For those of you who have this particular set and have made use of the included painting guide this tutorial is not a replacement, merely a different way of making use of the colours provided. The set provides eight pots of different colours and three different types of paint. There are four basic Citadel colours, white, red, silver and gold. Then there is an “undercoat black” which I used for the initial coat on the figure and for heavier washes. There is a black “wash” which is a very thin ink that can be easily run into cracks and sections in order to give and impression of shadows and depth for detail. The last two pots contain a brown and a blue “foundation” colour. This relatively new product from Citadel is a great way to cover any basecoat with a solid layer quickly making it ideal for creating entire squads at a time. The set also comes with a starter brush, which I decided to leave unused in favor of my basic fine, basecoat and small drybrushing brushes. The figures provided in the 40K set are five of the easy to assemble four piece Space Marines. I was quite pleased with the molding and detail on these troopers and I could see them blending in well with any future additions of the multipart Tactical Marines. A great point to note about these figures is that in a pinch, they can be used without any adhesive! I will, however be gluing mine together with plastic cement.
The first step when painting these miniatures is freeing the individual pieces from the sprues. I recommend using a handy pair of snips and a hobby knife for clearing away any excess hunks of sprue from the parts once they are off of the frame. With the four parts liberated, I used the blade of my hobby knife in a vertical scrapping motion to clear away all traces of molding inconsistencies and excess plastic left over from the fabrication process.
The first coat was a black basecoat applied to all areas before the figure was assembled in order to ensure no areas were missed. Once this had dried, I fitted the base, pack and shoulder onto the main figure with small drops of plastic cement in the butt jointed areas. A note on assembly: I found that the connector pins on the right hand and shoulder left shoulder were too long and their reciprocal holes were too narrow so, considering that I was letting the glue do all of the work I clipped down both pins by a half and used my knife to gently clear out the holes. After the glue had dried it was time to make use of the blue colour provided. I wanted to keep the first layer of blue as thin as possible while still getting a solid coat over all relevant areas, to this end I made use of a slightly frayed small brush and lightly rubbed paint across the surfaces.
The details of the figure are well accented and raised for easy painting. To begin I base coated the golden eagles with the brown, the red of the eyes and the purity seal in white, the shoulder rims in silver, the sling in brown and the weapon bits in silver. Starting with the eagle, I simply painted it gold and once it was dried gave it a quick heavy wash of thinned down undercoat black which I let settle in the creases in order to create depth. The shoulder rims were painted gold and with small sections of the outer edge left bare silver to show wear and tear. All silver painted detail such as the vents, weapon bits and sling hooks were given a solid wash at the same time as the eagle was and retouched with silver once the wash had dried. At this point I painted the shoulder insignias white taking care to paint within the lines and finished up by adding the eyes and purity seal in red. A final touch on the basic painting of the figure was to redefine all recesses and details with an accurate wash using the black ink.
I hadn’t finished with the trooper at this point though, I decided to show how a little bit of extra work can make your basic grunts really stand out. To this end I mixed the blue with the white at a ratio of 4:1 and using a fine brush, lightly drybrushed all of the raised areas of the armor. His weapon sling, purity seal and base were all detailed in the same manner except substituting brown for blue.
Hope you enjoyed this basic tutorial on how to get the most out of your 40K starter set! Hical, James
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