Five Hour Painting Challenge - Space Marine

Following on from my blog brothers Necropocalypse (Link) and Brambleten (Link) I decided it was time I give this 5 hour challenge a go. I've never really painted under a time pressure before, and naturally I'm a fairly slow painter so I was a little intimidated. Armed with a space marine from my jar of marines (seriously I have a jar of assembled marines, every painter should!) and my painting bro Anthony Rodriguez from Pirate Monkey Painting (https://www.facebook.com/antoniuspaints/) we set up our area and prepared our miniatures. First of all here is a pre prime shot of the prepared miniature. A simple kit bash from a variety of space marine boxes and some old blood angels bits.

The base was a resin base I've had for so long I can't remember where I got it. It's a 'scrap' base which I intended to be the interior of some kind of ship or space hulk. I added some oxide paste for some texture, a couple of weapon shells from Secret Weapon and a necron arm from my bits box.

I decided to paint him as a Flesh Tearer, I've always loved their scheme and the pose screams out Flesh Tearer to me! Here he is primed and ready for the challenge.

Hour 1: 

I had a broad idea of what I wanted to achieve, as he is mostly red armour I thought I'd allow a good couple of hours to work on that. First hour I put down a nice even coat of Reaper Clotted Red, a really nice deep red. Then I added some Vallejo Dark Sea Blue and started to block in some shadows. Usually I'd be neater but as time was a factor I was quite rough here, I can always neaten up if I have time later.

Hour 2: 

It feels like I got nothing achieved in hour two. I don't know what happened! I spent more time on the red, making sure the contrast was right and neatening a few areas. I also started working on the black. I tried to do a reflex light on the shoulderpad but just couldn't get it right after a few tries and gave up. Can see what I was going for with the highlights on the backpack though.

Hour 3: 

You'd think in a 5 hour challenge I'd remember to take a photo at the end of each hour right? Whoops. Oh well. Hour 3 was spent on metallics mostly, I used S75 silvers for the chainsword and boltgun and GW Balthasar Gold for the bronze areas.

Hour 4: 

Aaaaagh where is the time going? I haven't even looked at the base yet. Hour 4 I did as many of the details as possible, purity seals (Karak Stone and Ivory, Caliban Green and Ivory for the seal), Reaper Blood red for all the blood drops and some highlights on the armour, Karak Stone and Ivory with a wash of watered down Vallejo Smoke for the cloth tied around his leg. Then the head. Cadian Fleshtone base, glazed dark red and blue for the shadows and cadian fleshtone mixed with ivory for the highlights. The hair is kind of a crap sculpt so I just painted it with Tank brown, stippled a little and a highlight at the front. I didn't really paint the eyes on this model, they are so small as he's squinting I just darkened the area.

Hour 5: 

How I got this finished I'll never know, working on the base was a complete blur. Pure instinct, I did some sponging with a piece of blister foam and some metallic. Then I grabbed a load of washes (some GW, some Secret Weapon) and just mixed them on the base. I'm actually quite happy with how it turned out considering how long I spent on it! Not sure I could have got away with this on many other types of base. Finally a light drybrushing of silver and painting the necron arm and shell casings with S75 metallics. Then I had about 15 mins to do a little edge highlighting in places, try and freehand the Flesh Tearer's chapter symbol (it's a little rough, could do better) and use some thinned dark brown to add text to the purity seals.

Here is my wet palette so you can see what I used and how I mixed my colours.

Showcase:

And finally some nicer photos from my photobooth.

 

All in all it was a fun challenge, something a bit different from my usual display standard. I might do this again in the future and see how I can improve my time efficiency.