WIP: Blood Angel Sergeants

In any of my armies, Sergeants will stand head and shoulders above the rank and file, in terms of stats, wargear and general badassery. As such, I'll spend a little extra effort making sure they look suitably swish. Here's my current collection of active Sergeants:

L to R: Koris, #1, Wallace, #3, #4. I really have to get round to naming my sergeants...

They're arranged more or less in the order I painted them, from left to right. The guy on the left isn't really active, seeing as he's the Sarge of my very first Tactical Squad. His red may look a little richer, but don't let that fool you; he's the only one there whom I've varnished. I'm not sure if you can quite see it, but #1's armour is a little duller than the rest. Alas, it was only after I was done painting the 1st assault squad that I got my hands on Baal Red. Apart from 1st squad, the rest of the army has been washed with Baal Red, resulting in a deeper, richer red. Here they are again from the left side:

Conga to the left!

You can see here that it was only after I got my grubby paws on Koris that the Death Company plastic set was released. Since then, I paid bit more attention to making sure the Sgts stood out more, i.e. Black background for the pauldrons and a nice emblem for the left pauldron. And here's a pic from the right:

Conga to the right!

After I used decals on Koris' squad, I decided that I'd just paint on the company markings. I figured it would be good freehand practice, doing a relatively simple shape as a mellow yellow drop. Besides, getting the decal to follow the curve of that shoulder pad is a right pain.

So, how do I paint my Blood Angels? Currently, assuming a black undercoat:

Armour: Mechrite Red, then Blood Red base. Then, I use this to blackline:

It's absolutely brilliant, I can't tell you how much trouble this has saved me in blacklining my marines. That's a 0.05mm tip, by the way. Just right for catching all those little lines on the thighs and forearms. After blacklining, a wash of Baal Red, then line highlights with Blazing Orange and that's that. Now, with the infantry, all this was done by brush. Later on, I stumbled upon this stuff:


It's about half the price of GW's stuff, and thanks to this, my Razorbacks are now all the same lovely shade of red. Sprayed with this, then used the Citadel Spray Gun to coat everything with Blood Red. The result:


So yeah, one day, when I get round to the next expansion of my Blood Angel army, I'll be using Krylon Burgundy and a Blood Red spray to start with. Only downside is Krylon smells a bit nasty at first. The smell does go away, eventually, but still, yuck.

And that's the current state of my sergeants and how I my my Blood Angels red. This post has gotten a little long, so I'll save writing about the other details for later posts. Until then...