30 - Chaos Space Marine of the Black Legion

As promised, here's my first Chaos Space Marine, painted in the colors of the Black Legion. Is it just me or do Chaos Space Marines seem much larger and more imposing than your standard Loyalist Marine? Standing this guy up next to my two Blood Ravens makes the latter two look like red Stay-Puff Marshmellow Men.

So, for this fellow, I used true metallic paints. I've avoided using true metallic paints for the most part because I didn't really like the way they looked way back when I first started painting miniatures. In hindsight, my displeasure with true metallic paints probably had more to do with my lack of painting ability in the beginning and less to do with the quality or theory behind true metallics. Personally, I like how this Chaos Space Marine turned out using true metallics. My earlier efforts with metallic paints oftentimes produced a muddy, messy and caked-on appearance, but this most recent attempt turned out pretty clean. Eventually, I'd like to incorporate the non-metallic metals technique into my repertoire and use that consistently for the metallic surfaces of my miniatures, but that's still a long ways off.

I think I've settled on the 4 Warhammer 40k armies I'm going to collect up to 2,000 - 2,500 points each: the Imperial Guard, the Blood Ravens Space Marines, the Orks, and Chaos Space Marines. Nothing too out of the ordinary - I'm certain these 4 probably represent the top 4 selling armies for Games Workshop. I initially wanted to collect a Witch Hunters army, but the metal figures are way too expensive to purchase even at a 20%-30% discount, and eBay doesn't ever seem to have them up for auctions. Still, I might collect an HQ, a few Troops, and a Seraphim Squad or two just to ally in with my Guard and Blood Ravens armies on occasion, if only because the Sisters of Battle miniatures look like great fun to paint.

Okay, so the madcap painting pace continues - I'm knee deep in painting up my first Imperial Guard Heavy Weapons Team: the lascannon team for my Veteran Squad, "The 50-50s." By the way, I've intended to put together some tutorials for a while now (beacuse it really can't be all that interesting just reading blog posts on finished products), but I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do them. Once I start painting, I kind of lose all track of time and space, and before I know it, the basecoat is on and I'm starting in on the detail work. Maybe for my next model (after this heavy weapons team), I'll specifically incorporate a step by step tutorial from assembly to painting to basing. Something like that might slow me down too and prevent the dreaded painting burn-out that I'm afraid is right around the corner. I might actually put up a little poll listing the miniatures that you would like most to see a tutorial for. I've got a lot of random kits laying around so the options are pretty diverse actually.

For more pics of the Chaos Space Marine, click here.