'When life gives you lemons, make lemonade'
or so the old saying goes, and you are going to rewrite that old saying to fit everyone's new annus horribilis, 2020, it would go something like:
'When life gives you a COVID-19 pandemic and you are holed up inside and slowly going crazy from cabin fever, exploit the opportunity to attend to your indoor hobbies'
Well, don't mind if I do!
My Warhammer painting hobby is one of my longest enduring, and most infrequently practiced hobbies. After moving last summer I actually furnished a dedicated hobby room decked out specifically for painting figurines, but after my initial diorama project, it did not see much use other than as a regular office and study. However, the COVID-19 quarantine meant that I had to spend a lot of time being holed up in my home, so I decided that this time was as good as ever to finally break in the Dark Millennium boxed set I purchased long ago and get around to finally paint some primaris space marines! The colour scheme was naturally going to that of my home-brew chapter, Voidlords, which is built around the colours blue(primary power armour colour), red(weapons, purity seals) and green(energy weapons, energy effects). However, I decided to change the hue of blue to a more greenish, turquoise one compared to my old marines - in part to shake things up a bit, but also to make the marines stand out a bit more:
Old blue vs. new blue
Another new thing was the investment I had made back when furnishing the hobby room to take my painting to the next level: An airbrush! While I have grand plans for what to do with this wonderful piece of equipment, I am still very much an airbrush novice and it shows - I can't even just do some simple base coating without getting my fingers all dirty:
spraying and paying - both figurines and fingers
I tried to work systematically and paint all figurines one step at a time rather than getting carried away with finishing the figurines one at a time, which is more satisfying but is ultimately more time-consuming. I took a break from the routine of tedious blue edge highlighting however, to focus on the power sword of the lieutenant. A lot of people use airbrush for painting power swords to great effect, but I did not feel ready for that just yet, so I stuck to what I knew, and using this tutorial as a guide, I achieved a pretty decent result:
Green power effects give a good contrast to the blue armour
The airbrush really showed its worth in the gradual shading I was able to get on the banner; an effect that is impossible to replicate using only a brush. Generally, I am very pleased with how the banner turned out overall with the shading, the stars and the blue and red contrast:
The Standard Bearer
And given the weird combination of religion and technology of the Warhammer 40k universe that the space marines embody, it is of course essential to litter their armour with inscriptions, constellations (to keep in line of the overall theme of my chapter) and starry decorations. The starry patterns came out with varying success depending on whether I managed to get the viscosity of the paint just right, but the overall feel is more or less how I wanted it to be:
So that was the first squad all done. Next up is the captain and some Primaris hellblasters - I will try to muster the courage to use the airbrush more next time around. Future goals include some eliminators and maybe a Astra Militarum detachment.
Thank you for reading another entry in my series about my nerdy hobby. If you like my content, please leave an upvote and a comment and please consider following me as well!