Hiya,

I decided a while back I wanted to do my army as kind of a story. A progression as time goes on. In this aspect I will be recording great victories and heroic acts from a single unit or squad. I will then reward my models with such, add weapons, decals, greenstuff, a notch on a bolter. Simple things to make them feel unique.
On this theme I wanted to design my chapter in such a way that whilst it is overall Dark Angels. It consists of a thrown together bunch....

Ill have two Dark Angel Tactical Squads, the core of the army, squad 1 and 2. Each squad will have a unique captain and whilst they will start identical I will reward such squads with trophy's as I progress.

Ill also have my Angels of Absolution, the support squad, all holding bolters. The successor chapter that happened to be in the same area in the far away corners of the imperium. I planned to give them loincloths and when I get them, books of salvation and scrolls of prayer.
Ultimately I plan to get a veteran squad and/or create full robes and make a guardians of covenant squad.

Anyway, I decided I'd make my angels of absolution. It gives me two purposes:
1) I get to practice before I do my terminators
2) I start my tactical squad *shrug*

So first I picked out my lucky few:

My 4 members of the Angels of Absolution.

Wash of each kind, you can see pots behind.

I then decided to try using greenstuff. I cut a piece away, wet my fingers, used a small portion of my mat and wetted it, then mixed the epoxy. I continued to keep everything moist and rolled a nice green ball.

After a while to allow it to cure (about 10mins) I flattened it and cut out the average size I would need. I figured the size by eye and distance between legs.

I didnt want a uni-formal loincloth, plus I could test each one and poses, see which gets most praise so I made various sizes.

I left it to cure abit longer (15mins) and copied a banner fold. I puckered the centre up and flicked the edges up to make it appear more realistic. I did each one slightly different again, more out of lack of skill.

After allowing it to cure for a few mins I placed the loincloth over the legs and with the end of the wet knife i pushed the greenstuff firmly but gently into the folds of the legs. Using a Biro tip I pressed "studs" into the loincloths.

I left these to dry over night and painted the lot.

Loincloth marines

I then painted the lot and basecoated again to get them to the control level. Using a watered down 1:1 gryphonne sepia to wash the units. I then used Bad Moon Yellow to highlight roughly.

Rough brighter mix of Bad Moon Yellow and Bronzed Flesh

I painted them with bleached bone and carefully as so the dark areas showed bronzed flesh and the light areas were obviously bleached bone. Afterwards I highlighted with a 1:1 mix of bleached bone and skull white.

I followed this with a 4:1 ratio of Gryphonne sepia. Whilst It seemed like it did hardly anything I did see a slight darkening in areas, and as I am working with almost white. I was happy.

Bleached Bone with highlighting of skull white and washed with a very watered down Gryphonne Sepia.

My first "white" end model.

My Angels of Absolution

So yeah this I felt was my biggest challenge. I got lazy painting my dark angels as I could slap on dark green/black and hide slight errors. With the white its very hard. I spent a lot of time going over smudges, or that tiny splodge.

They are shit, but I am proud.
Any C&C welcome.

What was the hardest thing you remember painting?