Salamanders

These are some of my Salamander Space Marines. I try to make them as fluffy as I can, so I use Missile Launchers, Lascannons, and Plasma Weapons as little as possible. What I try to convey in the weapons I give my Sallies is one of fire and steel. Also, all my Sergeants or higher-ranked units have their head exposed, or atleast as much as the model permits. If you look at the finished minis, you can see that I follow the codex fluff on markings. On the left shoulder is the Chapter Symbol, the right shoulder has the squad marking, and the squad number is on the knee. I personally don't like the look of Sallies, atleast normal units, painted with flames everywhere. I think it just looks stupid. As for the banners, you can plainly see I use them. Mine are custom-made by myself on PhotoShop, and they match the dimensions of GW's. So if you want custom banners, email me.

I decided, on my own, the Sallies should be very tan, so I paint exposed flesh with a watered-down coat of bleached bone on my black basecoat, then drybrush with bronzed flesh, then ink the whole thing with chestnut ink. Since the bleached bone is slightly splotchy over the black, the skin tone varies, and looks more realistic. This idea of dark skin apparently matches with the fluff, so go me. Also, along with the fluff, I cut and paint honor scars into the heads of these units.

As for my Command Units, I first painted my Termie Librarian. I know that with the fluff, he should be mostly blue, but I don't like the look, so I made him all green. For my Termie Chaplain, I wanted to go with the fluff and make him mostly all black. This presented a problem not encountered with most other paint schemes. The shoulders on a Salamander, if done as per fluff, should be black, and in the case of a model in Terminator armor, there is no trim. I really didn't like the idea of an all-black mini, as it would look lame and boring, so I cam eup with a neat idea. Since, in the fluff, armor is usually parted together over time, it only makes sense that Terminator armor is so rare and parts would only be replaced if needed. Taking a cue from the fluff about Techmarines slowly incorporating more red into their armor as they grow closer to the Machine God, I left a few parts of the Chaplain Snot Green.

As you can see in the photos, I chose to leave the left upper arm, left kneepad, and right hand of the Chaplain green. The right hand is a given, seeing as the mini has a leather gauntlet of on the left. I chose the other two parts because they seem to balance the color scheme nicely. The rest of the mini is pretty straight-foward. After a basecoat of black primer, the whole thing was gone over again with Chaos Black, then drybrushed with Burnished Gold, followed be more black to cover gold where there should not be any.The deathmask and gauntlet are probably the most eye-catching things about ths mini.

To paint the gauntlet, I used my typical leathery scheme. I lay down several coats of watered-down Bronzed Flesh, allowing it to be a little splotchy. This is followed with a drybrush of Bleached Bone and allowed to dry thoroughly. The only thing left to do is inking with Chestnut Ink. As for the deathmask, I just kind of went with the flow, and stopped when I achieved the right look. First, I painted the mask with Skull White (go figure), then drybrushed with Bleached Bone. This originally left me with a stark-looking mini with no depth. To remedy this, I used a heavy wash of Chestnut Ink, being sure to focus on the mouth grill. I let that dry completely, and drybrushed again, heavily with Bleached Bone, and just enough to highlight with Skull White. Now I had a bit of depth and warmth going. A little Blood Red in the eyes (why are people so scared to paint eyes?), touchup on the black areas, and a little Burnished Gold, and the face was finished. The photos really don't do this mini justice, and I suppose the God-Emperor likes the job I did, since this Chaplain and his Command Squad of Termies have only scattered once out of atleast 15 times when DeepStriking, and he alone has trashed a fresh Magun-Ra and his Eldar Command Squad. That's right Eric, I went there.