I know a lot of people have had problems wih the Space Marine Drop Pod, so I figured I’d do a step by step showing how I made mine. This tutorial will also demonstrate some different techniques for painting, and show off the advantages of the airbrush.

Part of what makes this project tricky is the 3 color Ice Camo that goes on all the vehicles of this army. It starts with a white base coat, then true blue,

then the final coat is GW’s Ice Blue. So, to keep things simple, I primed white.

Then I arranged the primed pieces and laid down strips of silly putty.

The great thing about the silly putty is it molds itself into all the cracks and crevices of the model. Masking tape is great for sharp crisp lines on relatively flat, featureless surfaces, but it doesn’t work at all on tanks or models with a lot of 3D detail. The putty is perfect, because it sinks into all the cracks by itself.

I sprayed on the next coat of color.

then laid down more silly putty.

And now the final color.

The tricky part about using the silly putty is that paint never dries on it. Since the putty has a lot of moisture, it acts almost like a wet pallette. So you’ve got to be careful when removing the putty. If you smear it or roll it, you’ll end up transferring paint onto a different part of the model. I find that using only one hand to touch the putty and the other hand to hold the pieces works great; then just make sure to lift the putty straight up into the air.

All done with the base coat!

Next, I wanted to do hazard stripes on the inside of the ramps. I had already sprayed the outer edges with Ice Blue, so I used masking tape to cover that part up.

Then another layer of white was applied. Since yellow was going to be the first layer, I wanted a solid base to go under it. Spraying yellow is easier than painting yellow, but not by a whole lot.

With the yellow sprayed, I then washed the ramps in Gryphonne Sepia, and carefully applied masking tape.

Then some black paint via the airbrush…

Once the tape is removed, it looks great!

For the harnesses and the engine, it was a simple matter of spraying metallic silver, then spraying on a wash of Badab black.

I also painted metallic gold onto the eagles and the details lining the fins, and metallic silver onto the grates inside the floor.

After this, it was a pretty simple matter of highlighting and shading. I shaded with Badab Black ink and a fine brush. This shot shows the basic ink; I then went back with Ice Blue to keep the shading thin and even.

One trick I’ve found that works very well is to use colored pencils to apply the highlighting or hardlining to models. A brush is great for sharp angles, 90 degrees or more, but for more shallow angles, it’s hard to apply a thin enough line. The colored pencil does it perfectly, every time. The downside is that the colored pencil is easy to rub off, so be careful when handling the model.

Now I’ve got all the pieces painted!

I won’t lie, assembling this thing was a bitch. I found the easiest way to do it was by putting a few of the fins on, and the turbine, then attaching the other fins one piece at a time. Be patient and let glue dry between each piece, otherwise everytime you move one piece, you’ll mess up the others.

The airbrush made this a very easy project to paint. I cut out the pieces from the sprue on a Friday. primed everything Friday night, and started painting on Saturday. I was finished on Tuesday. Hopefully this helps out some other modellers, and I’ll be happy to answer questions in the comments.

Tags: airbrush, drop pod, space marine, step by step

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