Marine showcase - Blood Angels and Dark Angels

3rd installment is the original Angels of death. 

Blood Angels

My first and largest 40K army, Blood Angels hold a special place in my heart. The theme for this army is one of both retro touches and artistic flair for which the blood Angels are reputed. For the flair I tried to freehand several symbols onto the armour of each of the marines; angel wings, blood drops and the like, as well as freehanding all the chapter logos and painting chest eagles a variety of schemes. For the retro look I gave all the models the classic campaign symbol on the back of the right leg, black shoulder pads for squad leaders and sergeants (black trim for ordinary troops). 

This particular model is a squad leader from second squad, fifth company. The red was blood red over white with a vomit browm/blazing orange highlight and dark flesh shading. Battle damage in the forms of paint chips was achieved by painting a 'slice' of the highlight onto the armour, filling all except the edges of that highlight with 50:50 codex grey and chaos black, then painting boltgun metal within the dark area. The chest eagle was skull white then sunburt yellow, shaded with thinned blazing orange. 

The freehand wing is simply a codex grey silhouette followed by skull white detailing, leaving the codex grey inbetween as shading. This is a quick and effective way of giving the model the appearances of a Blood Angel artisan. The freehand on the chapter symbol just takes a bit of practice to get right. The base was goblin green on the top, calthan brown for the rim, followed generously by static grass. (old school)

Dark Angels

I don't actually have any normal Space marine model in my Dark Angel army, which is pretty much evenly split between ravenwing, terminators, vehicles and veterans. As they all have unique schemes, I thought a veteran would be the best model to show as he has at least some dark angels green on him. I used a black undercoat followed by dark angels green for the armour. This was then line shaded in the recesses with thinned chaos black and edge highlighted with scorpion green - a quick and effective way of getting nice DA armour.

The robes were painted with a 50:50 mix of calthan brown and dheneb stone, which was then highlighted progressively by adding more dheneb stone into the mix and likewise shaded by adding more calthan brown. I then applied a wash of gryphonne sepia which tied all the colours together nicely. It's a darker look than GW uses for the robes but I find it easier to paint and that it looks more monastic than the lighter colour. 

The chest eagle was dheneb stone, followed by bleached bone the shaded gryphonne sepia. The red inside to the robes was mechrite red, scab red then a highlight of blood red. (same for the gun casing) The stone coloured parts were codex grey washed with gryphonne sepia. (if you're spotting a pattern here with the sepia, you can make life easier by painting all the robes/details etc then washing it all in one go) For the red robe cord, I was lazy and just painted it mechrite red then washed with thinned black. The brazier was vallejo gold / tin bitz washed with thinned warlock purple to look like incense. Finally, for the base I painted it all scorched brown then heavily pressed on winter static grass.