Many Warhammer 40,000 hobbyists are excited about the new Codex Space Marines and related models so this week I thought I’d provide some tips for painting the Space Marine Stormtalon.
The Stormtalon is a handy little flyer that can also hover and dish out quite a bit of firepower for its size. Painting it can be a bit challenging though because there are many recessed parts. This article will hopefully help you speed up the painting process and get nice clean finished results.
One trick I often use to paint multi-part models quickly is to spray the pieces their respective colors separately. The parts shown here were sprayed flat black and will either remain mostly black or be coated with metallic paint.
The main color for my custom Space Marine chapter is a burgundy red, so I sprayed these parts with Krylon Burgundy. Games Workshop’s old Red Gore color was a perfect match, the new Khorne Red color would be the closest Citadel Paint match now. Of course, burgundy paint is something that other manufacturers of hobby paint ranges offer.
Notice that the horizontal stabilizer on the tail is swept forward. I often see this part glued on backwards on both the Space Marine Stormtalon and Stormraven. The elevators modeled on the tail should be pointing toward the rear as they are on real aircraft, otherwise they wouldn’t work very well!
You can see the beginning of the hand painting process in this next photo. Some black undercoated parts are getting a metallic coating. Portions of parts that were sprayed red, but that need to be another color are being painted over like the engine cowling molded to the wing.
The top piece for the cockpit is conveniently separate as I wanted it to be black and white. This allowed me to spray it black and hand paint half of it white without having to be be careful about getting those colors on the surrounding red fuselage.
Cockpit interior parts are also separate from the main body of the model and I painted them all including the pilot before gluing them together. The photo below shows the fully painted cockpit interior. The whole model was matte sealed before gluing the clear canopy on the model and painting the supports modeled on it. Matte sealer and glue will cloud the clear plastic so be extra careful with those parts!
Here’s the finished Stormtalon on its flying stand. The Greek key pattern was hand painted on the base to match the basing theme for the rest of the army.
I have another Stormtalon and a Stormraven to do for this army as well as a bunch of other projects. This army is past 3,000 points already and there’s a lot more to do.
If you’re interested in how I did the basing for this model please leave a comment below and I’ll cover that in another hobby article in the near future. Hobby questions about anything I cover in these articles are always welcome and I will do my best to answer all of them. Just post them in the comments. Thanks!
