How to Paint a Regulation Imperial Issue Battledress Space Marine
When I was sorting out some models last year, I discovered an old Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader Space Marine. He must have been one of my brother’s models, as I never actually had any RTB01 Space Marines. I thought it would be cool to paint him in a colour scheme befitting the Rogue Trader era of Warhammer 40,000, but one that I could get away with using in every 30k legion I have. I settled on the Regulation Imperial Issue Battledress colour scheme displayed in the original rulebook:
The icon on his right pauldron is largely used for apothecaries in Warhammer 30k now, so I thought that would be a good to be able to use him in any army. He was originally armed with a flamer, but with a little help from Rob’s bit’s box, I gave him a bolt pistol, cleaned him up and put on a 32mm base. I then basecoated him with Vallejo White Primer, and then gave an overall gloss varnish using Halford’s Gloss Spray:
The gloss was useful for shading, as it would allow the paint to run into the recesses rather than staining the armour panels. For this I used a wash made of a mix of 25% Citadel Drakenhof Nightshade, 25% Citadel Nuln Oil, 25% Citadel Lahmian Medium and 25% Forge World Clear Medium:
As you can see, this already provides a lot of extra detail to the model. The next stage was quite simple, and as you cannot highlight white, it adds more detail and helps to tidy up some of the wash. I sponged the model with some Citadel Ceramite White (see my Iron Hands Weathering post for some times on sponging):
The next step is to paint all the silver. This was done with a basecoat of Citadel Leadbelcher:
Then a coat of Citadel Nuln Oil, being careful not to get any of this on the black:
Which was then edge highlighted with Citadel Ironbreaker:
The next thing I wanted to do was to paint the red helmet. Rather than painting the whole thing red then painting the white diamond in the middle, I wanted to keep the original white. Also, I’m not so great at freehand, so I needed a way to keep the white and get the red lines even. I got some Tamiya modelling masking tape, and used a ruled to draw out a diamond (I drew a cross, then joined up the ends). I then put this in the middle of the helmet:
The helmet was then painted with a basecoat of Citadel Mephiston Red. I also painted the pouch with a basecoat of Citadel Rhinox Hide:
Both were given an overall wash of Citadel Agrax Earthshade:
The red was then given an edge highlight of Citadel Evil Sunz Scarlet, and the pouch a Highlight of Citadel Doombull Brown:
And finally a Highlight of Citadel Wild Rider Red and Citadel Tuskgor Fur respectively:
The model was then given a weathering as described in the previously mentioned post (found here). This was after applying the decal as described in this post (click here):
The last thing I painted on the model was the eye lenses. This was a basecoat of Citadel White Scar, followed by a Glaze of Citadel Lamenter’s Yellow:
I will cover the base in another post, but the last thing I did to the model was to give it a Matt varnish using Testors Dullcoat:
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