The Archangels: Part 1

A small introduction, today Japehlio is publishing his first guest post, he is new to blogging and was quite literally drug from the forums to test the waters here. He has a new blog over at Of Angels and Hero's and he will be guest posting some of his work here as well from time to time. His primary focus is Blood Angels for 40k and Empire for Fantasy. What I enjoy about his work is that he is completely unafraid to take risks and try new things, something I think we could all learn a lesson from. Take it away Japehlio:

When I started my Blood Angels, I decided that I wanted to do my own, converted and custom models for my HQ choices, because, lets face it, while the current/classic Blood Angel characters do have a load of history and charm, they certainly look dated...

As a happy coincidence, the Sanguinary Guard box had just been released, and the cogs started turning...

Naturally, first up was Dante, the Chapter Master, and I wanted two things:

1) A more dynamic, action hero pose
2) Wings. Big, feathery wings.

So, I went about point 2 first. This was actually my first proper "sculpting project", before now I hadn't experimented much with green stuff.

Having sorted the overall shape, I started with the bottom layer and, adding one at a time, proceeded to lay 1cm sausages of GS on, then flattened them out, and scored the individual feathers with a knife-blade. When that first layer had mostly cured, I moved on to the next row, and so on...

Moving on to painting, this was also going to be my first attempt at NMG too. I painted each part individually, and I wanted a more "yellow-y" gold. Following various guides around the interwebz, my end result is:

Overall, I am really happy with the result, but I look on this as mostly a learning exercise on various techniques and methods.

As I said, some things I would change, some things I am perfectly happy with! He does make a nice centrepiece for the army though.

Part 2 soon...

with this guy:

-japehlio