Devastator Squads WIP #3

Last post left off the 2x Dev squads for 5th Co. with the marines themselves largely done. The 5x man unit here has had knee coloured black for eventual squad markings, and are now waiting for helmets & weapons - which come together below...

All 8 weapons were airbrushed black; the plasmas got a burst of mephiston red, while the lascannon (arm parts) were brushed with khorne red & metallics to start the colouring. Both have had a few thin coats of white added to the weapon core. 

Easy to see why these are *much* easier to paint before being welded onto the marine - getting access to cables, chest, etc (let alone painting the blue helmets) would be a massive pain done on a fully complete miniature. 

Eventually, both will get a very light airbrush 'glow' but the mid step is to add a glaze (guilliman blue for the plasmas and waywatcher green for the lascannons). I'm glad I added a spray of mephiston red to the shoulders so they are consistent with the left arms, but it did make a lot of extra time in blacking out all the cables and bits of weapon later on (bit more obvious in the second photo below). 

Lascannons WIP with the glaze being added to the power coils. Washes & certain areas were much easier to let dry by poking the end into blu tac. 

Red areas highlighted and metallic details washed; the team with their toys laid out... 

In a fit of self-punishment, I decided to go and individually colour the wires coming out of the plasma cannons. God knows what I was thinking as I then had to add similar colours to the backpack wires too... 

Helmets... are much, much easier to paint when done separately to the body. Maybe it's my age and laziness - getting paint into the eye sockets can be done much easier by tipping the pot on it's side and 'rolling' it away from the brush to draw a line smoothly. As I might not ever get around to adding an extra 10x 'tactical' marines for the devastator squads, I went for all 10 of these as helmets rather than mixing in bare/hair for the sergeants. 

If I'd thought about blue helmets on red chests a bit more carefully, I think I would have opted for a different sergeant head to this one... I've taken to thinking of it as the 'optimus prime' look (note the ~25 yr old bottle of bronzed flesh...). 

They feel like these two 5-man squads took much longer to paint & put together than tactical marines... I guess the extra stages/parts for the weapons and some of the fiddlier details have added up. 

1 more final WIP post coming shortly for the devastator sergeants & markings.