[Tale of Painters] sovietspace's Dark Angels

[sovietspace]

Hello there LO!

This thread started as a log of my entry for the 08/09 Tale of Painters Project. Since completing the project I've continued the thread on as my army heads towards 3000pts. I'll be keeping this front page updated with the progress of the army list - mostly for my own satisfaction! If I get time I'll link all the units to their relevant posting, it should help anybody browsing through

Dark Angels - 3000pts Apocalypse Army List

HQ
Belial
Interrogator Chaplain
Power Armour Chaplain

Elites
Forgeworld Ven. Dread

Troops
5 Deathwing (including Apothecary, Standard Bearer & Flamer)
5 Deathwing (including Cyclone ML)
5 Deathwing (including Assault Cannon)
Tactical Squad 1 w/ Rhino
Tactical Squad 2 w/ Rhino

Fast Attack
6 Ravenwing Bikers & 1 Attack Bike
1 Landspeeder

Heavy Support
Armoured Spearhead:
Land Raider Crusader
Land Raider (Normal)
Land Raider Ares

Total: 3000pts

Progress Key
Black = Yet to Buy
Red = Building Work in Progress/Boxed
Orange = Painting Work in Progress
Green = Finished

Thanks for reading guys!

++++ Original First Post Below++++

Hello all,

In the spirit of ToP I decided to make this WIP thread to track my progress, and as a sister to my small 40k blog: The Astronomican.

As the title suggests I'm planning on doing a Dark Angels army, as part of a larger 1500pts Army List I've been planning for a while. It's taken me about 3 months do do my first Deathwing squad (that I'm not entering to ToP), so hopefully this will give me a bit of motivation to get the rest of the army done quicker!

Here's what I'm planning on painting over the course of the project:

HQ
Belial with Lightning Claws - 130pts

Interrogator Chaplain with Terminator Armour - 145pts

Troops
5 Deathwing (including a Terminator Apothecary & Cyclone Missile Launcher) - 265pts

Tactical Squad (5 Man; Sergeant with Power Weapon) - 105pts

Fast Attack
6 Ravenwing Bikers & 1 Attack Bike - 290pts

1 Landspeeder - 65pts

Total: 1000pts

Progress Key
Black = Yet to Buy
Red = Building Work in Progress
Orange = Painting Work in Progress
Green = Finished


With only 19 models I'm hoping this shouldn't be too hard, even for me...

Anyway, this is a painting forum and where would we be without pictures?

First off here are a few pics of the Deathwing squad mentioned earlier. This is NOT being entered, but will give you an idea of what to expect.









So yeah, any comments on them greatly received - I'm working on how to do the banner and they will be getting a layer of highlights eventually, I just really wanted to start on my first months entry!

That entry will be the 10 man Tactical Marine Squad, coming in at 205pts. Here's my test model:





I'm pretty pleased at how this came out, and hopefully I should have my first entry ready by the 15th! Let me know what you all think and good luck to everybody else!

[Canew]

Pretty good on the test guy. Nice, clean paint job, not too thick. The highlights aren't too bad, but I suspect they look better in person.

My only suggestions are to put some script on those purity seals, and, for the love of the Emperor and all that is decent and holy, DRILL OUT THE ^$@#&% BARREL!

[xbanditsx]

Your shading on the Deathwing looks fantastic! You have a very clean and neat style. My only suggestion would be to add some more highlights to the armour on the Deathwing because it looks a little flat. However, the highlighting on the Marine looks really good so it might just be the photos washing out what you've done.

Great work!

[sovietspace]

Thanks for your comments guys, they are really appreciated.

Canew: Yes, its a fair cop, drilling out the barrels is something fairly simple that would improve these models a lot- I imagine I'll be picking up a drill next time I'm out and about. Thanks for the criticism!

xbanditsx: The Deathwing haven't actually been properly highlighted yet - building up the bone armour took forever and I'm putting them aside for the time being to work on ToP entries. However, in any free time I get from that I'll be working on both the highlights and a banner, watch this space.

The Marine was actually my first real crack at highlights, so I'm very pleased with that feedback!

[sovietspace]

Well, I realised a while ago that I'm a bit of an idiot. Because the sign up thread for ToP was posted some time in September I got the idea in my head that the first deadline was on the 15th of October (as opposed to the 15th of Nov.).

This has meant that I had already finished my tactical squad entry by that date and was ready to submit them before I realised my mistake. Doh!

So, not wanting to wait a month to submit them I've just decided to not use them in ToP - I'll just probably paint up a second tac. squad for my last entry.

Anyway, treating this a bit like a more general WIP thread, as opposed to a ToP one, I have attached some photo's of the completed tac. squad. Apologies for the lighting on some of the photos, they didn't work as well as I would have liked.

As you can see I've used a number of bits from the DA Veterans box, including some of the Veteran torsos. I decided to paint these marines in brown robes instead of the traditional Deathwing Bone for a few reasons. Primarily I think that bone robes stick out far too much in a dark green squad, I wanted them to look like a coherent unit. It also means that if I do ever get a veteran squad they will look distinct, as they should. And of course, the brown was far easier to achieve! Any thoughts on if this look works?

Any comments and criticisms are very welcome, there are more photos on my blog.

[sovietspace]

In an effort to actually put some ToP stuff on this thread, here are two WIP shots of my Ravenwing. They are coming along nicely I think, I just HATE painting white. I'm going to have fun with my Terminator Apothecary when I get to him...

Any comments etc. would be great.

[Zema]

Well, from seeing these pictures i guess you have some kind of experience with proffesional photography, the models look solid too!

[sovietspace]

Originally Posted by Zemaphore

i guess you have some kind of experience with proffesional photography, the models look solid too!

Yikes, thanks a lot! But I feel that I must tell you that all the photos were taken on an average camera phone (5.0 megapixels, if your interested), and my only photography experience comes from reading these two tutorials that I found right here on LO:

http://www.librarium-online.com/foru...otography.html
Photoshoping your mini pics! - Wyrd Miniatures

Shows what you can achieve with a bit of instruction.

Thanks for your comments!

[forumjayz]

Great stuff mate looks crisp and clean.

Keep up the great work

Repped and subsribed

Cheers Jayz

[sovietspace]

Right, as some of you may have noticed I managed to get my first ToP entry in. Here are a few extra shots of the Ravenwing...











I've got to be honest, I really didn't enjoy painting the 'wing much, and I'm not really sure why. They just dont seem as clean or nice as my Tac. Marines or Termis. I know I messed up the front light on a few of them & I struggled with the white feathers, but it just got to the point where I just wanted them 'done'.

It's quite amusing, because I know full well I would have been chuffed to churn these models out only a year ago, which is a nice indication of progress!

Any comments or criticisms from you out there are welcomed, and thanks for looking at my efforts!

I'll leave you with a shot of all my DA, they are finally starting to look like an army...