Heresy Era Dark Angels - Characters and plasma repeater support squad(s) painted!

Got a fair bit of brush time in over the last few days, as well as some cool new gear - A good combo!

I wanted to do a few placeholder character models for the Dark Angels while I await whatever new models may drop with the release of the next book, Malevolence. The two Dark Vengeance models got a helmet swap and some Mk.III backpacks to heresy them up a little, while the chaplain basically just got painted as-is. Even so, they're a little over-blinged which reads as a bit more 40k in general. Nevertheless, quite pleased with how they turned out!

The plasma support squad was the initial test of the paint scheme using the Vallejo range of substitute colors for the armor, and while they worked out reasonably well, I ended up buying some Incubi Darkness and Kabalite Green which are both about a step darker and will hopefully not be quite so stark on future models.

Still researching how I want to do the heraldry thing with the models. As a nod to the fluff, all of the models in the army will have the green right shoulder pad to represent them being Calibanites (and as such filthy dirty traitors, as the situation demands). I'm thinking of going with a common heraldic design to denote squads, with some additional personal heraldry on occasional other areas of the armour. Most of the color plates seem to suggest a mix of red slashes, black and white checkerboard and bone, so will have to experiment with various combinations thereof! So that said, the two squads above aren't done per se - still a fair bit of work to go, but as a proof of concept I think we're on the right track!

You may have noticed a bit of an increase in the quality of the photos due to the acquisition of a proper light box (finally). I've been experimenting with backdrops and techniques over the last several months as you may have noticed, and finally broke down and bought a Foldio 2 based on the comments and reviews of several fellow bloggers - thus far I have to say I am quite impressed! The adjustable overhead lights make getting good bright white light at the intensity desired, these were taken at about half brightness as the full chat was blowing out the pics. The translucent material of the box itself means that I can position my stand lights to either side and get some nice secondary diffusion. Now if only buying new gear automatically granted a commensurate boost in  painting skill! Hah!