Blood Angels

I’m not sure exactly who made the decision as to which squads were painted in which colours when we first got 2nd edition 40k. My mum painted some of the first models, so it may have been her, but equally it could have been myself or my brother. We did have a very small number of Dark Angels, but in the main, the Space Marines were originally painted as Blood Angels. 

When going back a few years ago (c. 2020ish) and finding old models, I made the decision to repaint them up as Blood Angels again - I’ve always had a soft spot for their background, and I enjoy painting red, so it seemed fairly obvious, and given my first inspirations for 40k were for the period that Blood Angels were pretty much the poster boy for marines, it also makes sense.

I’ve got quite a few painted up to a basic table top standard, with a few squads almost finished (they effectively need transfers doing at some point). To that end, here are the “nearly finished” groups:

Painting wise, I tried to follow (fairly closely) the method in the 2nd ed ‘Eavy Metal Painting Guide. This is mainly with Coat d’arms paints, and a fair few coats in places, as soon of these are pretty translucent.

The armour starts with a coat of 50:50 Blood Red and Angel Red (Blood Angels Red/Orange), before shading in between plates with a mix of Red Ink and Vampire Red. After a bit of tidying up, highlights are Angel Red and the mixing a bit of Flame Orange in. I ended up doing black shoulder pad trim to break up the red slightly, highlighted through mixing in some blues and Shadow Grey.