New Dark Angels Painting Tips

From time to time, we update our old How to Paint Everything articles with new techniques and images. Today we've updated How to Paint Everything: Dark Angels, with new painting methods from Jack "BenBooley" Hunter and Greg "Greg" Chiasson. If you want to check out the full article, you can find it here. Otherwise, if you just want the new stuff, it's below!

Deathwing Terminator Praetor by Jack Hunter (shown above)

I was incredibly excited when updating this article came up as FW have released two Dark Angel Praetors, one in power armor and one in terminator armor. We've pretty well covered painting green up above, so this gave me a perfect excuse to try out painting bone. This isn't quite a perfectly traditional Deathwing - I've painted the inside of cloth bits, and some of the smaller cloth areas in red rather than pure green, and did the chest eagle in black, and instead of gold trim I went with a dark silver for contrast.

Prime with Vallejo Desert Tan (73.813)
Do a first pass in the shadowed areas with Vallejo Model Air Bud Brown (71.037)
Do a second smaller pass inside the previous with Vallejo Model Air Rust (71.080)
Hit upper surfaces with a highlight of Vallejo Model Air Insignia White (71.279)
Spray a few thin passes with Citadel Air Terminator Stone to tie it all together and lighten the shadows a bit
Gloss varnish the entire thing
Use AK Paneliner Sand and Desert (AK 2073) to wash into all the recesses
Matte varnish, then use a torn up piece of foam and Citadel Rhinox Hide to add some chipping
Start painting in all the details. I typically block in any large areas of color (so on this model the chest eagle, silver areas, and robes) so I can see what it'll look like, then start on the details. I used Vallejo Model Color Dark Grey (70.994) as the base for all my metals. Red Cloth: Follow my BA painting method Other Reds: Mephiston Red, Carroburg Crimson, Wild Rider Red, Troll Slayer Orange Greens: Caliban Green, Nuln Oil Gloss, Warpstone Glow, Moot Green Undersuit: VMC 70.994 Dark Grey, Black Templar Contrast Blacks: VMC 70.994 Dark Grey, Nuln Oil Gloss, VMC 70.867 Dark Blue Grey, Scale75 SC-03 Graphite Golds: Scale75 SC-87 Decayed Metal, Druchii Violet, Scale75 SC-72 Viking Gold, 50/50 Viking Gold + SC-75 Citrine Alchemy Sword: Scale75 SC-63 Black Metal, Nuln Oil Gloss, Scale75 SC-66 Speed Metal Armor Trim: Iron Hands Steel, Nuln Oil Gloss, Speed Metal Other Silvers: Vallejo Mecha Color 69.058 Gunmetal, Nuln Oil Gloss, Speed Metal Parchment: Skeleton Horde Contrast over the bone basecoat
Glue on the sub-assemblies, matte varnish the whole thing, and gloss varnish the eyes.
I painted the base with Mournfang Brown before coating it in Agrellan Earth, which got washed with Seraphim Sepia and drybrushed with Terminatus Stone, but you should base him to match the rest of your army.

Deathwing Terminator Praetor, from behind. Credit: Jack Hunter

Fallen by Greg "Greg" Chiasson

Or another, more different, type of black power armor. I have to say, I am not super thrilled to be following that Deathwing model. I'm just going to have to hope you stopped reading after Booley's part of the post, and get on as best I can here.

Anyway, Fallen are the Dark Angels that aren't Dark Angels, which I think makes them the darkest of all possible angels. No official models exist, unless you count the obviously photoshopped Veterans kit on Games Workshop's web store, but it's easy enough to kitbash any non-Primaris marine kits from either the Space Marines or Chaos Space Marines range. In my case, it was a mix of MK3, MK4, the MK7 Dark Angels Veterans I linked above, some random Primaris bits I had, and a box of Chaos Space Marines, assembled entirely at random with no attention to whether any of it matched (this hilariously led to one model that was, entirely by accident, in a full matched suit of MK3).

A small unit of Fallen. Image Credit: Greg Chiasson

Given that these are 11-point bolter jabronis in a joke army that has almost no rules support, the goal was not to spend too much time on them, but I still wanted to try something different from my usual Ravenwing black armor. I wanted something that looked appropriately grimey and banged-up, because lord knows these goobers have Been Through Some Stuff. In contrast to my normal Dark Angels, where I leave off the pouches and decoration in order to keep the silhouette clean, I also loaded them up with extra gear to reflect the fact that they're always on the move and probably have to haul their entire kit across the galaxy.

Most of the layers are in the armor:

Prime white. Corax White, specifically
Black Templars Contrast on the armor.
Flesh Tearers Red contrast on the gun, and the Dark Angels shoulder logo. Edge highlight of VGC Bloody Red
Wide highlight with VGC Cold Grey
Finer highlight with VGC Wolf Grey
Wash the entire thing with Agrax Earthshade.

Everything else is literally two or three layers. Leather is VGC Dark Fleshtone, highlit with VGC Beasty Brown, and washed with Agrax. Metals are just VGC Chainmail Silver washed black, and golds are VGC Glorious Gold washed brown. Most of these colors were picked entirely at random, but they kind of work, so that was nice.