Painting the Lamenters chapter symbol

I've taken on a personal project. My favorite Space Marine chapter is definitely the Blood Angels, but I'm always fascinated with the fluff and stories behind the various Successor Chapters. I sympathize with the savagery of the Flesh Tearers, the poor circumstances of the Lamenters, etc. So I figured I'd pay homage to good ol Sanguinius by painting one model from each of the Successor Chapters.

I've painted one Flesh Tearer Tactical Marine so far, using the new GW transfer seals that are available.



The next model is a Tactical Marine from the Lamenters chapter. Obviously the most challenging parts of this chapter are the checkered shoulder pad and the sickly pale yellow of their armor.

I was able to make the Lamenters yellow from mixing Iyanden Darksun, Skull White, and Goblin Green in varying amounts to end up with a hue I felt matched the artwork in the Forge World Imperial Armour 9 Badab War book.



Next was painting the checkered shoulder pad that is iconic of the Lamenters chapter. So being the impatient bastard that I am, I decided to try and paint the Lamenters checkered shoulder pad first.

Starting with just the yellow shoulder, I base coated it with watered down Ceramite White base paint.  Then using Abaddon Black, I drew in the lines for the checkers.

Using watered down Abaddon Black, I painted in the squares. I would’ve used a micron pen but I couldn’t find it so I used a super fine detail brush.

Once the checkering was done, I cleaned up any stray black marks with Ceramite White.

Using Ceramite White, I drew a circle for the center of the Chapter’s symbol. Then I outlined it with Abaddon Black.

Finally I drew in the heart and blood drop of the chapter using Evil Sunz Scarlet.

I’m so glad I’m only painting one of these. This was a huge pain in the ass. Ironically the most difficult part was drawing the heart.

Step by step of a Blood Angels Terminator with the new GW paints

This was a rather rushed paint job in order to just illustrate how the new GW paints work when painting red for Blood Angels.  The new paints create a much more gradient approach to painting minis.  Whereas previously you had to do some mixing of paints to create certain gradient colors, but the new paints offer pre-made increments that make the process relatively straight forward.

My previous process was to use Mechrite Red as the Foundation paint, Blood Red as a base, shaded with Devlan Mud wash, then re-highlighted with Blood Red.  The next highlight was done with Blazing Orange then an extreme highlight with Vomit Brown concluded with a watered down Baal Red wash to re-center the blends.

With the new paints the process went as follows:

1. Assembled the Terminator

2. Primed with Chaos Black primer

3. Base coated with Mephiston Red Base. This base paint is a little different in hue that Mechrite Red. It's closer to the former Blood Red than it is Mechrite Red.

4. A coat of Wild Rider Red was used to 'redden' the hue a little more.  This gave it a slightly orange tone.

5.  Carroburg Crimson was then used to shade the model.  This color is between Baal Red and Devlan Mud. IT is a much more appropriate shade for red models like Blood Angels.

6.  Wild Rider Red was then used to re-layer the raised surfaces.

7.  Wazdakka Red was then layered in smaller areas.

8.  Troll Slayer Orange was then used to highlight the raised surfaces.

9.  The Drybrush paint Eldar Flesh was used to drybrush the edges.  Normally this would've been layered by Vomit Brown but the drybrush paint seemed a bit more apropos.  I would've loved to have used Kindleflame which is recommended by GW but I forgot to pick up a pot and they're closed on Easter.

10.  Finally, Bloodletter Glaze was used to tone down the highlights and re-center the colors.