Painting Space Wolves Armor

This entry is all about how I paint Space Wolves Armor. I forego the light blue that GW does for a grey tone that emulates the look of cold stone. I developed this method very early in my painting career, and my goal with it was to get something that looks cool, but isn't high on skill. This technique isn't hard to do, as it uses lots of dry brushing, but it has several layers which hides the worst side effects of dry brushing.

We start with the near obligatory black undercoat. As you can see by the picture, this isn't a thorough undercoat. It's a bit dusty looking in places. This is fine. An undercoat's primary purpose is to make sure that paint sticks to the model and make things easier to paint. In some cases the undercoat is the part of the color scheme, and it always contributes to some amount, but for my space wolves it only serves as a canvas, and so coverage doesn't need to be perfect.

The first color is Vallejo Cold Grey, but honestly any medium to dark grey will work. I apply this with a technique I call a wet dry brush, which is like dry brushing with a fully loaded brush (wet the paint a little, usually applying straight from the bottle will mean the paint goes on too heavy and you potentially lose details). As you can see, it's pretty sloppy. It doesn't matter if every crevice gets filled, as this technique is all about texture, and some blotches actually add to the effect. It also doesn't matter if coverage is solid with this first layer, so I don't typically do a second coat unless the color looks very very thin.

The next coat is Nuln Oil wash. I apply this very thickly. I used to do this with black ink, which is shiny, but gives you much harder, darker lines. But Ink is harder to work with and nobody really makes them any more out of artist paint lines (I have them, but I tend to not use them often, despite the fact that I really like them). This seems to work fine, though. Although from batch to batch I sometimes go back to the inks. The difference is subtle enough that generally only I seem to be able to tell. Because I apply this so thickly it takes a long time to dry. Some people use hair dryers to speed this part up, but that feels like a waste of time to me, so I usually just have a second painting project going on the side.

Here's a shot of a dreadnought at the same stage. Noticed how blotchy the wash is. This is not only fine, but for this technique it's actually desirable. The final effect emulates stone, with lots of texture, so unevenness in the layers enhances the effect. I actually go back to the model at this stage and sometimes add more 'blotch' if there isn't enough.

Next step is a good all over dry brush of a 50/50 mix of Vallejo Cold Grey and Vallejo Fortress Grey, or whatever light grey you prefer. This needs to be done from a lot of different angles to make sure you minimize directional brush strokes.

The next step is a dry brush of straight Vallejo Fortress Grey. At this point you start to get more of the desired effect. While it is identifiable as a dry-brushing technique, the dusty look you can get from that technique becomes desirable texture when done in layers.

The final step in this grey armor technique is a light drybrush of Vallejo Ghost Grey, focusing mostly on the raised edges and avoiding flat surfaces. This color, unlike the other greys, is very particular and important, because it has just a 'touch' of blue in it. I find this final touch is what really makes it look like stone. If you look at the final pics versus the previous one the armor almost looks darker because of the bright highlight.

I think this technique looks cool on its own, but it doesn't really come together until you get the other model details, which I'll be posting soon!