Tactical Marine Painting - Armour

So after some work, I've finally finished painting something worth posting!  Here's a step by step walk through (with pictures) of the process I did to paint the armor of my tactical marines.  I'll be adding a part 2 with the completed marines at a future date.

Step 1: Undercoat using Citadel black primer.

Step 2: Base coat with Mechrite Red.  I did two coats as the color is pretty thin.  Each coat took about 10 minutes per model, for a total of 20 minutes per model for step 2.


Step 3: Wash with Thraka Green. This was important because the Mechrite Red was really shiny, a thin Thraka Green wash toned the shiny down without loosing the red hue.  The wash took 5 minutes per model.  See the picture below of a marine (with a beak - my favorite helmet!) after step 3.

 

 Step 4: Paint all shaded areas with a 2:1 Blood Red:Water mixture.  This step took me around 20 minutes per model.  See the picture below for a tactical marine after step 4.

Step 5: Semi-highlight with a 2:1:1 mixture of Blood Red:Blazing Orange:Water.  To do this I basically looked at the marine top down and painted every surface I could see looking straight down.  Step 5 took about 10 minutes per marine.

Step 6: Highlight with Blazing Orange.  This was just adding an extra orange coat to the "shiny spots" on the marines.  Step 6 took about 5 minutes per marine.

Step 7: Wash with Baal Red.  Toned down the brightness a little bit.  Step 7 took under 5 minutes per marine.

The picture below shows a marine once completed step 7, which is all of the armor painting.  Steps 1-7 took just over an hour per marine, for a total of 10-11 hours for the squad of 10.  Pretty steep, but overall I'm happy with how they look.  If I could've changed anything I would have done a touch up coat of Blood Red:Water after step 4, as the Blood Red coat was a little thin.

Next up is to touch up then paint all of the details and the weapons!