While I don't do many contests, I've always wanted to try my hand at painting up a Red Scorpion Space Marine. They have a very simple and cool looking color scheme I think. There's just something about grey armour with a single accent color. It always looks so sharp.
After finding out that Jack from over at Red's Corps Red Scorpions was holding a small contest to create a Red Scorpion Space Marine character, I figured this was the perfect excuse to try my hand at painting one up.
The contest requires you to make up your model's stats and I'm not sure how well I'm going to do with that aspect. But, I like to think my painting turned out well enough. And really, all this is my weak excuse to paint one of these guys up in the first place.
Finding background information to work from
The first thing I did was head to my Imperial Armour books to see what I could dig up about these guys so my model fit in with what was already being put out there. I remembered seeing them in IA6 where they made an appearance on Vraks.
After looking through the book, I decided that's where I would set my character in terms of history (modeling and painting) and then I'd build the rules from the story I came up with. I still haven't come up with my rules for this guy yet, but I'm not worried, I still have some time left to work that part out.
Why just a Veteran Sergeant?
I went with this lower profile for a couple reasons. First, I like the idea of senior troops leading Tactical squads. On top of that, the Red Scorpions have a tendency to replace their Sergeants with Apothecaries. It's an upgrade you can buy using the Forge World rules for them. I opted out of the Apothecary upgrade and went for the traditional Sergeant look for this guy.
Most of all though, it's what I had spare bits to make. That's what it came down to in the end. I was lucky I had the right kind of helmet to use otherwise I might have passed on this whole project all together.
Builing the model
Using Vraks as my stage, I built my Veteran Sergeant to fit the story (and bits) I had available. I went with the classic chainsword and plasma pistol combination. I didn't have the older MK arour chest plate I would have liked to include, so I had to go with a basic one instead.
I did use a set of running legs I had lying around to give him some movement like he is charging forward leading his men.
Painting the model
Just like any other chapter with grey armour, there are a hunderd different ways you can go about it. Do you want light or dark, warm or cool looking, strong highlights or subtle and the list goes one. I decided on a slightly darker and muted armour scheme against a high contrast base color. That's fancy talk for I painted him to look like the picture in the Imperial Amrour book and I wanted to use a killer red weathering powder so I needed an excure to do that too.
Knowing that his sole purpose was to paint him for fun, I finished him off in a quick evening of painting. I did go all out on the weathering though to give him the gritty look I like. Some chipped paint here and there with weathering powders (from Secret Weapon Miniatures) and he came right to life.
Make sure to check out these posts as they might help:
Weathering powders, a two part series on using them
Weathering with sponges, a comparison
