Dark Angels Indomitus Deathwing Elite and Characters WIP - Part 1

 

Greetings.  The Dark Angels Deathwing characters and elites from Indomitus are coming along well.  I'm focused on the Bladeguard currently, but as I do certain batch painting, I've been skipping over to the Lieutenant, Ancient and to a lesser degree the Master. This helps use paint already on the wet palette to limit waste and in some cases saves time as well.  Let's look at the Bladeguard models more closely.

I started with the shields off, since they cover portions of the models and make things hard to paint.  I love the push-fit models for this. I'm trying out a new recipe for the bone color of Deathwing Armor.  Here I sprayed Pro Acryl Bright Ivory, from Monument Hobbies, and shaded that with GW Seraphim Sepia.  The model on the left was brush painted as a test model.  I quickly realized that wasn't going to work if I wanted these done this month, so the rest were all airbrushed.

I used standard GW Caliban Green on the tabards and chest eagles, shaded with Agrax Earthshade.  Then I had to have some fun with the tilting shields on front armor.  These Bladeguard are seasoned veterans with a long service record who have earned the right to display personal heraldry (In chapter colors, of course).  So a little fun with free hand here.  Decals may be applied as well once things get cleaned up.  

Next I painted all the leather work, eye lenses, the halos, base coated the power swords, and then spent some time on the storm shields.  These were great fun to paint and I like how they have turned out. Here's a close up of a shield.

The camera washes out the fact the the sun burst surrounding the skull in the middle is actually more gold than silver, but it's subtle in any case.  With much of the armor details and shading done, I could glue the arms on. Here they are, standing proud.

As I worked on various areas on the Blade Guard, I would occasionally skip over to the other characters as described above.  Here's where the Bladeguard Ancient stands currently.

The standard will be a special project, so I've mostly left that unpainted, focusing just on the marine (and some purity seals).  Here is the state of the Deathwing Lieutenant.

When I move on from the Bladeguard, I'll be well along in completing these other Deathwing characters.

I did not take an updated picture of the Master/Captain, but you can see that he is also coming along in the title picture above. With so many details, these models are taking some time to paint, but I like how they look in Deathwing colors.  Progress is being made and we'll see if I can complete them before the end of the year.  I have a suspicion that I'll need all that time to finish these six and likely won't get to the new Judiciar or Chaplain.  In fact, I misplaced the Chaplain somewhere, because I noticed while putting the article together that there is one in the box, but not on my painting table. 😂

He'll turn up in a future post, no worries.  So that's where the first week of December got me.  It's been interesting to pivot from the black Ravenwing to the bone colored Deathwing.  Dark Angels are a fun force to collect and paint for that reason.  There are many details that pull them all together, but the different armor worn by various companies really mixes thing up and makes for an interesting force on the table.  I look forward to finished family shots of the whole set of Indomitus marines painted up.

I hope your own projects are coming along this season and that your families are safe and healthy.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!