LATE POST- Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine Chaplain Helmet Part 2: Painting

I had this post mostly written/edited last week and have only just now gotten around to posting it a bit.  Enjoy.



For those of you just joining, I've been working on some helmets inspired by the Space Marines from the tabletop wargame called Warhammer 40,000. When last I wrote about this project, I had a fresh casting just out of the mold that looked like so:



With the helpful assistance of two different types of primer, three different kinds of white paint, some chrome paint, a bottle of mustard (yes, mustard like you put on your sandwich), a little bit of gentle love from an airbush, and a few little details added in, it looked like so:



There's a metric butt-ton of pictures and a detailed description of the painting process after the jump.


Enjoy.



Since it will end up with a predominately white color scheme, I decided to give it a few coats of white primer:


This revealed a handful of spots that still needed some filling and sanding attention, but nothing too major:



With the worst of those problems resolved, the next step was a few coats of shiny chrome paint:


The crome paint is a bit delicate though, so it took a while before it was solid enough to handle.

Then I painted it white again:


I failed to take any pictures of the in-between step, but the short version is that I daubed mustard wherever I wanted a scratch to show through the paint on the finished product.  You can see some of the mustard blisters in this close-up shot:

Yes, you read that right.  Mustard.  French's yellow mustard, in point of fact.  Just like you might use on a sandwich.


When the white paint had dried, it was just a matter of picking off the mustard blisters with a pointed stick to leave these gorgeously believable paint scratches:



To add some depth to the damage, I then repeated the mustard masking:



Then I sprayed the entire helmet with a glossy coat of a slightly yellower white:



Then I picked off all of the mustard blisters and gave the helmet a quick washdown:



The next step was adding vent details and airbrushing some age onto it:



For the aging, I airbrushed a color called "Steam Power Black" into the crevases.  It works out to be a very dark, grimy shade of brown:



At this point I couldn't resist the urge to try on the helmet, so I wedged the eye lenses in place and popped the whole thing on my head:

I failed, however, to give the glue from the cheek vents enough time to finish off-gassing.  I snatched it off before it caused me any permanent health problems.


I hope so anyways.


Either way, a little bit more tweaking and I was finally happy with the paint scheme. Then I installed a lens and some lights in the camera housing above the left temple:



I'm very proud of the lights:



It still fits too:



More importantly, it looks great alongside the rest of the family:



Sooner or later I'll get around to building the full suit of armor that goes with these helmets.


No promises though...