Blood Angels Stormtalon

As many know, I love Space Marine vehicles.  Their unrealistic boxy aesthetics is something I find appealing.  Maybe it's because I drive a Honda Element which looks like something a Space Marine woudl drive.  In any case, last weekend the Stormtalon was released from GW for Codex: Space Marines.  It fills a Fast Attack slot on the FOC and has some fairly interesting rules.  It's essentially a squished down, one-man Stormraven.  While it doesn't have Power of the Machine Spirit nor does it have the nose-mounted multi-melta/heavy bolter/typhoon missile weapon pod, it does mount a twin-linked assault cannon as standard with your choice of twin-linked heavy bolter, twin-linked lascannon, typhoon missile launcher, or the new Skyhammer missile launcher which is a 60" S7 AP4 Heavy 3 option.  

So needless to say, I had to get one and paint it in the colors of Great Sanguinius - RED ALL THE THINGS!  Even though Blood Angels don't get to use this beautiful flying potato, our group is pretty casual and tend to let things slide within reason.  As soon as I got it home, I went to work.  There are only two sprues and the vehicle is very easy to assemble.  I was able to put it together in about 30 mins.  I also magentized the side weapon pods so I can swap out for the Lascannon or Skyhammer options.

Once the model was built, I primed it black using GW Chaos Black.  

Here's a size comparison between the Stormtalon (left) and its bigger sibling, the Stormraven (right)

Now that dextrous control over my airbrush is increasing, I felt comfortable to try and use a pre-shading technique on this vehicle.  After the black primer has dried, using my Iwata CS airbrush, I carefully sprayed watered down Administratum Grey on to the raised or exposed areas, leaving the black primed areas in the recesses.  This gives the model an appearance of shadowed recesses and also allows for some depth. 

Once the highlights have dried, I take thinned down Blood Red (50/50 Blood Red and Isopropyl Alcohol) and spray a thin layer over the entire model.  The goal is to apply the layer thin enough where the grey highlights only just absorb enough red but not enough to blot out the shaded details.  This gives the model a very cool layered appearance while the black maintains the look of having been shaded.  Unfortunately the poor resolution of my iPhone camera doesn't allow for all the shading to appear clearly so I tried using the HDR feature and only marginally was able to capture some of the shading.  

I painted the Techmarine Pilot using Khorne Red base, Carroburg Crimson shade, then highlighted with Wazdakka Red and finally Squig Orange to give it a darker, rusted red of Mars look.  The cockpit was painted and the canopy was glued down.  The rest of the details were then painted in.

Finally, I decided to test my potato out against some Orks in a 2500pt match.  Unfortunately my opponent didn't want it getting near him so he kept it on lockdown all night until finally the potato was baked.