Painting Deathwing, Part 3

Painting Deathwing, Part 1
Painting Deathwing, Part 2
The Completed Deathwing

Ok, our third and final installation on how to paint the Deathwing. We'll start with how I paint the symbol on since GW hasn't made Deathwing decals since 2nd edition. I know there's a fan decal sheet out there but I didn't want to do it that way.

Step 1: Paint a thin red line to delineate the position of the sword. The sword has a break in it near the bottom, mark that with your line. I use Scab Red for this part.

Step 2: Now flesh out the sword. Keep the quillions of the sword close to the body, my mistake on the early ones was making them go too far out. Don't worry if you mess up, after you're done with the sword get out your white color and clean up your lines.

Step 3: Now add the frame for the wings. I had to switch models for this photo, you can see that I haven't cleaned up the lines yet. The inside lines for the wings go as far down as the break in the sword, the curves are a quarter circle and the outside lines of the wings are the same length as the inside ones.

Step 4: Now thicken the lines and add the other lines to the wings. I find this the hardest step, getting the angles just right. If you mess up it's fine, once you're done use your white to clean up the red mistakes. It may take more than one coat.

Step 5: After it is all cleaned up, use Blood Red to highlight. You don't need much but it really helps bring it to life.

So that's all for the symbols, now here's how I do the scrollwork and Purity Seals on these models.



As you can see this guy is laden in scrolls and seals. As mentioned before, I use regular Bleached Bone straight from the bottle (not my thinned out mix) for the scrolls themselves. I wash them with Gryphonne Sepia, then highlight with a Bleached Bone mixed with a bit of Skull White. Lastly I take a very fine sepia-colored pen (I use a Staedtler, but Micron is a great line as well) and do some Latinesque writing. For the purity seals I just do a big letter than a bunch of scribbles. For the larger scrolls I write a bunch of Latin type words. There's plenty of websites that can give you great words like fortius, fidelius, mortus and so on. Be sure to include the serifs! If you really want that "authentic" feel, change all the letters "U" into "V." Not necessary but I do it after having seen lots of Latin writing through my various art history classes. Some Latin scholars will point out that there's much more to make it "authentic" but that's good enough for me. Besides, High Gothic isn't actually Latin anyway.



Here's the lightning claws squad. I still have to finish their bases. I used the Baal Red wash to make their claws look a little bloodstained. I just finished up the thunder hammer terminators, only 5 guys left!