Blood Ravens Expeditionary Force Primaris

[Patrick Boyle]

Knowledge is Power, Guard it Well

So thanks to Dawn of War introducing me to Warhammer 40k however many years ago now, I've spent the last three painting Space Marine minis. I don't have a lot to show for that time, as I paint slowly and mostly only when the mood hits me, but I'm finally to the point where I feel good enough to share my work with the world at large rather than just my friends. So here now I'm unveiling the start of my attempt to complete not just an entire Company of marines, but a force even larger than that. The Blood Ravens, being a fleet based chapter, are constantly sending out forces in search of lost knowledge, particularly of their chapter's founding. My idea here is a post-DoW2:Retribution force, where now Chapter Master Gabriel Angelos is leading one such force consisting of the 4th Company, the marines who featured throughout DoW2, elements of the 1st, and then associated chapter command.

So, lets get started, with the first half of the IVth Company, 2nd Squad.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3760/11896962273_c92902d5e5_b.jpg

The Razorback isn't quite finished and will feature more in a later post, when I get all of my current transports completed and up to standard soonish.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3749/11896685785_0afc8363f5_b.jpg
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3831/11897764636_8a692a727d_b.jpg
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2829/11897548696_3cbfc19d83_b.jpg

I really like that there's a whole Beaky armor set in the new tactical box. I gave him one of the Phobos bolters I have laying around to add to the old-schoolness. Aside from that bolter and some purity seals from the Grey Knights box, the rest of those marines are purely bits from the new kit. I really like the newer marine minis, the new castings are so much cleaner than the old box was. There's a few more here at Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/84497250@N06/sets/72157639664658456/), including a shot of just the Sergeant, and a couple heavy weapon tacticals I also did in this batch.

Next on the block is going to be the other 5 marines to finish 2nd squad, as well as final touch ups(finally) on my 3 Rhino/Razorbacks and 3 Drop pods. After that it's a toss up. My Gabriel Angelos conversion is half assembled but I think I want to do a few things differently with him. I have another drop pod partially assembled(I want a total of 5 eventually). I've got a Mark IV Venerable Dreadnought who will eventually be Davian Thule, and I want to use the Sternguard kit I've got to make a Command Squad to go along with my Tigurius counts-as Librarian. So many choices...

[Patrick Boyle]

And here's a few of the Librarian hiding in the middle of that tactical squad, I decided against going with the creepy cherub, and instead fished out a servo skull from the Devastator kit I've had sitting around primed for ages. Rather conventiently said skull has a IV carved into it already, so it fits in nicely. I tend to use this guy as a Tigurius stand-in, given the Blood Ravens are known for having powerful, prescient Librarians. Works out nicely. Really liked how he turned out, especially the glowing eyes.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2871/11897110354_28b05e818c_b.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7381/11897422324_688bf11049_b.jpg

[SadisticMagician]

love the Librarian's eyes!

[Pauly Addams]

Wow, absolutely stunning work. :D

All the attention to detail is great, particularly the colour markings on the armour; e.g. company marking on the knee pad (I'm assuming that's what it's for), which a lot of folks seem to slack off on these days. And the full Mk VI armoured Marine.

Awesome, look forward to seeing more.

~Pauly

[Darren Richardson]

I agree, wonderful work and great personal detailing makes these stand out, and yeah, the beaky looks great :)

[Wolfshade]

Awewsome :)

[phil035]

Can't wait to see the rest of the squad and your take on Gabriel Angelos

[euansmith]

Nice clean paint job.

[Nurglesprince]

Stunning work there sir. :)

Dan

[Gingerpanda]

Great painting, I'm envious that you managed to paint the Blood Raven emblem, something I lack the skill to do.

[dirkspair]

the BR sybol is a decal. but great work nonetheless, BR have a nice color combo and you make it look really great. kudos.

maybe a bit of that white around the decal would make it less obvious.

[Patrick Boyle]

Great painting, I'm envious that you managed to paint the Blood Raven emblem, something I lack the skill to do.

Well, you can stop being envious because it's not painted :p I'd be envious of someone able to do that good a job freehand. Forgeworld actually sells a Blood Ravens transfer sheet. Blood Ravens emblems in all manner of sizes plus enough tactical, assault, devastator and command shoulder badges for an entire company, plus a lot of librarian symbol transfers as well.

And thanks to everyone so far. Seeing as I got posted to the BoLS facebook page I guess I should try to get a little more variety in here sooner than later, so lets dip into some of my older models. I mentioned before that I don't think a lot of my olderstuff is quite up to snuff, and my tactical marines in particular are probably all getting dipped at some point to try again, but there's a few standouts from the last year where things really started to click for me. That said these photos are really reminding me I need a better photo setup, anyway, lets start with someone who should be familiar to anyone who has played Dawn of War 2...

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3693/11914068834_f637944229_b.jpg

Scout Sergeant Cyrus. The Telion model should be recognizable, the head is converted from the same, greenstuffed by a friend of mine waaaay better at it than I am. There's some touching up him and his squad need that's on the list of things to get done but consider this a tease I guess.

[Patrick Boyle]

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5544/11913585875_e937e5d87a_b.jpg

Hey, they didn't have those in Dawn of War. Well, that's true, but even going back into 5th edition where they died to a stiff breeze this guy would win games for me. It was also the first mini where I was truly proud of the finished paintjob. Not so happy with the model itself though. This is one of the metal ones, purchased less than a month before they moved these guys over to finecast. The symptoms of the sloppy casting are evident, to me anyway, all over the cannon itself, especially the treads, but it all came together pretty well. Fastforward a year and a half later and the little screen on the back of it has vanished and there's some dings in the paint from falling off high places, but it's still a workhorse in my army and I still think it looks good.

[m3g4tr0n]

This is absolutely fantastic! Great work!

[Patrick Boyle]

And the Stormtalon. A lot of people don't like this model, but aside from the landing gear on the nose turret I really do, so I just lopped the landing gear off and patched it up some. I bought the model right when it came out but didn't end up painting it until last spring. Even now there's things I'd do differently but this was the start of where I figured out how to handle vehicles.

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5539/11914493196_d20b75f54e_b.jpg

The flash on this next one brings out some of the flaws less visible in normal light but is mostly meant to highlight that I'm insane and fully painted the cockpit instruments as well. Even the ones mostly hidden by the pilot...

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3754/11914485386_35e56e82ec_b.jpg

A couple more photos at flickr again. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/84497250@N06/sets/72157639695021306/)

So, from here on out will mostly be newer models. I have a couple of vehicles to work the decals onto a little more(the Razorback seen above and something a little bigger...), then it might be a bit till there's anything new. Thank you all for indulging me so far though.

[Patrick Boyle]

the BR sybol is a decal. but great work nonetheless, BR have a nice color combo and you make it look really great. kudos.

maybe a bit of that white around the decal would make it less obvious.

Yeah. I've tried a bit on the tactical marines in the first post to sponge a bit of bone paint on the edges of the decal to get them to blend a bit better but it hasn't entirely worked. I guess the best solution would be to get good enough at freehanding the emblem to not need the decals but as much time as I already put into these guys I'm not sure I'd have the patience, so I guess I'll continue trying to work out how to get the decals to blend. I've ordered some mico-set and micro-sol as I've heard good things, guess we'll see how that goes.

[SuperDann]

Well, you can stop being envious because it's not painted :p I'd be envious of someone able to do that good a job freehand.

I did Deathwatch marine with a freehand Blood Raven symbol. All I can say is it put me off ever wanting to any more than that one Marine. I don't blame you at all resorting to transfers.

Anyway, your painting is so clean and precise. I'm jealous of your evident patience and look forward to seeing more.

[Patrick Boyle]

Well then, between impending work deadlines, The Banner Saga releasing, and unnaturally cold weather(around Florida anyway) making me want to avoid anything other than being bundled up(again, you don't put the heat on when you live in Florida if you can avoid it...), hobby work has been slow, but I've been chipping away at a few things here and there. Some more tacticals are being assembled, bits are being sorted up to get rolling on my Honor Guard, and I've gotten one of my three Rhino/Razorbacks finished.

"2" on the front over the tactical symbol aside(note to self sponging red over white decals gets you pink...) I think I did a much better job here blending the decals in, no?

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7406/12112324564_10afccd7b4_b.jpg
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5478/12111933735_2edaafa7a9_b.jpg

For some reason I really wanted to do a LasPlas turret. So I did, and here's a closeup of it. Ah photography, revealing all of the little bitty things I didn't notice while giving the model the last once over. Also featured is a somewhat weak attempt, I think anyway at OSL. I try to make it sutble when I go for it, and some times I think I go a bit far...

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2869/12112228763_eec4ebd905_b.jpg

And lastly with the Razorback turret swapped for Rhino top doors, taken with a totally different exposure setting because I don't know how to camera. I should maybe invest in a proper setup...

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7399/12111929395_23a7215a43_b.jpg

Anyway, I'm looking for some criticism on this one when it comes to the weathering, both the dirt and the few bits of paint chipping I tried. It's the first time I've really tried either. I'm generally happy with how the dirt came out, trying to give it a dusty appearence to match the dried out, deserty feeling of the marine bases with a touch of orange for the sandstone. I applied it over the new technical Typhus corrosion, because I didn't want it just flat on the model but the grit doesn't seem to have done much, maybe I didn't lay it down thick enough? The paint chipping though I'm a bit split on, and definitely open to suggestions, though I'm thinking I should probably get some more specific pictures for that.

Generally though I like how this turned out. I usually feel like I have to suffer through doing vehicles to paint the minis I actually like, but the process on this one was pretty painless and will hopefully help going forward. If only I'd started doing them the way I did this one. I have two other Rhinos and three pods all partially finished that I'd started painting in a totally different fashion, and comparing them to how I've done my most recent vehicles(this guy, and the flyers, one of which I've already posted and the other not quite ready for prime time...) is kinda painful and is making me drag my feet on finishing them, but I've got to suck it up. Onward!

Oh, and to give people an idea, the 'shopping list' for Gabriel Angelos at the moment, for the major bits anyway, goes roughly like this...
- Non-helmeted head from the new Chaplain out of the Reclusiarch Command Squad box
- Chest plate from the multipart marine commander
- A heavily modified pair of Grey Knights legs; the ones with a skull on each knee cap, to have the text area filled in and some wings from banner toppers used to make winged skull greaves
- The cape from the Forge World Ivanus Enkomi kit...
- modified to use the eagle head backpack from the Commander kit
- Inquisitor Coteaz's daemonhammer, plus some little winged skull bits out of the Commander kit...
- a Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard shoulder pad, the one with the large sculpted Blood Angels emblem...
- and a bunch of greenstuff being applied to many of the above parts

[Lord Ezekial]

That's a great paint job! Great work!

[Patrick Boyle]

Woah pseudo necro bump. I mentioned in the first post I paint slow, no? Work, my girlfriend visiting, then the tournament season for X-wing Miniatures and Android Netrunner, and Titanfall, took away from my painting time through most of February and into early March. I'd started a large new batch of tactical marines but they ended up on hold when GW released a certain model, and I figured hey, the Blood Ravens and Mechanicus are supposed to be good friends and form exploration fleets together, so this will be a perfect fit...

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5069/14019389786_1bacef51f3_b.jpg

While trying to figure out how to handle the heraldry banner I started thinking to myself how ridiculous it was there was a Forge World Metalica; not necessarily obvious(even if were somehow unintentional but come on...) metal reference, but especially why it was for an American band. That got me thinking down a path of how to incorporate some British metal in there and so even though it's pretty much for myself, that's how Lady Edina(get it, eddy?), the "Iron Maiden" got her name, and a backstory to justify my goofy reference. There's only a couple minor references to the band that made it onto the knight, see if you can spot them.

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2898/13978694324_d6c864ee7b_b.jpg
https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5062/13975062872_58573d62bd_b.jpg
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7239/13975052992_0b9c5b08e9_b.jpg

Once again my crappy lighting washes out a lot of the detail. I'll have to reshoot all these guys once I get around to making a lightbox, something else that's soon on the project list. I should really get some photos with the Thermal Cannon swapped on. More photos of the finished product at full size here (https://www.flickr.com/photos/84497250@N06/sets/72157644382308334).

And for the curious, WIP shots here (https://www.flickr.com/photos/84497250@N06/sets/72157642299391413/).

Next up, a bunch of tactical marines, a new drop pod plus cleanup on some outstanding vehicles, then Gabriel. Hopefully before the year is out at the pace I'm going heh.

[ElTanko]

Excellent. Nice crisp paint job too. The librarian is very good. Want to see more of these, that's for sure!

ElTanko