Tutorial: How to paint Ravenwing and Deathwing

Tutorial: How to paint Ravenwing and Deathwing:

In a follow up of Monday's Dark Angel tutorial, today we'll explore how to apply the techniques you learnt there to the Deathwing and Ravenwing models of your copy of Dark Vengeance. We also give you some ideas how to paint the blue armour of your Librarian and how to paint skin.
Painting Deathwing
For the armour of the Deathwing Terminators I used the same technique as for painting bone in our original Dark Angels tutorial. For armies that have a lot of different looking units it's key to keep your palette limited and to pick up colours from one unit or model and apply them on another.
Instead of priming the models black and then basecoating them with Bleached Bone [Ushabti Bone], I recommend priming with Skeleton Bone colour primer from The Army Painter, which is essentially Bleached Bone in a spray can. This will save so much time, because building up an even coat of Bleached Bone over black (or even over white) primer takes a couple of layers. If you can't find Army Painter's Colour Primers at your local game store, check out the full Army Painter range at Wayland Games.
So after I got my basecoat done, I painted VGC Brown Ink directly into the recesses, cleaned everything up with Bleached Bone and highlighted with Screaming Skull and Ceramite White.
Weapons and other details on the model can be painted just as explained as in our original tutorial. For the chest eagle use the same technique and paints as for the dark green armour. You can also paint the tabbard of your Sergeant dark green to increase the amount of green to your unit, this will help to tie your Deathwing units to the rest of your army. Feathers, purity seals and other ornaments and embellishments of the armour can be painted the same way as the robe in our original tutorial - I did this with the little skull on the hand guard on the example below.

Painting Ravenwing
The traditional black armour of the Ravenwing can be painted in the same way like the black underskirt of our regular Marine, described in step 4 of our original tutorial. I recommend using Army Painter's Matt Black primer for Ravenwing models, as it creates a very dark and rich black basecoat. Games Workshop's primer often comes out slightly greyish and would require a coat of Abbadon Black to even it out, wasting valuable painting time.
Once the basecoat was ready, I highlighted with Eshin Grey and Codex Grey [Dawnstone]. Weapons and bone embellishments were painted as usual.
To add a little hint of green and to better match your Ravenwing units with the rest of your army, I recommend painting the eye lenses with VGC Mutation Green [Warboss Green] and highlighting them with Skarsnik Green, instead of red lenses like on our regular Marine. You could also paint the inside of your Ravenwing Seargent's robe or the wax of the purity seals in dark green, to add a couple more spots of green.

Painting blue Librarian armour

The technique for painting the armour of your Librarian is the same like on your regular Marines, you just need to exchange the greens for blues. A recipe that worked really well for me on my Ultramarines can found in this tutorial: Painting Ultramarines the Stahly way. Note that this one uses the old Citadel paints. To convert them to the new range of Citadel Colours, I advise basecoating with Macragge Blue, shading with Vallejo Game Colour Black Ink (or thinned Abaddon Black), and highlighting with Calgar Blue and VGC Steel Blue [Fenrisian Grey]. Note that this will result in a lighter blue armour as in my Ultramarines tutoria thoughl, as Macragge Blue is significantly lighter than old Mordian Blue. For acchieving a darker blue armour with the new Citadel paint range, I recommend a basecoat of Cantor Blue, shading with VGC Black Ink or thinned Abaddon Black, and highlights with Alaitoc Blue and Hoeth Blue.
Painting skin
Some of the Dark Angels in Dark Vengeance show exposed flesh, like the Libarian or the Ravenwing Sergeant. We published a tutorial for painting faces on Tale of Painters a while ago, check it out here. It uses the old Citadel flesh tones, but you can see exactly where to place your highlights and learn an easy way to paint eyes. To convert this tutorial to the new paint system, basecoat with Bugman's Glow, layer with Cadian Fleshtone [Tallarn Flesh] and highlight with Kislev Flesh and a mix of Kislev Flesh and white. The new flesh tones from Citadel are more muted and caucasian, unlike the bright tan of the old paints. Quite fitting for the sombre theme of the Dark Angels actually.
We hope that you learnt everything you need to know about painting your Dark Angels from Dark Vengeance by now. If anyone uses our tutorials, we'd love to see you posting links to your models in the comments!
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