Showcase: Dark Angels Deathwing Bladeguard Veterans

Today’s post is going to be a little different. You might have noticed I’m painting a different project every week. These weekly deadlines have been beneficial to my productivity and I thought it might be interesting to follow this week’s project a day at a time all in a single post.

The plan was to paint the Bladeguard in a week. With carefully blended powerswords, lots of freehand icons and plenty of details this was going to be a hard task. Breaking the project down to daily tasks would be key.

Day 1

I had already assembled the models prior, so that gave me a flying start to the week. I undercoated them with Wraithbone Spray which is quicker than using my airbrush (it takes so long to clean). By the end of the day I’d managed to highlight and shade the armour.

Day 2

The following day I worked on the tabard, leathers and greens. At this stage I could still be a little messy on the unpainted areas as this will get covered up later on.

Day 3

On the third day I was painting golds and metals. I was careful to get down nice solid base colours and then shade using Contrast paints or Shades. Thin highlights of Stormhost Silver on the edges of both the gold and metal made these shine.

Day 4

On this day, I set myself the target of painting the freehand Chapter and unit symbols. I don’t like using decals because I don’t like the how clean they look, I’ve always hand painted my symbols, it’s good painting practice.

Day 5

This day was all about blending and glazing the Master-crafted Powerswords. Like the freehand Chapter icons this took some time so I gave myself a whole day to get it done.

Day 6

Coming to the end of the project, this day saw me paint the details like eye lenses, purity seals and I also freehand the tilt shields. I had just the bases left to do.

Day 7

Sadly not a day of rest. I painted the bases and then got the camera out. Taking the final photos to share on social media and this blog is how I like to underline a project. Once the pictures are done it’s a wrap.

Hope this has been interesting to see how breaking a project up into daily tasks can make hard to paint units or models much simpler. At the end of every day I felt I’d achieved something and this kept me motivated.

That’s how my #weeklywarhammer works. The previous week it was Beastgrave Terrain and next week it will be Necrons. I’m chipping away at all my collections and it feels great, it doesn’t feel like anything is being forgotten about or left on the shelf.