From the painting desk #17 – More Colonial Marine specialists
August 30, 2012It’s a busy time here, with plenty of work. I’ve got a few new projects in the pipeline, and surprisingly this doesn’t even mean I’ve dropped my old ones. The Colonial Marines are still rolling out and they’re slowly moving towards a more generic futuristic army. My latest addition to the force consists of three models from three different manufacturers.
A while back, Paul a.k.a Sho3box commented on how he felt that the Colonial Marines deserved better leadership than that of the inept Lt. Gorman in Aliens.
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Enter this officer from Copplestone Castings. With his simple stance and his hands behind his back, he really looks like he means business. I’m guessing actual combat drops instead of simulated.
Next up is a CM operating a sentry gun. The model is from Woodbine, and I really like the pose, with the trooper sitting on his knees and casually holding his rifle. I painted the laptop’s screen to suggest that it’s being used to control the sentry gun. I like the way his paintjob turned out, and I’m especially happy with the five o’clock shadow I painted on his face. The sentry gun is from the same set, and it’s a very nice piece of hardware as well. It will join my four em4 sentry guns to help my marines dish out loads of automatic, motion tracking death. The laptop’s screen didn’t photograph too well, due to the gloss varnish on the screen.
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Click for a larger version
Speaking of em4, they produce the third model of this trio. I decided that attaching some form of special forces to the Colonial Marine strength would be fun, so I’m currently painting up these troopers in berets. I settled for a black beret with a silver/steel badge, and in my opinion it looks suitably special force-y. What do you think?
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A fun batch to paint, all were minis that painted up nicely. I ran into a terrible hitch during spray varnishing, as for some reason – humid weather I guess – my Army Painter matt varnish left the models with a horrible, gritty texture and turned all the blacks grey. After some brooding I went back and did a lot of fixing on the minis. The next run with the same can of spray went without a problem, so despite the setback the minis are finally finished.
As always, comments and critique welcome!
Dawn of the Lead 
I somehow managed to unsubscribe to DotL and so missed the stuff over the last couple of months ::)
The stubbly chin did come out really wel. Its not something that I have ever managed in a fashion that I was happy with. What technique did you use?
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I was starting to wonder where you’d disappeared, glad to have you back on board. Thanks for the compliment on the painting! IIRC, the chin is simply a combination of some black washing and a very thinned down, watery grey. The trick is to do multiple thin layers.
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Cool, I will try that wash method the next time that I need to make someone look that little bit more combat and a little less simulated.
Your camo painting seems to have got better too Mikko, I think that it may be better on these guys than on earlier examples. Cool stuff.
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