Painted Neophytes

[Bonemarch]

Greetings Brothers!

I recently finished my neophytes, 15 in total. And I was particular pleased with how the faces turned out so I thought I would share the wealth. Hopefully this will help out a few of our recently inaugurated brethren in building and painting their army.

+Edit+ I thought I should mention that all of these are the standard scouts from the Space Marine Scout box, no bits from any other set were used.

They all started with black primer and I followed what the "How to paint" book instructed. Dark Flesh, followed by a light coating of Dwarf Flesh and did the upraised areas in Elf Flesh.

By the end I wasn't too pleased with how the color looked so I gave all the faces a light coating of watered down Dwarf flesh. When it dried I gave them an Ogryn Flesh wash and let it dry. After that I added a Badab Black wash and after about a minute dabbed a dry paper towel to it. Then ended with with dry brushing Elf Flesh.

The end result gave my neophytes a dark Mediterranean look that I was hoping for, rather than the pale sickly look I had got with the first attempt.

Also I made one of my troopers black which I started off with a basing of Scorched Brown and followed it up with Dark Flesh. After that I followed the same steps I did for the different washed even using the Elf Flesh dry brush.

(This seems a bit more complected than it needs to be but, I was in the mood to experiment.)

After that I did the hair I started by setting all the units in groups of five. My idea was to alternate between black hair, brown hair and blond hair

For the black I set up chaos black and mixed it with codex grey so it would be a different tone from the Chaos Black armor. After that dried I dry brushed some codex grey at the tip of the hair to give it a little bit of depth. (I got this idea from the front of the Space Marine Scout Box.))

For the brown hair I used some Beastial Brown and a little bit of grey mix and dry brushed black at the tip of it.

And finally I did blond this one was interesting because I didn't want a straight bright yellow. Started with a Golden Yellow and Codex grey under coat. (Which looks kind of pink with you put it on.) After that dried I followed it with a Golden Yellow and Dark Flesh mix and finished the tips with a Golden Yellow dry brush.

(Just as a note my Golden Yellow is old and a little dry so it was thicker than fresh paint.)

For the eyes I did a standard dab of white with a black pupil.

However I had a few accidents. Some of the eyes either turned out too big for me to accept or I accidentally gave some of my troops googly eyes. As funny as it would be to have the Neophytes looking like that. (Especially the shot gun troops.) I just could not deal with the look.

So for the eyes where I leaked too much white I added a bit of war paint. Using Red Gore going going from cheek to cheek and one I did the cheek to cheek and painted up the bridge of the nose as well.

And for the googly eyes I did some scaring to cover them up (Oh irony!) with some Blood red followed by a wash of Baal Red just in the area of the scar and ended by putting a little bit of Scab Red on it. For some fresher scarring on a unit I just used Scab Red.

Over all I'm very pleased with the results, granted these wont win any gold demons but, it gives the flesh a good depth and tone and with some of the scarring adds a little bit of personality to the troops. Some of the eyes do look a little big (Very robot chicken-esk.) but, they look fine from arms length.

The 4th to the right is an example of the old scar while the unit behind the 3rd to the right is an example of a new scar.

To the far left is the war paint example.

And finally two shots of the group at a distance. (As a funny note, yes I put the shot gun Neophytes for would allocation in red shirts.)

[barek]

Nice! Although the eyes of SOME of them seem to need some work?

[Bonemarch]

Haha oh yeah! You should have seen the models I couldn't stand. My cousin (Who is working on Nids) was well amused and got a few laughs at my tempars expense... Though later he did recieve a snow ball in The Empeors name for this transgression.

 

But more to the point I'm going to need to have a steady hand the next time I work on eyes. Though I tried it with a fine brush, do you think a tooth pick would have worked better?

[jubei124]

It might work better for you, I've tried it before but doing it that way didn't work for me. I use a very fine pointed brush and put a very small ammount of paint on the brush. If I have to go over it again oh well.