Painting my Marines

It's a new month, a new year, and I decided that I'm going to be focusing on my Dark Angels for a while to get them up to par.  Our local gaming club is doing a league type called "Slow Grow", which I'll describe in more detail in another post.  In a nutshell, we're playing small point size games with tight restrictions each week, and increasing the point limit and reducing restrictions each following week until we ultimately have a 1000 point tournament some time in February.  Although I have largely been collecting for a Deathwing army, this is the perfect excuse to paint and play all of my regular marines!  Here is my painting process for my Tactical marines.  Although it's not fully finished (shoulder pads and touch ups, etc), I'd like to get my whole army up to at least this step by the time the tournament rolls around.

Black base coat with Abbadon Black.  I would do spray primer, but I don't have it.

Base color coat with Dark Angels Green.  I wasn't very careful with this model and had to go back to fill in the joints, gun, and other details with black.  For future models, I'll try to save time by missing these areas when doing the green coat in order to leave them black.

Detail work by painting the shoulder pad edges, chest tube things, purity seal parchment, and backpack skull with Codex Grey, most of the boltgun with Boltgun Metal, the outside/ inside weapon plate, purity seal, and eyes with Red Gore, and the chest art with Shining Gold.  I left the Gold slightly watery so that it doesn't look so vibrant.  I would consider dry brushing it for future models.  I also plan to base coat the purity seal parchment with a brown and coat over it with a slightly watered down Bleached Bone so that it looks like real parchment.

Highlighted the edges on every edge I could think of with Striking Scorpion Green.  The highlights are more pronounced than I intended initially, but I kind of like the pronounced bold over-highlighted style.  It looks better from farther away and gives the model some interesting contrast.  Finished by basing the model with Elmer's Glue and Citadel's Scorched Grass.  I still have more work to do on touchups, covering the grey chest art with boltgun metal, deciding what I want to do with the shoulder and knee pads for company divisions and such, but overall a satisfying goal to get the rest of my army to by February!