Mk 7 Space Marine in Primaris Scale

When primaris space marines were revealed back in 2017, I really liked the new proportions and design but had mixed feelings about the move away from the classic mark 7 armour (and earlier marks) that I grew up with. It’s purely nostalgia I think – it doesn’t matter how amazing the new miniatures are, they just can’t recapture that golden era of my youth!

The problem is that once I’d had my eyes opened to the new space marine proportions, it was difficult to look at the classic marines and not see their underdeveloped legs and lack of abdomen! So sometime last year I thought it would be a fun little project to make a mark 7 tactical marine in primaris scale.

The miniature you see here was made from scratch in blender, using measurements I took from a primaris marine to get the proportions right. I thought it would be fun to add a few blood angel specific bits of bling and I tried out some swirly embellishments on the pauldrons, but I think the mini actually would have been better without these. I printed it on my Elegoo Mars 3, using standard Elegoo resin.

I kept the paint job nice and simple since I didn’t want to get bogged down spending a long time on what was just supposed to be a bit of fun. Just an ‘Eavy Metal style but trying to bring some of that second edition blood angels flavour in with the black rims on the pauldrons and the bright yellow chest eagle! I suppose I should have gone all in with a goblin green base really. Maybe next time!

For those that want to know my recipe for the red armour, it’s as follows:

Basecoat 1:1 mephiston red and evil sunz scarlet over a very pale flesh coloured primer (white would be fine, it’s all about getting a really vibrant red).

Shade with khorne red, then a khorne and incubi mix and finally black in the deepest recesses.

Edge highlight with evil sunz scarlet, wild rider red, fire dragon bright and small spots of lugganath orange.

Blood Angels Primaris Lieutenant

When Games Workshop announced the first Blood Angel specific primaris space marine there was no doubt that I was going to have to paint it! So here you have the Gareth Nicholas version, complete with shiny armour, textured loincloth and underwhelming base (TM). I have some fairly strong views about this miniature that I’d like to get off my chest so I’m going to put them at the bottom of this post where most people won’t bother to read them. 😉

Fans of my painting guides will be pleased to know that this guy features in vol 5 and you can get your copy from the Etsy store as usual.

I used the ‘Eavy Metal version of the miniature as inspiration and kept the yellow shoulder pad with red stripe. It’s reminiscent of Captain Tycho so I stole his icon and added that too. The miniature has a very plain power sword so I replaced it with a more ornate version from the Sanguinary Guard kit and painted it in my preferred style for these weapons. I’ve tried to add some extra shine to the armour on this miniature and it’s definitely something I want to explore further in future.

Review (and rant)

I have to admit that when I first caught sight of this miniature I was somewhat disappointed. In the photos I felt that the pose looked a little awkward but I was prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt and bought it anyway.

Having built the miniature I can report that there’s nothing technically wrong with the pose but I still find it an odd choice as it doesn’t seem to have any angle that looks particularly good. I think it helps if the miniature is positioned at the top of a step as it gives him a reason to be looking down but it’s still not an angle that I like for the head and I would prefer the torso to be a little more in line with the hips.

I also can’t understand why the halo piece is separate from the backpack. It’s not a big deal but it seems like a fiddly bit of assembly that could have easily been avoided.

On the plus side I appreciate that the loincloth doesn’t have any sculpted on detail for once and the face and hair are really great and were very enjoyable to paint. But why does he have a massive scar on his face? A disfigurement like this would surely be anathema to a Blood Angel! Captain Tycho wore a mask to hide a similar injury so why does this guy not care?

The power sword that comes with the mini is very plain. I can’t understand why it doesn’t have any kind of Blood Angels iconography at all. This guy is fairly senior – shouldn’t he have a cool sword?

But the real issue I have with this guy is that he isn’t Dante, Tycho, Mephiston, Astorath, Corbulo or the Sanguinor! Seriously, who thought that what the Blood Angels really needed was a rather plain lieutenant when all these legends of the chapter are languishing with old sculpts in the abomination that is finecast?! It’s a very odd choice in my book when we already have plenty of primaris lieutenants that can be made to be Blood Angels with minimal work.

Here endeth the rant. It’s not a bad miniature and I hope I haven’t offended anyone with my views but I just feel this little release could have been so much more awesome, so I wanted to use my little corner of the internet to voice my ill-informed opinion. 🙂

Blood Angels Chaplain

I’ve had the blood angels chaplain in my “future projects” pile for years, but with the advent of primaris space marines it became clear to me that if I didn’t get off my backside and make the chaplain a current project pretty soon then he’d probably never get painted!

I’ve been sharing some work in progress on instagram (nicholas.gareth), but here he is in all his finished glory.

If you’d like to know every detail about how I painted this miniature then you can purchase a painting guide here. I’ve used pretty much the same paints and techniques that I used when I painted my slayer sword winning blood angels diorama, so if you’d like some more insight into how that piece was created then this guide is for you!

The chaplain is also for sale, so please contact me if you’re interested in adding him to your collection. Sold, sorry!

Blood Angels Space Marine

Every good performance deserves an encore, right? I was really pleased to be asked to paint this commission in the same style as my Blood Angels diorama (right down to the base).

There were plenty of opportunities for freehand with the parts that were chosen. I took inspiration for the loin cloth from the art on the cover of an old blood angels codex. It’s difficult to make out on the pictures but there is texturing on both this and the banner. The design on the right shoulder pad was adapted from space hulk.

I filled the indented crosses on the knees since neither I or the client were particularly keen on them, and it provided the opportunity to get a squad marking on the left knee.

Full non metallic metal was requested for this one, and I’m quite pleased with the result I achieved on the gold trim. I also experimented with a slightly different approach on the power sword, but the position of the power node thing is further down the blade than I’d like, which I found a little restrictive in terms of the effects I could employ.

My next painting project will be another commission – a dark elder archon this time. In the background I’m continuing to work on my sculpting too, focussing on 30 mm scale miniatures at the moment.

Blood Angels Terminator Librarian

The librarian is now finished! Since the last update I painted the axe, went back and touched up the armour (particularly some of the transitions on the red shoulder pads that I wasn’t happy with), painted the gems and spent a little more time working on his face. Oh, and the base. 😉

For the force axe I base coated with black and then applied area highlights in two stages using a mix of turquoise and white (about 1:1 and then with more white added). I then painted on the lightning using a brush with a good point and applied some glazes here and there until it looked right. Unusually for me I didn’t use the maximum colour saturation (unmixed turquoise) at any point. The miniature is already pretty colourful and I didn’t want to overdo it.

I’ve glazed some more purple and blue tones into the shadows on the face, as I wanted to convey that this guy isn’t super healthy and the psychic ability is taking a toll on him. I’ve painted some veins around the temples to emphasise this too. For some reason I’ve struggled to get the mouth looking right on this miniature – in the end this was the best I could do!

I thought long and hard about adding some damage to the armour. Having spent the time getting to a point of shiny perfection I find it very difficult to then do something that will detract from this, and I’ve bottled out of doing it in the past. On this occasion I came to the conclusion that damaged armour would suit the somewhat stressed-looking face better than a factory fresh suit, so I took a deep breath and plunged in! Here’s a picture of how he looked before:

I’m happy with my decision and it was good to push myself out of my comfort zone. That’s two new things on this piece, since I had never attempted textured freehand before either. 🙂

I built the base out of ureol modelling board, plasticard and a couple of brass etch pieces from forgeworld. It’s quite simple, but that is very much my style – I’m still having headaches over the high elf sea base at the moment too, and I couldn’t handle having two difficult basing projects on my plate!

Overall I very much enjoyed this project. It’s a great sculpt by Ed Cottrell for the best space marines chapter 😉 and hopefully I’ve done it justice!

You can find earlier work in progress here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Blood Angels Librarian Part 3

Another week goes by and some more progress on the librarian.

I’ve finished up the glazing on the blue armour and moved on to the red. I used the citadel reds here – it brought back happy memories of the hundreds of hours I spent on my blood angels diorama a couple of years ago! The base coat is mephiston red, then I highlighted with a mix of evil sunz scarlet and white, then again with more white. To shade I just added abaddon black to mephiston red. Then lots of glazes with mephiston and evil sunz.

I plan to go back to tidy up the armour a little more towards the end of the process and apply some final spot highlights. I think the lighting/camera has done something funny to the red armour in these quick pictures too – the transition between red and shade is definitely more gradual in reality than it appears here! Gah.

I’ve elected to go with true metallics on this piece rather than non metallic metal. I think it’s fair to say that the combination of this kind of shiny armour and true metallics is a bit of a marmite style. Personally I like this approach as the shinyness gives the miniature some extra impact in the hand but I have to admit that it doesn’t photograph as well as non metallic would.

For the gold I’ve used retributor armour, with a mix of dark flesh and black in the recesses, then highlighted with liberator gold and mithril silver. The steel is vallejo gun metal, shaded with black and highlighted with stormhost silver and mithril silver. Both metals get final spot highlights with vallejo metallic medium.

Plenty of parchment on this guy. After all, he’s a librarian so it makes perfect sense that he’d strap parts of his library to himself before heading into battle. 😉 For this I base coated with creamy ivory (reaper) over an initial layer of creamy ivory and khemri brown to help with coverage. Then I shaded with rhinox hide and a little black before highlighting with some white added to the ivory. After I painted on the text squiggles (a mix of rhinox and black) I used a wash of gryphonne sepia to yellow it up and increase the difference in colour with the robe a bit more.

Not too much more to do now, although I’m sure the final stages will take twice as long as I expect as usual! I should be able to get onto the axe this week. 🙂

Blood Angels Librarian Part 2

After the very early WIP here, I’ve made a decent amount of progress with the blood angels librarian this week.

As you can see, he’s now fully assembled. I reduced the shadows under the cheek bones a bit before gluing the chest piece in, as I felt I’d gone a bit too far with those.

I have to say that I’m finding this miniature a joy to paint. The sculpt is by Ed Cottrell and it’s a lovely open stance with some fantastic details. I’ve made some minor modifications by removing the sculpted on detail from the loin cloth and cleaning up a couple of areas on the legs where the limitations of injection moulding had required some filled in detail.

At the moment I’m working on the armour. So far I’ve base coated using kantor blue through my airbrush (I like to use the airbrush for base coating as it saves a little time). Then I built up the highlights using 1:1 enchanted blue (old citadel) and ghost white (reaper), then with more ghost white added following the technique described here. I shaded with abaddon black.

On the lower half of the miniature I’ve been applying glazes of enchanted blue and kantor blue, but I haven’t started this above the waist yet, so you can see the difference this makes. Still some way to go before the armour is done. I’m thinking I’ll add a little bit of battle damage too…

For the loincloth I wanted to experiment with combining some texturing with freehand as it’s not something I’ve done before.

I base coated with a mix of deck tan (vallejo) and rakarth flesh (citadel). Then I shaded quite roughly with 1:1 rakarth and cloudy grey (reaper), then 1:1 rakarth and abaddon black. The next step was to paint the freehand design, for which I used mephiston red (citadel). I then went over the whole loincloth using a brush with a very good point and just building up lots of dots using my previous mixes and going up to pure white dots on the creases. For the red areas I added black for the shade and the highlight dots were a mix of evil sunz scarlet (citadel), bestigor flesh (citadel) and deck tan. Looking at the pictures I may push the shading a little further, but I’m fairly happy with how this experiment has turned out.

More work in progress

I’ve finished painting the sea lord now and I’m very pleased with how this has turned out. I’ve spent a lot of time on this over the last month but it has been worthwhile. It’s a lovely miniature with lots of great little details. I wish I knew who sculpted it, so if you know then please tell me!

The outside of the cape is still a little glossy and I’m unsure about committing myself to using a spray can on it (testors dullcote) since the thought of something going wrong with so many hours invested in the mini is very scary. I’ve applied a couple of coats of lahmian medium and that has definitely helped, so I think I’ll probably just leave it as is.

I’ve spent quite some time putting extra little touches into the model that are hard to see from the pictures: wood grain on the inside of the shield, very fine hair strands, a texture on the inside of the cape, and some more texture on the ends of his sash. You can maybe make out some of these on the picture below:

I’m now into the phase of experimenting with various water effects for the base, so he won’t be completely finished for a while yet. I’ve therefore started my next painting project, and it’s back to 40k! Very early days for this Blood Angels librarian at the moment. I’m painting the head before I complete the assembly:

True metallic on this piece. But I’ll be doing my trademark shiny armour as well… 😉

Blood Angels Battle Brothers

By far my most ambitious piece to date, this diorama took something like 400-500 hours of painting over about 8 months.

Blood Angels have always held a special place in my heart since those halcyon days of 40k 2nd edition when my brother and I used to battle over my hotly contested bedroom carpet. I think the artwork that GW were putting out was what won me over to the chapter. Dave Gallagher’s image of a golden commander leading the Blood Angels against some genestealers remains one of my favourite pieces to this day, and was very much in my mind when I conceived this piece.

The GW plastics are universally excellent, but I had a real struggle finding a suitable miniature for the commander. I had already rejected a couple of finecast Tychos when the limited edition captain was fortuitously released and I realised that it would be a relatively simple matter to convert him for my purposes.

I spent quite a lot of time faffing around working out the best positions for all the minis and deciding how many to commit myself to painting. I only wanted to use flavours of Blood Angel that would have been around in 2nd edition, so no Sanguinary Guard (even though they are really cool). I knew I wanted a Terminator and couple of Death Company alongside the commander, so I needed to include enough tacticals to balance it out.

Painting-wise there was nothing particularly revolutionary here – just hour after hour of glazing. I stuck to a tried and tested triad of ochre, red and cyan and used my standard techniques for painting shiny armour (which I intend to cover in a future post). There are quite a lot of freehands throughout the piece: every marine has a name painted on him somewhere and I remember taking quite some pains to try and make sure that the chapter icons on the tactical marines shoulder pads were as near to identical to each other as I could make them. I suppose I could have used transfers, but that’s not how I roll.

I always had the slayer sword in mind when I was working on this, as I’d previously had feedback from the judges that I should do something bigger than my habitual single miniature entries at Golden Demon. Of course, I hadn’t realised that 2015 would see a series of ‘mini demons’ rather than the full fat event, so I ended up taking the sword at Golden Demon: Space Marines. It was indeed a proud moment but I do still have a nagging feeling that I need to go back at some point and try and win a ‘proper’ sword…