Painting Word Bearers Chaos Space Marines

Introduction

You've met these guys previously, in Green stuff: first encounter as well as Magnetized weapon arms.

Planning phase

I'm going for the classical Word Bearers color scheme: dark red power armor with gunmetal trimming. For reference: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Word_Bearers

Getting at it

Priming and undercoat

As usual, I've primed my models in white. Then I put on a layer of Gore Red. The result was a bright red color that did not look at all like what I intended.

So I proceeded to undercoat the models in black.

This has the added benefit of giving a black layer to the armor joints, so I won't have to fiddle with that using the detail brush.

Alternative: 

Prime the models in black.

Armor basecoat

I then came back to laying on the red paint. Unfortunately, this time the black was showing through. Still, this was better than the underlying white giving it that bright nuance.

This was easy to fix: I laid on another layer of red.

Alternative:

Use a thicker, darker red color (Mephiston red?).

Details: armor trims

This was the first time I was painting power armor; and I did not anticipate the amount of work being involved with painting armor trims. This was probably the longest and most arduous process for these miniatures; here's the result:

Details: horns, eyes and decorations

For the horns, I went with a brown undercoat. I built up a layer of bonewhite on it.

The decorative elements on the bolters and armor got a bronze coat. The eyes are glowing green.

Overall black wash

Be generous.

Highlights

Edge highlight the bronze details with more bronze. Highlight the gunmetal trimmings with silver. Highlight the armor itself with a lighter red. Highlight the eyes with just a drop of green.

The weapons of the Champion

Let's make sure the squad's Chaos Champion isn't running around empty handed and with his right arm chopped off at the wrist.

A desecrated boltgun goes into his left hand. I scratched a cut into the aquila and painted a chaos star over it. Giving the upper part a black basecoat was a bad idea, as the shape of the star is barely visible. But it will do.

A power sword goes into the right hand. I went with a lightning themed blade. The basecoat is a very dark, purplish blue:

I drew the shape of the lightning with a regular blue. Then mixed it up with some white and drew the lines again, this time, thinner.

Finally, I drew over the lines again, even thinner this time, with white.

The golden hilt encases a blue gem (should have gone with green?) to complete the Tzeentchian effect.

Shoulderpads

Emboldened by the success with the power sword, I decided to do some freehand painting on the shoulderpads.

On the left side goes the legion symbol: a daemon head on a flaming background. I have followed the guide as posted in this article (an excellent painting guide by the way, but too monochrome for my tastes). For ease, this is how the process is outlined:

I used matte medium for more control over the paint - especially because yellow needs a ton of layers to look good on dark red and black. I forgot to take more in progress pictures here. This is the finished icon:

On the right side goes the chapter symbol. I decided to resurrect the Serrated Sun, as it was my favorite chapter from the Horus Heresy novels. I decided to take a similar approach as above.

Many, many layers of yellow, of course.

Bases

Unlike daemons, these guys do not fit into any fantasy realm; so I went ahead and gave them ruined cityscape bases.

Start with chopping up some cork:

I initially wanted to work on the bases as they were; but I realized that I could not paint the bases without getting some paint on the minis themselves (or at least, I had to try very hard). So I broke them off their bases. It made gluing the pieces of cork on much easier.

I then added some flocking and large grained sand.

Spray-paint the bases black.

Heavy drybrush with a dark grey, leaving only the crevices black.

Light drybrush with light grey, to highlight those edges.

I dry fitted some of these bushes, but it was way to large for what I wanted. So I chopped one up...

... the perfect size to simulate a bit of growth on a ruined cityscape.

I placed them mostly where the spray paint did not cover up the original colors of the terrain. This meant all the larger crevices, so it looks even more life-like!

Painting finished!