How to paint a grimdark Blood Angel
So in this short post, we will be going over how to paint a grimdark Blood Angel! This can be for Warhammer 40k, or indeed, the Horus Heresy!
This is going to be a brief overview, rather than an in-depth post. You may have seen, I have linked to a video on my YouTube channel where you can watch the entire process!
This post was originally posted over on my other website GloriousBadger and I have adapted it a little bit for this website! It was also one of my first painting videos for YouTube! I am looking forward to getting more painting videos in the future. Unfortunately, this does really require a house, or a studio!
Since the recording of this video, I have changed how I paint my Blood Angels and also started collecitng a few Blood Angels. I shall go into that in an entirely different post, however!
Paints required:
- Hull red
- Khorne red
- Mephiston red
- Evil Sunz scarlet
- Abaddon black
- Incubi darkness
- Dark reaper
- Zandri dust
- Ushabti bone
- Ivory
- Dawnstone
- White Scar
- Caliban green
- Warpstone glow
- Moot green ( scorpion green)
- Bilious green
- Neutral grey
- London grey
- Bastalt grey
- Gloss varnish
- Matt varnish
- Ivory black oil paint
- Raw & burnt umber
- Streaking grime
- Road dirt/ city dirt pigments
I’ve listed all of the paints used and I shall now give a brief rundown of the order I painted in the video. As a note, I would probably change the order I do things now!
Blood Angels armour
So, using an airbrush I gave the mini a good coat of Vallejo Model Colour Hull red.
Then we moved swiftly onto Khorne red, and then Mephiston red. I directed these from above, with Mephiston red being more focussed from above. You can consider this is as essentially zenithal lighting. Bright spots and edge highlights can be done with Evil Sunz scarlet.
Honestly, it was at this point, I wasted time doing some glazing, which will get mostly hidden by oil washes. At this point, I would save the glazing & further hightlighting for after the oil stage!
The black armour parts were Abaddon black, moving on to highlights of Incubi darkness and finally Dark Reaper!
Accessories
I painted the Aquilla with Abaddon black, then picked out the details with Dawnstone and finally Space Wolves grey. Now, they don’t make this anymore, so just adding a bit more white to Dawnstone will get you the same effect. I used these colours to paint all of the gun casing and backpack parts as well!
We did the purity seal with Zandri dust, then Ushabti bone and final highlights of Vallejo Model Colour Ivory. You can use some thinned Incubi darkness or similar if you want to scribble some writing on them!
For the eyes and wax seal, I used Caliban green as a base, moving up to Warpstone glow, then Moot green ( or Scorpion green if you have it!) Final highlights I used the ever amazing Bilious green – add some Dorn yellow to Moot green if you aren’t blessed with it.
Transfers & grimdark
Giving it a good gloss varnishing and having some tea whilst it dries is the next move! This is going to give us a good base to put the transfers on and then then oil washes.
Cut your transfers and soak in water until ready. Yes, using Micro SOL/SET is definitely good – I just didn’t have it at this point! I use a brush to slide the transfers off the backing paper and into position. I like to use a cottonbud to roll over the transfer which will speed up the drying process! Once it has completely dried, I give them a coat of gloss varnish to seal them
In this video, I use some Ivory black oil paint & odourless thinners and make up a thickish wash. The plan was to do some panel lining, but it was frankly a bit to thick to work. However, we did use it to line all of the armour panels etc. If any spilled, we tidied it up a little bit with a brush dipped in odourless thinners.
Once this had dried, we did some subsequent washes of burnt umber, maybe some raw umber mixed in. After we had gone away to make some tea and it had dried, we came back and cleaned it up a with a cottonbud. If it was slightly too dry, making that cottonbut damp with some thinners will help.Â
You can then use some streaking grime to add some extra depth – shaping the streaks with a thinners dipped brush. I think as time has progressed, I have generally slapped on much less off this than my first attempts. I know you can absolutely coat the miniature with this, I suppose it depends on what you want!
Once that has dried, I use the grey paints to paint the base, using progressively lighter colours, drybrushing the couple of layers on! Paint the lip of the base the colour that you want, in this case, I use Abaddon black!
Then you can give it a good matte varnish and once that has dried, you can brush on some pigments and use a pigment setter. This will help “sit” the miniature on the base and make it look like it belongs!
Blood Angels wrap up
I shall need to work on a better way of writing all of these up, in future! Maybe in a much more compressed format, relying on the video to get the details in? I was happy with how thie Blood Angels space marine turned out. As I said, I do now have some Blood Angels that I shall be painting up, including Death Company! I will be doing painting tutorials for as much as I can in the future! Thanks very much for reading and do consider signing up to the Newsletter below!
