75 - Blood Ravens Tactical Squad Fortis

Day 2 of the project is done! Here are 5 Blood Ravens Space Marines which had been sitting at my painting station, mostly in need of an ink wash and minor highlighting. I'll be counting them as 1 miniature as I did the Orkz from yesterday. I've decided to name this Tactical Squad - the first of two - Fortis, which is Latin for "strength." I have 3 more Blood Ravens to fully paint up before Fortis is complete - the Sergeant, Meltagunner, and Multi-Melta Operator. Fortis will also be mounted in a Rhino, so that's gotta get painted up too.

Previously, I had major issues shading the red armor with ink washes. I'd been using Badab Black and the results were less than pleasant. The Badab Black darkened the armor way too much, forcing me to spend extra time bringing the Red back up. It was a real pain. But then I read an article in White Dwarf (not sure which issue, but it was a current one, I believe) on how to paint, shade, and highlight Red which suggested using either Thrakka Green or Asurmen Blue to shade Red, depending on the effect you're going after. So I decided to use Thrakka Green on this batch of Marines, and I must say, I'm pretty happy with the results. The shadows aren't as deep as if I'd done them with Badab Black, but the Thrakka Green is definitely neater while still providing a decent level of shading. I selected Thrakka Green over Asurmen Blue because the Blood Ravens already have elements of Green in their paint scheme, so I figured it'd tie in better.

To the right is a more detailed look at 3 of the Blood Ravens from this batch. You'll notice the Marine to the far right has been given a Black Templar boltgun. I wanted to add some diversity to my Marines and seeing as how the Black Templar arms were so damn cool, I knew I had to include them. All it took was some careful scraping off of the Black Templar icon on the boltgun and it was good to go.

Okay, as I wrote up top, Day 2 has been successfully completed. Tomorrow though begins the real challenge as I have to paint up a brand new miniature from the bottom up for it to count towards this project. I haven't quite figured out which one of my hundreds of unpainted models to pick yet, but depending on how much time and energy I have left tomorrow after work and family obligations, I might either go with a rank and file model or a more elaborate character model.

Note: again, I've had to post these miniatures past midnight my time due to time constraints, but rest assured, they were finished prior to the midnight hour tolling! I'm very likely going to have to follow this sort of schedule for most of my miniatures in this project.