Storm Raven.

Hello fellow 40k enthusiasts!

What I'm about to post may astound you. It might even make you weep as its beauty is the stuff of legends.

This is my Stormraven, a grueling project which took me over a month to paint.

My goal in this project was to make it look like it just entered orbit. After all, it is a spaceship used to deliver the emperor's finest™ into combat.

I had wanted forever to get an airbrush - painting this was all the excuse I needed to purchase one. I had to test my airbrushing skills out first on lesser subjects. So I painted up two Razorbacks. Which for the record look very good. Well don't let me tell you - judge for yourself.

I start out painting my Stormraven by doing the interior. I debated a long time on painting the interior or not and I settled on painting the interior, but not a lot of detail. Pretty simple really, dry brush boltgun with some minor details on the inside.

The next step was assembly. This Stormraven is magnetized like all my newer models. Every bit of weaponry on this bird is is interchangeable. On top of it, the wings are magnetized for easy transporting. I stole the magnet design from Adam (tau4eva), a member of our gaming crew and a MI40K blogger. I think I improved on it though. =)

The model was base coated with Army builder Red. Several layers of of Blood Red was air brushed on. I found using high air pressure and with my nozzle almost closed I was able to achieve a real nice smooth base coat. The weathering was achieved by layering Gore Red, Scorched Earth, and Black. Over-all I really enjoyed air brushing this model, and was really pleased with the results.

The rest of the model was inked with black, and then highlighted fiery orange. To be honest I'm not fond of the cockpits so I decided to paint my windshields gold. To achieve my look I literally applied liberal amounts of burnished gold to the interior. On a side note, I found out if you ever screw up clear plastic, if you finely sand it then hit it with a glossy coat it makes it look like new.

To wrap up the model I put on the decal stickers. If you look closely there are WW2 style pin up girls on the front of the Stormraven. At first I was disappointed, because they were color decals that promised to go on dark models when I bought them. However, the more I looked at it, I really enjoy the subtle look to them.

If anyone would like to discuss airbrushing techniques, what I did, what you do, I'm always up for some learning or talking painting.

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Look for an upcoming blog from me - "Tactics for use of Stormravens".