Spacemarine Bolters - Improvement tips needed

[veggiemanuk]

Im painting Bolters for my Ultramarines atm and would love some pointers as to how to improve them.

After Priming them Black I paint all the metal areas Boltgun Metal and then apply a watered down wash of black ink. The next step is then a drybrushing of Chainmail. Then because of the drybrushing a tidy up of the black areas is required.

Any tips or alternatives are more than welcome.

Thanks.
Rob.

 

[DaN]

SMALLER PICTURES! lol

Seriously, they look ok to me.
Maybe you could \"blue\" the metal with a thin blue glaze or start with a base coat of tin bitz.

Looks fine to me.

 

[Darkmessiah]

u need to add some grey highlights, use the side of the brush to paint the edges

 

[demonherald]

both things they just said

 

[veggiemanuk]

Cheers guys.

DaN, im at work atm and those images sure are large. I keep on forgetting that not everyone uses a 22\" widescreen monitor so a 1700 pixel width isnt the best of ideas, i\'ll reduce them once I get home

The basecoat of Tinbits sounds interesting, i\'ll give it a try.

Cheers.

 

[Dragonsreach]

Unless you are making them for Chaos I\'d forget Tin Bitz as no one allows (or should allow) a weapon to show signs of rust.
I\'d make two suggestions:
Vallejo Airbush Chrome
Vallejo Black Glaze

The Chrome is a very fine pigment paint, far better than GW\'s mettalics and does look realy smooth.
The Black Glaze is in fact a very dark Grey and on mettallics works to mute the shine making the metal look older/well worn.

 

[Shadzar]

few suggestions based solely on personal preference.

the emblem on the side should be a color form the army scheme. the reason is you can them paint the chamber relase chainmail and well as the inside of the chainmail and give them a bit more depth.

since you aren\'t going for NMM and i dont even know how to do it anyway...

take some mithril silver or a brighter metal color and highlight the areas of the clip that would not likely have dust collect in the midts of battle.

even marines aren\'t going to stop firing to field strip and clean their weapons.

do a thin chaos black wash over the metal areas to put some grime on them and darkne the recesses.

don\'t be afraid to add some damage to the gun or some imperfection to the casing. an explosive round not directly hitting the marine may still cast debris that could put pits or chips into the finish of a bolter.

i would think power armor is strong than a bolter is so if shrapnel could damage it then why can\'t it scuff up a bolter?

thinking about it i don\'t know what color for the emblem on the casing since they are for ultramariens that would look good. unless you wanted to detail the wings. the ridges a brown or gold color, and the flat parts of them whiteish or silver to give them character.

or just match them to the chest eagles.

i have tried a bolter where i basecoated it and dropped it into my sand flock and shoock it around. this polished and smoothed it a bit so the metals went on a little better looking. these photos may seem splothcy because how big they are and may not need that in real scale.

the protruding portion under the barrel itself i prefer to paint black. just something about guns in general i mostly see that part as black even when other parts of shiny.

unless the entire gun is chrome or black then it matches.

in this first picture with the emblem showing there are a few \"nobs\" that oculd use either chainmail or black depending on what color the \"rivets\" should be. unless they show correctly normal sized....

these are jsut some minor things that may enhance the bolter, but not all of them are needed, jsut some little touches that may give the bland guns a bit more character than they have from the manufacturer.

of course there is really nothing wrong with them the way they are...

 

[veggiemanuk]

Sorted the images out, much better now (note to self, 1700x1000 images are not good)

@DR, thanks for that. I will have to check both of them out, are their other metalics the same or do they have individual characteristics?

@Shadzar, there sure are a few ideas to try there, thanks for that. As my Ultramarines are from the 2nd company I was thinking of doing normal squad members emblems in gold and the sarg\'s in white as he will have veteran status, this will allow me to paint the chamber release as you suggest. Cheers.

I have some new Raphael 8404\'s to try out and plenty of spare Bolters to experement with. I will post the results back here once they are done.

 

[Dragonsreach]

Originally posted by veggiemanuk
@DR, thanks for that. I will have to check both of them out, are their other metalics the same or do they have individual characteristics?
As far as I can tell all the AIRBRUSH metallics are far finer than \"standard\" metallic paints and likewise for the non-metallic paints.
I\'ve only been able to obtain a limited range of the airbrush paints at the moment, but I really appreciate their finer quality and smoother application.
The Black and White are unbelievable in comparison to GW/Citadel, in fact I\'d go so far as to say that they are at completely differing ends of the Quality spectrum. (Ok Fanboy moment over )
But the Airbrush paints will lend themselves very easily to people wanting to work freehand details into their figures due to the smoother pigment and more fluid consistancy.

 

[DaN]

Something I like to do it to make the main casing of the bolter one colour, then do the handgrip the opposite, complementary colour.

Ie. Green and red.

And sometimes for characters I might reverse this, making the casing green and the hand grip red.