Empurata's "How to Paint Night Lords."

[Nearly_Unfinished]

Hello Ladies, Gentlemen and Xenos alike.

Recently I have completed a full 10 man squad of Chaos Marines in the Night Lords Colour Scheme as part of my "Chaos Marines: Redux" Project, where I will be eventually stripping down and repainting my entire chaos marine collection to become one unified warband. As I was painting way I thought to myself. "There really isn't enough tutorials going around about painting Night Lords, True there are some decent ones with what we have already but I still wanted to showcase my talents and show people the my process behind it all"

This tutorial won't win you any Slayer Swords or Golden Demons, This is mainly to get your Night Lords Tabletop/Tournament ready with 3 colours up while looking a bit nicer than just a base coat in select areas.

For the paints I used Games Workshop paints and washes but if I know paint companies, you can expect to find it's equivalent with other manufacturers.

So without any further delay,

HOW TO PAINT NIGHT LORDS,

STEP 0: Prepare your models. As you can see from the image above, I have trimmed and assembled 5 of my Night Lords to be ready for painting, Now I did skip priming them in black/white/grey which would be the normal thing to do and I do suggest on doing so. In this case I skipped it because:

A.) It was Windy Outside

B.) I was lazy.

C.) I was not lazy enough to paint,

STEP 1: Base coat the power armour/entire model in a dark blue. I used Kantor Blue to do this. It's predecessors, "Regal Blue" and "Mordian Blue" can also work as the base coat.

STEP 2: Liberally wash the entire miniature with Drakenhoff Nightshade wash. This will add shading to the recesses of the miniature and will also darken the tone of the blue to appear almost like GW's older paint "Midnight Blue". Sadly, the camera makes the miniature brighter than it is so it looks like I only washed the recesses of the model instead of the whole thing but as I said the end result is a much darker blue.

STEP 3: Using Chaos black or Imperial Primer, paint any parts of the model that will be silver/gunmetal, at the same time, paint any soft parts of the power armour like the knee and elbow joint in black also.

STEP 4: Using Brass Scorpion paint the armour trim of the Night Lord, This was by far the longest part of the painting process as you have to be careful not to get the brass anywhere else on the model. If a little bit does go onto the blue armour, re-colour that part in the base colour and blend the new blue into the washed blue this should hide the mistake and repair attempt pretty nicely.

STEP 5: Painting the metallics. This is pretty much standard issue here folks, Base the metallic areas you want to be silver/gunmetal in Leadbelcher followed by a wash of Nuln Oil.

STEP 6: Painting the Red parts. These are normally located on the wings on the Night Lords emblem and helmet, as well as their eyes, base coat the wings in "Mephiston Red" and once dry, highlight with Evil Sunz Scarlet With the eyes carefully paint them neatly into the eye sockets using Mephiston Red once dried go over them again with a small wash of Drakenhoff Nightshade

STEP 7: Painting Bone/Horns. Base coat each Skull/Horn/Trophy Tooth in Rakarth Flesh, Next wash each bone item in Agrax Earthshade and. If you wish to try and darken the tips/base of the horns keep applying Agrax Earthshade to the horns, Getting closer and closer to the tip/base after each layer dry's. Normally 4-5 coats will do the trick.

STEP 8: Painting Satchels, Base any part of the model that is suppose to have brown leather with Abbadon Black/Chaos Black/Imperial Primer. The pant each pouch in Mournfang Brown and highlight with Steel Legion Drab, using a Agrax Earthshade wash will also help after highlighting

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STEP 9 (OPTIONAL): Lightning. This bit is optional as I find it to be a a absolute nuisance to try and get the lightning to look right to actually represent the crackling effect the Night Lords seem to have. but in case anyone is interested how I do my lightning please see the below sub steps:

9.1: First water down some Ultramarines Blue, Aldorf Guard Blue or in my case Mordian Blue until the paint is a a bit more thinner than normal paint but not so thin that it's a wash or glaze. Use this colour to draw the path where your lightning will be. this will be your guide as well as your base/glo of your lightning.

9.2: Make a mixture of Skink Blue and some water like in the last step and go over the previous line you have drawn but leaving some of the previous colour behind.

9.3: Using a mix of White Scar and some water repeat the process again only his time add some breaks in the lightning to still show the previous blues underneath. The white is to act as a highlight and complete the appearance of bright lightning.

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With this Tutorial complete you should end up with models like those pictured just above.

I hope someone finds use from this and hope you enjoy the read.

Happy Hobby and Wargaming.

[Galron]

Interesting. One method I use to get a darker appearance is base them in Black, drybrush Kantor blue heavily, do the metallics and throw on a nuln oil wash. Then a slight drybrush of kantor on the exposed flat plates, along with a highlight of whatever the next stage of blue is along with a highlight on the high points of the metallics. Much darker and grungier. Then liberally apply lightning bolts all over. Lightning bolts indeed are a PITA to get right, think thin.

[Nearly_Unfinished]

Interesting. One method I use to get a darker appearance is base them in Black, drybrush Kantor blue heavily, do the metallics and throw on a nuln oil wash. Then a slight drybrush of kantor on the exposed flat plates, along with a highlight of whatever the next stage of blue is along with a highlight on the high points of the metallics. Much darker and grungier. Then liberally apply lightning bolts all over. Lightning bolts indeed are a PITA to get right, think thin.

 

I like this idea Galron. Personally I'm not too much of a fan of dry-brushing as it's not my preferred style of painting but I can see it's application provide some real nice results especially if you are going for the more darker scheme as you've mentioned.

[Black_out]

I love seeing everyones take on the Night Lords paint scheme, keep up the good work!

 

Did you apply any kind of wash to the brass trim or did you want to keep it a bit brighter?

[oxskull]

found this really useful, especially the lightning, used on Helbrute and terminator

 

[Nearly_Unfinished]

I love seeing everyones take on the Night Lords paint scheme, keep up the good work!

 

Did you apply any kind of wash to the brass trim or did you want to keep it a bit brighter?

Thank you for your support Black_out. I left the brass scorpion trim unwashed mainly because I did not have the right wash for them at the time.

 

found this really useful, especially the lightning, used on Helbrute and terminator

Glad you found use out of my tutorial Oxskull and its great tot see another night lord player in the hobby.

[MedPig]

I'm doing couple figs, Curze and Sevatar as commission work for someone. I still have 4-5 bottles of the old "Necron Abyss", so that's my base coat.