Painting Alpha Legion Snipers 3. Washing and Trims

Following a base coat in rune fang silver from Citadel, and a layer or two of gunmetal blue from Vallejo, the next few steps to painting my Alpha Legion snipers follow a process that will be familiar to many readers: washing and doing the base colours for the trim and other regions.

The washes used a watered down blue and green colour. The first step was to take a pure blue wash and apply it to the lower halves of the plates of every marine. Using a mixture of blue and green (weighted more so toward the blue than the green), a wash was then applied to the upper portions of each power armour panel and blended with the lower halves to create a smooth transition. This leaves the overall colour still very much a metallic blue, but ensures that there is some subtle variation on the greaves, shoulder pads and elsewhere. This was accomplished using a traditional paintbrush rather than the airbrush at this stage as I felt it gave me a bit more control over what I wanted in terms of the desired outcome. 

At this stage, I then went on to paint the trims of the armour -- mostly the outer trim of the shoulder pads, but also the central portion of the back pack on the power armour. The trim colour is a combination of lead belcher and rune fang silver.

On the death mark rifles, I've painted a dark forest green along the powered parts of the rifle, and left the silver from the base coat showing through in key locations. You can see that I've also done a little bit more work on the sergeant by painting a stripe on his helmet and had a play with his eyes. The hoods from the Dark Angels on these miniatures have been painted almost pure black -- going over the stray gunmetal blue from the earlier zenith airbrush stage. 

The next few stages will be to wash down the trims (probably with Nuln Oil) and do some detailing - particularly on the capes. But first, I'm going to let all the washing and trims dry out thoroughly.