++Brotherhood of Darkness Painting Tutorial++
This time around I've decided to stick with models that were basically fancy black power armour, and to stay away from green and purple.
To that end the second Chapter I decided to do was the Brotherhood of Darkness, as they are drawn on page 18 in the Codex.
Author Muskie is a seasoned Nurgle Marine player and a long-time member of the Bolter & Chainsword.
Requirements
Paints
I use a lot of paints that have gone out of production but, I’ve also been buying more GW and non-GW paint because I like to try out new colours and new techniques. This paint scheme isn’t that complicated, the main colours you need are:
• Black
• Medium Grey
• Light Grey
• Dark Red
• Lighter Red
• Dark Brown
• Bone
• Flesh
• Metallic Gold
• White
I’ll reveal the exact brand and colour that I used as I go along. I’m also a pretty heavy user of inks and washes. You can paint without them, but why bother unless you’re trying for a GD. Generally using inks and washes helps you get smoother results quicker when shading a model. I also used the build up from black technique. This has become the standard in GW land. The main washes you will need are:
• Red
• Rust brown.
I’ll probably use a fine orange edge highlight as well, but that will be an optional step. Also optional, and depending on how you arm your Brotherhood of Darkness models will be which colours to highlight the lightning claws with. I’m leaning towards purple or blue, but any colour can look cool. I also think a medium brown will be necessary for the base, but you can base your models however you think looks best.
You will of course also need a prepared mini.
Here's mine,
This model is mostly black so I used an old pot of Chaos Black and painted right over the bare plastic, greenstuff, and metal.
This might not be the best primer but it is quick and easy. And for these tutorials I have to keep that in the back of my mind.
You can easily substitute this by using a Chaos Black spray from GW.
Optional Dry Brush
In the interest of speed I thought about drybrushing the model with two greys right away. I however am not a fan of heavily dry brushed black power armour, so if you’re a confident drybrusher or are just in a hurry, dry brush now.
If you want to do the traditional edge highlighting of Chaos Black where GW always recommends using Fortress and Codex Grey, skip ahead to painting the trim red.
Step 2 - Paint the trim Red
Normally I do the power armour before the trim, but sometimes I paint the trim first. For a paint scheme that is basically black and red, I think that deciding early on what you want to be red is a good idea. Everything is already black, but you can give the model a lot of shape by painting the trim red now. I’m going to use the Foundation Red, not because I like it, (it tastes terrible!) but because that is what GW staff would probably tell you to do.
Don’t believe the GW hype, if you want a good red going over black you’re going to need more than one coat. I put a second coat of foundation red and these were pretty thick coats. Then a highlight of ruby red. I really wanted the red to pop, so I had a few more steps I planned to do, but you can stop any time you’re satisfied.
Now normally I do all the little metal studs and spikes a metallic colour, but they appear to be just red for the Brotherhood of Darkness. Of course I plan on highlighting them, but to make them stand out more, I decided to do some black lining of the red, using pure Black Ink.
Step 3 - Highlighting Red
There are a lot of theories on highlighting red I suppose. I decided to go with Fiery Orange. Having already done the black lining, this gives a pretty extreme highlight, maybe a bit cartoonie for some, but I had a plan. The key to getting a nice red is as much in the lowlights as in the highlights. So after carefully painting on my Fiery Orange edge highlights I planned, not one, but two washes.
Time to darken key areas. Maybe the black-lining is enough for you, but I think a fairly dark wash with red ink and a little tiny drop of black should be selectively applied where you want to darken up your red. Try to avoid the orange edge highlights, but don’t sweat it if you get a bit of wash on them. It’ll make them less extreme and more gritty. My wash was approximately 3 parts water, 2 parts red, 1 part black ink.
Step 5 - Blending the Red
After the wash has thoroughly dried, use the Ruby Red to blend back from the black lining, or even down from the edge highlights. Basically if anything got a little messy, touch it up with Ruby Red.
The next step I decided to do was to use the old GW Red Glaze over just about everything that was red or orange. This will help smoothen out the blends. It is really subtle. If you don’t have Red Glaze you can use a really thin Red Wash or Ink. The final step for the red is to do any more orange highlights that you think the model needs.
Not a lot of guidance is given as to what colour to paint the exposed tubing with, and that is a prominent feature on CSM armour. After considerable time spent staring at the picture on page 18 I decided it was a dark red'ish-brown. My plan for painting it consisted of brown on the raised portion of the tubing, leaving black showing where possible, then a red highlight using the Foundation Red to keep the pallet reasonably small, then a wash of a mixture of red and brown ink. You can do the tubing however you want, just make sure it is a very muted colour, for the Brotherhood of Darkness you want the trim and the runes to stand out, and for this particular model you want the helmet-less head and the lightning claws to also be featured prominently.
I used Bestial Brown but perhaps should have used a darker one, followed by Foundation Red
Step 8 - Black Power Armor
There is no reason to reinvent the wheel. If you haven’t drybrushed the power armour, you need to do edge highlights using Fortress and Codex Grey. Keep the highlights minimal and one trick I have to muting the highlights is to use a thinned armour wash if things get too prominent. You can always use Chaos Black to touch up mistakes.
Now the model should be looking a bit more like the one on page 18, but besides the black power armour and the red trim, the defining feature of the Brotherhood of Darkness is their rune covered armour. We’re almost ready to paint the chaos runes.
Step 9 - The Chapter Symbol
Normally I paint the insignia and squad markings last. However, because the Brotherhood of Darkness symbol is surrounded by runes I think it is best to paint it first. If you’re not adept at painting free hand, you might be better using Night Lords’ transfers or even Night Lords’ shoulder pads if you can track some down. They really are very similar. I am going to try and paint it free hand.
This is probably going to be the most difficult stage, so if you’re in a hurry or if you lack confidence, this is the section to skip. I was a little worried about this insignia myself, more so than the Hakanor’s Reavers one. Whoever dares wins though, right?
First, paint the basic shape of the symbol with brown, Bestial Brown for me to keep the paint colour count down, but any medium brown will do. Paint both the wings and skull shapes brown. You’re just getting the rough shape so it doesn’t have to be perfect. Now paint the skull Bleached Bone and the wings Foundation Red.
Now the wings are pretty simple and are almost done. But we have to shape and shade the skull more. Get out your Chaos Black and paint the eyes and the nose. Again no pressure as we can easily fix any mistakes. Now, if you’re happy you can call the symbol done, but if you want to go for extra bonus points we are going to add some depth to the wings and the skull.
The wings are easy just get Ruby Red and paint a thin line along the edges. For the skull get out your Bestial Brown and paint some details at the bottom of the skull and a line above the eyes to better delineate the ocular cavities. Then paint some Bleached Bone highlights. At this point we are saying that it's “good enough”.
This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the stage that sets the Brotherhood of Darkness apart from the Black Legion, the rune inscribed armour. When I first volunteered to paint this scheme I wasn’t sure what source of non-English characters I would use for the runes, but then while looking through “Hordes of Chaos” which is still the current rule set for WFB Chaos Warriors I noticed on the third to last page the Chaos Runes alphabet. You could try to spell out words but I’m just going to paint whatever symbol I think is cool, wherever it will fit. It is Chaos after all.
Get a good brush, relax, focus, start on the non-Chapter symbol shoulder pad and work down the arm. Then the other arm. Then both legs, lastly paint symbols on the chest. You can paint them randomly, but the picture on page 18 that I’m working off seems to have them top to bottom like in some Asian languages. I decided to use Shinning Gold, you could use brass or yellow or even orange. Just paint one symbol at a time and if you make a mistake just paint go over it with Chaos Black.
Step 12 - Lightning Claws
I went with my original plan for the claws, purple. My evil purple recipe consists of Liche Purple and Tentacle Pink with a Purple wash. It is important to use thinned purple washes and judicious amounts of pink, but honestly I use straight pink and with washes it looks really good. Don’t let physics or art theory affect your painting of power weapons, you can do anything that looks cool from gradients, to edge highlighting, to lightning effects, to striations, to some combination of all the above. I just kept things relatively simple and of course evil.
I grabbed my pots of browns and flesh tones: Snakebite Leather, Vomit Brown, Tanned Flesh, Dwarf Flesh. Then I did a thinned wash of rust brown and red.
The eyebrows were snakebite leather and fiery orange. They were painted just before the wash. After the wash dried I did a little bit more highlighting with Dwarf Flesh and Fiery Orange and pushed on.
Step 14 - Skulls and Skull covered base
I painted the skulls on the model and the base at the same time and in the same way. Snakebite Leather then Bleached Bone then a wash-mix consisting of rust brown and red, then more Bleached Bone.
Step 15 - The Final Details
Here I did the eyes and the earrings and touched up any obvious mistakes.
Note: I plan to ultimately seal the model with purity seal.
And that's it.
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The Bolter and Chainsword > Librarium > Painting Tutorials > ++Brotherhood of Darkness Painting Tutorial++
