Painting the magnetized arms for the Chaos Terminators

Introduction

I decided to paint several arms for the Chaos Lord and use whichever looked best for the competition.

Painting the arms

I started applying the color scheme. When I got to the weathering step, I realized that I needed something else first.

Freehanding shoulder icons

They are of course part of the same warband as these Chaos Marines I've painted before, so they get the same iconography.

Word Bearers icon

I made some improvements over the original process.

I now have a base paint: Heavy Goldbrown, so the yellow flames don't take 100 layers to achieve.

Carry on with black, as per the scheme.

Again, the yellow base paint help in painting the eyes. Straighten the teeth where necessary.

Clean up the eyes with black where needed.

Highlight the yellow flames with Sun Yellow.

Serrated Sun icon

Again, small improvements.

Start with a black rhombus.

Heavy Goldbrown makes for better and faster shapes on black. First the disc...

Then the rays. Clean up with black where needed.

Highlight the discs in Sun Yellow. I did a half moon shape in the lower right "corner".

General details

Carry on weathering. It hurt a bit to sponge over the freehanded icons, but a job's a job.

The power weapons have cables connecting them to the armor, and all the arms have elbow joints on the inside. Basecoat black, then line highlight Heavy Charcoal.

Fangs hanging around as random trophies/effigies. Paint them as bone.

Not shown, but several of these have small reactor vents. I painted them green, as above. Basecoat Dark Green, then highlight Sick Green and Escorpena Green. I had the brightest highlight be at the corner of the melta reactor and the center of the power axe reactor.

Combi melta

Always drill out your gun barrels.

Highlight the bullets with Bright Bronze to give them a different feel than the weathered gun parts.

Muzzle flash on the melta barrel: use Drakenhof Nightshade at the end, then Druchii Violet, then Seraphim Sepia at the back. Let them blend a bit around the borders.

This would work better on a shiny, less-weathered metal. On this already dark barrel, the effect is barely visible up-close.

Green power sword

Almost like the painting tip, with a few small improvements.

Instead of going directly for the Sick Green edge, first do a blend of Dark Green and Sick green, lighter towards the tip.

Edge highlight as normal.

I felt the contrast too stark, so I glazed over with Waywatcher Green. I picked out the power nodule with Chainmail Silver instead of green for variety.

Red lightning claws

Basecoat Heavy Red, then glaze over with successively lighter colors. I forgot to take pictures. This is already after two glazes, Bloody Red and Hot Orange.

Finally glaze with Orange Fire.

Edge highlight Sun Yellow.

The paint scheme looked good on paper, but it is definitely the weakest of the 3 power weapon types.

Ice axe

Basecoat Royal Purple.

Heavy drybrush Magic Blue. The result is this strange, off-blue.

Edge highlight the blade with Magic Blue. Also do scratches on the axe head. Barely visible here.

Progressively highlight the blade and the scratches with lighter blues. First mix 1:1 Magic Blue and Electric Blue.

Then just Electric Blue. This is already light enough to draw some angular shapes - mostly triangles - along where the blade meets the rest of the axe head.

Mix 1:1 Electric Blue and white for further highlights.

This is definitely the best looking left hand option, so I went with this for the competition.