Telling someone you know how to paint Space Wolves can be a mighty big claim. While there may be only a dozen or so great wolf companies, there's got to be ten times as many ways to paint them. In this case, I went with the Forge World look or the pale, light grey look. I kept away from the blue tint and went just for the grey. It feels like it's a bit more imposing than the blue tinted armour to me.
That being said, here's the quick and dirty process I used to get the results you see there.
Priming and basecoating
I've primed this guy using a light grey color. Actually it's the exact color of my basecoat too. I have this color in spray (for priming) and in a pot (for touch up work). I decided this was going to be the color for my armour. It would save me lots of work in the end by doing this.
How did I end up with an assault cannon toting terminator? This is how he came to me. My friend was kind enough to donate him to the cause. I did however put him on a Secret Weapon base so that I could load it up with snow so he fits in with the Imperial Armour 11 theme. I even painted him up as part of Red Branmaw's Great Company although I'm not so sure I got it right. I hope I don't offend any Space Wolf players out there with my feeble attempt.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure the base with the blasted tree stumps matches the world in IA11 either. Nonetheless, I've been looking for an excuse to use this base and that's what I'm going with. Blasted tree stumps are cool looking and snow makes everything better.
Shading and highlighting quickly
The shadng on this guy was done again with the Soft Body Black wash from Secret Weapon Minis. I normally use GW washes for most of my shading, but since it worked so well on white with my White Scar model, I decided to try it again to see how it would fare over light grey.
If I were painting this guy a few months ago, I would have used a thinned wash of say GW Adeptus Battlegrey for the shading. Just goes to show you that you should always be trying new things and techniques.
The SWM wash did the job perfectly. Again, no shaking the bottle before using it though. I didn't thin it either. The only thing I needed to do was keep an eye on pooling since I applied it liberally over the whole model.
When it came to highlighting, I did go back over some of the upper faces of the armour plates with my basecolor again to clean it up. Not much though. My only highlight is a line highlight on the upper edges as well using thinned GW Skull White.
That's it, armour is done!
At this point, it was just a matter of adding the details.
Highlighting the black portions of the model
If you look carefully at his shoulderpad and the assault cannon, you can see those are highlighted differently. I used a zenithal approach and wet blended the highlight into the black. I think it gives the model a much better look. You could do a simple line highlight here as well and save a little bit of work.
Additional parts and formulas
When it came time to paint some of the other elements. I sort of went by what looked good. The crux on his left shoulder is highlighted a few times alternating between cool and warm greys to get it to stand out against his armour.
The yellow wolf head on his right shoulder was another element I wanted to stand out, but only so much.
With the shoulderpad painted first,I started on the icon second. I gave it a basecoat of GW Foundation Calthan Brown before going over it with GW Foundation Iyanden Darksun. Since this was going to be too bright, I hit it with a few passes of GW Gryphonne Sepia wash until it darkened down to my liking. Using the Darksun color, I touched up the upper edges of the wolf head as a final step.
The gun barrels were given the heat stained look and the battle damage was kept smaller in scale. I wanted to see if I could get it better and maybe more realistic looking. Sometimes I think I'm too heavy handed in my application and I'm trying to cut back some. Doing battle damage over lighter colored armour makes you slow down and take your time.
The basing was simple enough. All I did was give the whole thing a quick wash of black and then covered it completely with snow. I'm using GF9 snow and regular white (PVA) glue. I'd add a layer, give it time to dry, add another layer, give it time to dry and then I think I did one more layer of snow for the deep areas. I need to work on my snow some more. It looks ok, but I'd like to have a little more control over it.
All in all, he was a quick paint job and the weathering brought him to life in the end. I like the snow effect, it gives him a certain feel. Then again, snow bases tend to do that. I think if I were to do something different, it might be to try a thinned blue wash in the beginning to give the armour a different and more traditional Space Wolf look. I wonder how that would turn out.
And last but not least, a few banners
These are also posted on the Downloads and Banners page with lots of other banners. I've only got a few character banners right now, but as I get time, I'll add more as I get them drawn up.
Make sure to check out these posts as they might help:
8 different ways to base your models with snow
Using a standard pencil for weathering
Painting Space Marine helmet lenses
The basic idea behind zenithal highlighting
Additional Note:
here is the primer and basecolor I used. It's the two on the left.
The spray primer is by ColorPlace and is called "Grey Primer" I believe. The bottle color that matches it exactly is Slate Grey by Americana.
Additional FTW member related posts:
Army Undecided tried this very technique out with his wolves.
