Topic: 8,000 points of Space Marines (The Galahadain)

[NewHeretic]

Here is my entire, painted, Space Marine army: The Galahadain.  It's about 8,000 points worth as I normally equip them.

There are still a few I need to finish (gold eagles, silver weapons, red crosses, etc.) and I have another 50 or so Space Marines that are in need of konverting and/or painting.

The entire (painted) army.




Some close-ups.

Master Commander Jonathon Rizzenson with his Command Squad and Razorback.


Tactical Squads Xaris and Kyrie with their respective Rhinos, Regina and Eleison.  (These are sometimes fielded as Veteran Squads.)


Vet Sgt Lamoni with Lamoni's Converts and Master of Sanctity, Moroni the Ambassador.


Vet Sgt Helaman with his Son's (Assault Squad Son's of Helaman) and Epistolary, Lehi the Prophet.



Vet Sgt Akish with his Scout Squad with Sniper Rifles.


Vet Sgt Gideon with his Sniper Scouts.


One of three more  Tactical Squads with their Drop Pod (Alpha, Omega, & Gamalial) and two of my five painted Devastator Squads.



Master Commander Rizzenson with his Terminator Command Squad and LRC transport.


Dreadnoughts Alma, Sosthenus, Mosiah, Orihah and much of the rest of the mechanized portion of the Galahadain's force.


Tornados (Squadron, Wrath of the Lamb).


Techmarine Coriantumr and his retinue.





Captain Ulfilas.



More...





Somehow, I didn't save the rest of the pictures to photobucket before I deleted them from my camera, so I'll have to add them later.

NewHeretic

[SeriousCallersOnly]

Hehe, I like your vindicator. That's almost as cheap a conversion as mine - I also used an old style rhino, but with a sawn-off Action Man Bazooka glued on the front

[XCrusaderguy01]

Lol. Gotta love the proxy Drop Pods. I wonder with the new kits out soon if these will be frowned upon.

[Damnation]

So, when's the dip scheduled?

[XCrusaderguy01]

Also, I just noticed that you have a lot of double assault weapon tac squads. You know this isn't legal int he new dex correct? I hope you have some heavy weapons to put in them. 

[Rick]

nice paint scheme,  but you need to base them and paint the faces for them to look finished, at least imo

[XCrusaderguy01]

nice paint scheme,  but you need to base them and paint the faces for them to look finished, at least imo

Honestly, nothing in the army looks done. Are you planning on dipping your army? This would add loads of definition to every single model, and would be sinfully easy to do.

Also, the close ups have the flash on. Combine this with mostly white and silver models and there is zero detail able to be seen in these shots. Use ambient light instead and turn off the flash.

[Khain Mor (/kharandhil)]

nice paint scheme,  but you need to base them and paint the faces for them to look finished, at least imo

Honestly, nothing in the army looks done. Are you planning on dipping your army? This would add loads of definition to every single model, and would be sinfully easy to do.

Also, the close ups have the flash on. Combine this with mostly white and silver models and there is zero detail able to be seen in these shots. Use ambient light instead and turn off the flash.

I feel pretty much the same, I feel that too many details are not painted yet. Doing the main color blue, red ,white ,whatever is always the easy part, but doing the details takes a lot of time, in some cases more time than the main color.

The army doesn't look like it's 8k big, I feel it lacks tanks...

I still do enjoy somehow looking at those rly old marines I used to fight against. I even had some myself, but I...destroyed them...(dont ask why and whatfor)

The drop-pods need more details...
I do find the concept interesting, why do pods have to be kinda square with lots of angles and plates...why can't they be round?

[Jehan-Reznor]

NewHeretic, i am not the best painter in de world but your army looks to monochromatic to me, how about a grey wash and some skin color?

[Zemanova]

ink wash - watered down blue, brown or black then apply a fine white high light.

[nesbitt_bub1]

right you need to get some painting done. IMHO there not much better than been undercoated white.

Grab one of the washes. Sepia would look good on them.

Then grab a colour for the eyes. scorpion green maybe.

And finally grab the black wash for the metals.

Once you have the models washed in the sepia, and the black on the silver, paint the eyes. Your army will look 500% better.

ATM that army is not pretty... and with a very small amount of work you could make it look pretty good.

[Darth Bob]

Yeah...the army is too plain, good work so far but...a few pointers:

- Add more detail to the plain white looks like you just primed them. Do a wash of wash with some plain white highlights.
- Make the captains' skin colors different than their armor. A more fleshy color would look way better.
- Make the eyes a good color, a bright green or red would look good.

Overall this army doesn't look anywhere near done, try some of these pointers and other reccomendations by others and I'm sure these guys will look much better .

[NewHeretic]

Thank you, gentlemen, for all the great painting advice.  I need it and will experiment with your suggested improvements.

I know my Drop Pods might not be acceptable in tournaments once the GW ones are released, but they'll still work at my LGS.  (I do intend to add fins some day.)

Lastly, what is a 'dip'?

NewHeretic

[XCrusaderguy01]

Lastly, what is a 'dip'?

"Dipping" refers to painting models in a simple scheme then quite literally dipping the whole model into a wood stain to give it definition. The stain settles into the crevices on the model, bringing out detail that looks great and is impossibly easy to do.

Your army would benefit from this especially. You can continue to just prime white and paint metals silver, then dip to bring out all the detail. My friend recently tried this with his tyranids, who have a very light scheme (mostly bleached bone) and it worked amazingly well after he tried it on a model or two.

I don't think I could recommend this technique to anyone more highly than I can to you. It'll give you a chance to get your whole army looking more "finished" while you bone up on more time consuming painting techniques on some new models.

[Darth Bob]

Here's an awesome example of how much better a mini will look after dipping:

Before:

After:

[XCrusaderguy01]

Thank you much for the demonstration, Darth Bob. 


And yeah, it is really, really, stupidly easy. Simple paint scheme, dip in wood stain, pull out and dab off the excess with a paper towel. Let dry.

That picture does a particularly good job showing how flat something painted all one color (the carnifexes white skin, or your plain white marines) suddenly come alive with all sorts of details that you could barely see before.

The only downside to dipping is the tendancy for models to look "shiny" after they dry. While this is fine for nids, who just look slimy, marines don't look so good like this. After they dry, you can easily spray a light layer of matte sealer over the model to dull the shine, and they will look great.

[NewHeretic]

Crusaderguy:   thanks for that awesome advice.  I think it sounds easy enough for even me to accomplish.   

Darth Bob:  that is an awesome comparison!  Thanks for the pictures.

Now, my concern is that the stain darkens the original quite a bit.  It looks perfect on the Tyranid, but assuming I want my Marines' armor to look 'pristine' white, could I just use a (much) lighter color of wood stain?

NewHeretic

[XCrusaderguy01]

Crusaderguy:   thanks for that awesome advice.  I think it sounds easy enough for even me to accomplish.   

Welcome. 

Now, my concern is that the stain darkens the original quite a bit.  It looks perfect on the Tyranid, but assuming I want my Marines' armor to look 'pristine' white, could I just use a (much) lighter color of wood stain?

Well, the really nice, clean, white look is unfortunately, very hard to get that "pristine" look. It requires a lot of subtle shading. Just priming white won't do it, and dipping will make it look darker.

[nesbitt_bub1]

you could try a light blue wood stain. blue and white tends to makes whites look clinical and clean. You could always reapply some skull white back to the models in very very thin layers before there finished if there mot bright enough.

What people are getting at is that a models painted all in white without a darker shade to give that white definition looks flat. The best whites you see on pro painted models ( eugh hate that term) are always not actually pure white. The painter will take a brown, grey, blue or something else and work it up to the pure white to give there white definition... The dipping or washing teqnique is a shortcut. Granted it won't look as good a brush painted army. But it will look far far better than what you have now with very little effort.


you could also thin down the woodstain. Some are waterbased, or can be thinned with celulose thinners (avoid these acatate based ones they will melt your plastics). This will make the effect more delicate.


personally if i were you I'd grab a couple of spare sprues with bits still atached, undercoat them then just play about with the stains and washes of a couple of hours. make sure you write down what you do to each piece so you can reproduce the effect. Once you find a method you like, then spam the rest of your army production line style. You'll have the full army dipped in a few hours.

[NewHeretic]

Excellent!  Thanks, Nesbitt.

NewHeretic