Every Journey Starts with a First Step: Painting the Assault on Black Reach box set.

Step 1: Testing the Waters.

I guess in the future there is not only War, it would seem that there is also a crap load of painting.

Here is my working space:

Yeah that's a lot of plastic. First I need to do a couple of testers, let's start with the Space Marine. We're going to paint this set as Ultramarines, because the box told me so.

So here he is all glued together and ready to go.

I primed our marine and put together an Ork while I waited for this guy to dry up...

And below is the final product. I applied a base coat of Regal Blue to all the blue areas and made sure to leave all the nooks and crannies black to give the mini depth and interest. That didn't always work out like I planned so I made sure to go over the areas I wanted to have that look using a very thin brush with just a smidgen of Chaos black on it.

For the gold areas I applied a base coat of Shining Gold, for the eyes and seal I used Scab red and for the various skulls and arrows I used Bleached Bone.

To finish the model off I dry brushed on a few coats of Ultramarine Blue and then added wear on the edges with a little Ice Blue and some Skull White for the tips and other highlights. I used Blood Red on the eyes/seal and Burnished gold on the gold areas. For the various skulls and other white elements I finished them by dry brushing Skull White on the raised areas (except the arrow on the shoulder which I edged). Then, to finish the mini, I applied some highlights of Shadow Grey to the boltgun and edged the silver areas with a mixture of Boltgun Metal and Bleached bone (about a 2/1 ratio). Ideally I'd like to use Mithril silver for the highlights but I don't have any so I'll go and pick some up after work.

1 down 16 more to go.

I'll probably die a horrible death! WHEEE!