Black Legion Test Model and painting recipe.

Having used the distraction of these chaos space marines to help me get on with the Mega Kannon, I have been playing around with colour schemes for them. Having shared my test model on Dakka it's only right that I share it here after the break. 

 I've been trying to paint Black Legion marines for many years yet sadly never managed to settle of a stile that I was pleased with. 
Mostly I don't like the pseudo edge highlights used on a lot of chaos marines, no matter how nicely painted a model is highlighting just inside of the trim has never in my mind looked right. I just don't think surfaces look like that. For space marines without trim on a lot of their armour edge highlighting is perfect but as a chaos player all my toy soldiers have trim around most of their armour.

Some time ago I thought I had cracked the conundrum having seen some advice in a WD for painting black armour using ink washes.

At the time I produced this fellow for a deathwatch game, one brother Galantine of the storm wardens.

While he still needs a head thanks to him having a Mk2 helmet it's been a while since we've played so I'll order a crest for the bretonian knight helmet I have put to one side for him.

The black on brother Galantine's armour was painted using Mechanicus Standard Grey and then washed with Nuln Oil, Agrax Earthshade and two more Nuln Oils.

While it worked well on The one deathwatch marine when I attempted to do the same on my BFG repulsive class grand cruiser it ended up to shiny and back to the drawing bard once more. 

It was these images from the Black Legion Codex supplement that got me thinking again and eventually digging 6 models out of the loft.

Now while my experiments didn't work out to make it as misty as the image I think I have finally managed to come up with something I realy like. Finding the right shade of grey was a absolute pain and in the end I just bought a new Abaddon Black and Mechanicus Standard Grey using my old ones to mix up a nice dark grey.
The second part of the puzzle was solved by after some resurch into Glazes, Inks and washes. To make my own glaze I refiled a mostly used pot of Nuln Oil with just water and added a few drops of this allowing me to tailor the shade of the glaze.

Then to make it into a glaze I needed to break the water surface tension with the tiniest amount of fairy liquid (should have used scotch not that there's enough to taste either).

Once I had my paints it was onto the model. 
Step 1. 
Using dry brushing paint all the silver areas with 3 stages (leadbelcher to runfang steel)
Step 2.
Paint all the armour black.
Step 3.
Stipple on the new dark grey working from the edge of armour plates in leaving enough black to have nice dark recesses. 
Step 4. 
Stipple on Mechanicus Standard Grey in smaller areas than the last layer.
Step 5.
3 stage paint the gold (Balthasar Gold to Auric Armour Gold)
Step 6. 
Glaze the armour plates
Step 7.
Paint all the read with Mephiston Red.
Step 8.
Wash everything with Nuln Oil.
Step 9.
Highlight the red to a vibrant orange before a final red wash to help blend and keep it from being too bright.

Step 10.
Base.... TBC after considering good dakka forum comments.

So now I've bored everyone  with how I got there heres my first test model for my resurgent CSM,

I've got a second well on his way and some paint on the rest. I want to knock up a small allied force for my orks and with a space set of the Dark Vengeance CSMs I'm going to try to convert up an interesting yet cheap HQ to joint them. 

Hopefully I'll get something hobby related done over the weekend and have something interesting to share next week. thanks for reading and comments as usual welcome.