It has been quite some time since I was  painting anything for my Blood Angels Army. And recently I had a opportunity to take a quick glance at the state of my Space Marines. Well, they don’t look impressive.

In April this year I started painting challenge when I entered the campaign with my Blood Angels. The idea was to paint at least one more squad/vehicle/character before the next battle of the campaign starts. This way, in every subsequent battle of the campaign, more and more of my army will be painted and eventually all of Blood Angels will see red.

That was the plan…

…but you know how it is with the plans. They never work. Well, maybe not every plan, but painting challenges? Not in my case. There too many awesome miniatures to paint in my collection, just to focus my efforts on only one type, and to coordinate all my efforts to paint exactly one mini until the deadline – it seems to impossible.

So, let’s be honest – this whole Blood Angels painting challenge was futile from the scratch. I shouldn’t fool myself, and don’t even bother with it. I’ll just stick to what I love to paint at the moment, with no hassle.

And this time I feel like Blood Angels time again! When I deployed my models at my two last battles (against Imperial Guard and Black Raven), and saw over half of my army unpainted, I said to myself – no more! It doesn’t look good. Time to give my Blood Angels some love. This is my pledge. Not even one game, before all of my Angels are done. Just like I done with my Skaven for Warhammer Fantasy.

I’ve painted so far:

• Librarian in Terminator Armour
• Sanguinary Priest
• Tactical Squad
• Terminator Squad

The next reasonable choice was Heavy Support or Dedicated Transport. And I think, the mean of transportation for first Tactical is number one priority. So, Rhino is here.

Generally, I’m not used to painting vehicles. I’m not used to and not exactly fond of doing it. Vehicles (comparing to other models) are kind of boring to me. However, Rhino is a must for every Space Marines army. So, I took a deep breath, grabbed a brush and started a work.

First Step. Priming the model. God bless GW for their Mephiston Red Spray. Few months ago it wasn’t even available in Poland (due to some custom bureaucracy issues), but thankfully, all went back to normal and all colour spray where on the shelves again. This red spray is a huge time saver. Just few minutes and Rhino is all red. All left, shades, highlights, edges, details, weathering, battle damage and it’s done. Piece of cake;).

That was Step Two. And while red colour with all its shades, highlights and edging turned out well (maybe it could be little bit brighter), I’m not entirely happy with battle damage.  I made it little bit too random and chaotic. Unfortunately I noticed that after I made a quite serious number of scratches on Rhino. I decided to go on, rather than strip the model. It has to stay like that. It will be the example of my trials and errors on weathering.

Black smoke on the pipes and dust on the track. I’m happy with these. No complains here.

I used Forge World’s add-ons: side doors and a frontal plate. The model received something extra with these. I messed a bit with glueing the door backwards (the angel’s wings should be positioned in direction of the way the tank moves – not opposite, like mine are). I can accept this flaw though. Rhino will be delivering Marines to the battle with the doors designed in wrong way. Everybody will live with that.

Anticipating the question. No, the inside is not painted. Glued for good. Only my Blood Angels have the key, so undesired visitors will not complain about painting job;).

In general, I’m really happy I pushed forward Blood Angels army. It should have been done long time ago. It is how it, however. The point is to keep the steady progress. At the moment I’m in the middle of painting few random miniatures to sell them on Ebay, but next week – Blood Angels again. Tactical Squad once again!

Until next time!