30K Series - Raven Guard | Tabletop Made Easy

Warhammer 30K Series - Raven Guard Tactical Marine

Raven Guard marines were my first dabble into doing Games Workshop's ubiquitous Space Marine lines of models.

Brought on by my friends all playing Traitor Legions in 30K games, I quite fancied putting together a loyalist legion.

After thinking long and hard about the different legions, I decided on the Raven Guard;

Legion XIX. The marines were a combination of a couple of sets of miniatures. The basic items like the arms, legs and Torso game from the beaky helmeted version of the Marine from the 40K Space marine packs... two of each of this pack are available in the MK6 power armour which the Raven Guard Favoured. These models can also be done, by buying the Forge World MK6 armour marines, but they can be quite costly. A cheaper alternative is, to buy a Horus Heresy set - Like 'The Betrayal at Calth (BaC);' and get the upgrade parts respectively.

I opted for a number of bits - the Helmet is a Forgeworld Upgrade, the torso, legs and arms are the MK6 parts from the 40K set, the boltgun, sword and pouches are from the BaC box set, and the backpack was part of the FW upgrade kit.

Before we start with the guide though, there are a couple of points to detail below, which are important to take into account for painting this figure - detailed guides can be found in the 'Painting Guides' tab at the top.

Things like - Basing - Drybrushing - Detailing - Washing - Weathering

If you're unfamiliar with any of these painting techniques, or you are and you think that you could do with a refresher, please follow the links above, or where they're inbeded in the body of the text.

Model parts laid out and cleaned up

Stage 1 - Assembly

Probably as important as the paint job itself is the preparation of the model and the assembly.

Most plastic models are made from injecting hot liquid plastic into a 2-sided mould... so you'll have mould lines. Resin has flashing, which is a similar thing. This all needs to be removed before you paint - because if you don't - it will come out in the detailing and it will look rubbish.

Infantry figures need to be build with careful consideration - Think about where and how accessible your model is when built for a paint brush. As a rule, I always build the model either without the arms, or without the weapon for painting the main bit. You'll see that below.

Resin preparation: Resin pieces (especially Forge World ones) usually come still covered in the mould release agent - This substance will ruin the finish of your acrylic paint upon contact. Wash this off with warm soapy water before starting on your model.

Stage 2 - Priming / Base Coat

Priming models is the key to making your paint stick to your models, and stay stuck to your models. To get a good clean finish all over - Use an airbrush or a rattle-can primer.

Before painting the model, i usually heat up the tip of a screw using my oven's hob. When pressed into the foot of a model gently, and then left to cool - it creates a good pedestal on which to hold when you paint. Super gluing a straight piece of sprue onto the underside of the foot works well too.

I used Tamiya Light Grey Primer on this model. With spraying anything, hold the can 4 inches away from the model and dust in the model in light thin coats - Too much and the paint will pool in the detail and make it so that the detail isn't as pronounced - which spoils the model.

Wait the recommended time from the paint manufacturer to dry, and the move onto basing. Painting black is easy if you just want flat colour - however, we want the model to show light hitting it from above (from a sun in this case, or a directional light source)

Graphite Grey is applied all over the model

So we're going to use a Dark Grey - This way, when we put the wash on it at a later stage - the wash makes the recesses go to the black colour that we want, and the larger flatter portions of the armour panels 'catch' the light and show up as grey/lighter black.

I used Scale Colour's Graphite on this model - The paint has a really thick pigment - and requires a little bit of thinning for it to apply to the model evenly - As with the base coat - this needs to go onto the model very thinly - Use 2-3 coats if required. On this model's instance, don't forget to paint the hand holding the boltgun which we haven't attached yet.

Dawnstone drybrushing highlights

Stage 3 - Drybrushing / Highlighting

Drybrushing is an easy way of creating highlights on a model, without needing the skill/time necessary to do what the pro-painters do - and layer up several different shades of highlights over the top of one another.

That being said, there's a bit of an art associated with drybrushing, and all it needs is a bit of planning.

Consideration #1 - Where is the light coming from? Is it a sun which is illuminating your model, or is it lava on the ground which is glowing on your model. This will affect the drybrushing direction.

Consideration #2 - Strength of the light - Is the sun a distant glow, or is the model in a binary star system which pumps out volumes of light. This will affect the pressure on which you brush the paint on the model.

In this model's instance, it is being dimly lit from a star/sun directly above it's head. Therefore, the direction of the drybrusing was from top to bottom - never from bottom to top; and the pressure

applied to the model is light. I used Games Workshop's Citadel Dawnstone Dry paint to drybrush this model. I have found it complements the graphite colour well.

Using downward light strokes (see the drybrushing detail page above for how to load the brush), pass your brush over the model, making the brush leave paint on the edges of corners, and lighting leaving strokes on the flatter parts of the armour. Continue this in lots of light passes, until you're happy with the level of highlighing required.

Stage 4 - Pre-wash Detailing

Before we put the wash on, we need to think about any of the detailing parts which we don't mind being caught during the wash phase.

In this instance, I have painted the earpieces on the helmet, the harness on the front of the chest piece, the power unit exhausts and stripe detail on the top in GW's Citadel Leadbelcher and the leather ammo pouches and sword scabbard in Tamiya Flat Earth.

At the same time, I applied the Flat earth to the grip of the boltgun, as well as applying Leadbelcher to the metallic parts of the boltgun.

Now is a good time to glue the boltgun into the Marine's hands, as the wash will make it's way to places you can't see in-between the gun and the chest anyway. If you've painted where the pieces are to be glued together, scrape off the glue with a knife - it will bond better that way and not spoil your paintwork

Flat Earth paint applied to ammo pouches

Nuln Oil wash being applied all over

Stage 5 - Washing

Now comes the messy/fun bit! Washing the model is a great way of making all of the sunken detail (panel lines, mouths, eye sockets etc) sink back into the model and create the illusion of ambient occlusion.

Giving it a good shake before hand, I used GW's Citadel Nuln Oil to un-surreptitiously wash all over the model, from head to toe, including on the recently applied Leadbelcher and Flat Earth components.

Be sure to cover all of the model; however be careful that the wash doesn't pool on any of the open panel surfaces - use your brush to keep working the wash gently into the recesses, but don't remove the wash completely from the armour panels - This will help tone down the earlier drybrushing into a colour not too dissimilar from the base coat graphite we put on earlier.

Note: Wash goes on very shiny, but usually dries matt (unless you get Nuln-oil gloss)

Give it a long time to fully dry - you may want to batch-do these models, so by the time you have done one or two more, the first one is dry.

Stage 6 - Detailing and Technical

When the wash is fully dry, it's time to put the finishing touches to the model - paint colour choices that we chose not to be affected by the wash - This is usually bright colours, light white, yellow and red.

The items left to do are the eye lenses, and the Raven Guard emblem on the front of the helmet.

Quite why they adorn jet black armour to hide in the shadows, and then decorate them in white markings I'll never know!

Using GW's White Scar, do in a couple of thinned layers - Roll the brush head through the paint to generate a nice sharp point in your bristles. Then using the tip/side of the brush, run the bristles over the embossing - The paint will land on the raised areas and leave the lower portions the base colour.

The using the same brush tip rolling technique, put some Tamiya Gloss Red paint on those eye lenses.

Painting the eye lenses with a steady hand!

This is a particularly tricky operation to do, as you don't want the paint to spill out of the eye-cup holes. The gloss red will naturally shine in the light from your painting bench, so highlighting it with a lighter red isn't required.

So there you have it, the completed mini - Now onto the rest.

Please see my basing, and decal/transfer application tutorials for adding that extra touch to your models.