Sternguard

I decided to paint these Sternguard for a friend's Ultramarine army. (I guess I was fairly bored that week.) Check them out below, I think they turned out fairly nice.



To paint the armor, I use a very basic method (although time consuming). I start by painting all the armor areas in Ultramarine Blue. When this drys, I wash the armor with blue wash which should darken the color of the original coat immensely. When the wash drys, I highlight the armor with Ultramarine Blue again, making sure to leave dark lines at the joints, air vents and other areas to give the armor more depth. Finally, I line highlight the armor with a 1:1 mix of Ultramarine Blue and Skull White. The result is nice and easy to do.

Because I spray my miniatures with black primer, it is usually really difficult to get white to look right. The white on these models turned out okay, but could have been better. I started by painting all the areas of white with Dheneb Stone mixed with just a little black paint. Then, I applied a watered down Dheneb Stone mixed with Skulls White. Finally, I applied one last coat of pure Skull White.

The guns were painted with Chainmail, washed with black wash, and then highlighted with Mithril Silver. The black area of the gun was simply line highlighted with Codex Grey. The straps on the guns were painted with Scorched Brown and highlighted using Snakebite Leather. The scope was painted with Gore Red. Then the bottom half of the scope was highlighted with Blood Red. Finally, a very small dot of Skull white is applied in the upper corner of the scope. Using this method will get you really cool optic looks. Using more layers will really make the optic (or jewel depending on what you are painting) really stand out, however, make sure to always leave a dark version of the color surrounding the entire area.

The awards, decorations and ribbons on each Sternguard were also painted using a fairly simple yet time consuimg method. I started by painting the paper material with the Darksun foundation paint. After that drys, I apply a 1:1 mix of Darksun foundation and Bleached Bone/Skull White and apply it to raised areas of the ribbons. I then do a 1:2 mix of Darksun and Bleached Bone/Skull White to the more raised areas of the ribbon. Finally, I apply a pure Bleached Bone/Skull White. The result is usually pretty nice. If you'd like (and if you have an extremely small brush) you can even put some wording onto the paper to really make it stand out.