Deathwing Terminator Painting Tutorial

Step One: After Cleaning and assembling the model I’ve given it a thorough priming with a bone coloured primer. If you don’t have a can of bone coloured primer handy you can achieve the same coverage by using an air brush, or simply prime the model white and then with a large brush paint over the entire model with bleached bone. I’ve made sure to prime the model with several coats consisting of short controlled bursts on all sides, this allows for greater coverage and a smoother finish. Two thin coats of primer should be adequate, just make sure to allow each coat to completely dry before applying the next.

Step Two: Glaze the entire model with Griphonne Sepia Wash. Make sure that your brush isn’t overloaded with the wash to prevent pooling, to do this simply run the brush along the lip of the paint pot to be rid of any excess. This may take some trial and error to get the correct amount of wash on your brush, but have patience.

Step 3: With a large brush (I used the basecoat brush) clean up the model, and pick out the raised areas with bleached bone. I also highlighted with broad lines around the edges of the shoulder pads and the tops of the knee pads/grieves. In this step these general highlights will determine the general locations of further highlights.

Step 4: Paint any areas of the model that are to be black, grey or nmm with fenris grey. This will serve as a colour guide for the model and a general base coat for these areas. If you get any grey paint on the adjacent bone coloured areas don’t worry you can go over any touch up areas with bleached bone after you’re done painting the grey.

Step 5: Pick out the other coloured areas with dark angels green and blood red. If you dilute the paints approx. 1 part paint to 1 part water you can use the paint similarly to a more concentrated wash. The paint should not run but be pushed into the crevices with controlled flow from your brush. If done this way the bone colour beneath should be ample enough to provide highlights without applying further colour.

Step 6: Apply a wash of Badab Black to all areas that were previously coloured grey. Remember to control the flow to keep the black wash from running onto other areas of the model. Use a fine detail brush to apply the black wash to smaller less accessible areas on the model.

Step 7: With a fine detail brush pick out the raised edges of the bone armour with a 50/50 mix of bleached bone and skull white. Thin your paint slightly with water to allow the paint to flow off the brush in smooth narrow lines. This can be done easily by running the side of the brush along the hard edges of the model.

Step 8: For these models I’ve decided to go with a glowing eye effect. To do this, first paint the eye and the surrounding area in Swooping hawk turquoise with a little bit of white added to the mix (in my opinion the paint is too dark right out of the pot), apply this in a watered down layer so to glaze the area surrounding the eye reather than painting it. Going in towards the center of the eye highlight with increasing amounts of white paint added to the mix followed by a pure white dot in the very center of the eye.

Step 9: Using a 2:1 mix of white and bleached bone, paint the most extreme highlights on the model. Remember to thin your paint to allow for good flow off your brush to achive the sharpest highlights. After this pick out light source points with a dot of pure white at the center of each highlight.

Step 10: Highlight the Grey, Black and NMM areas with shadow grey, 1:1 Shadow grey and Space wolves grey, Space wolves grey, and finally 1:1 Space wolves grey and Skull white. The most extreme highlights can be picked out with a dot of white paint in a similar fashion to the bone coloured armour.

And there you have it, 10 steps to painting your own Death Wing terminators. Below are some pictures of the completed model.