent areas of decal with black, again, it's all to max out the contrast and make black black and white white. Finally I seal by hand with gloss varnish once more and when that's dry I hit it with the Dull Cote matte spray varnish that gives my RG their 'stealth' coating.

Fig. 17 Decals

The Finished Product And here we have the finished product, decals, Dull Cote and all. Hopefully you’ve found this tutorial of some use and don’t forget to drop by the B&C to show us the results!

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