Dire Avengers Complete (Hobby)

Well, that took a long time! Ten Dire Avengers bringing my collection to a total of 11.  As I've been dipping my toe into Kill Team as of late, I had intended to employ them as not to confuse my opponents (I had been using my RT Space Elves with Shuriken Catapults) and took the opportunity to complete a whole squad inclusive of an Exarch. 

The paint job was quite traditional:  I started with a gloss black undercoat, then applied a zenith matte white undercoat - that left the shadows dark and the exposed faces a light grey.  From there I did the body suit/glove in a dark blue, applied a blue wash then used a lighter blue on the armour panels.  I then used a lighter blue for the panels edge lining and re-blocked the same to tidy them up. 

You can see the four different sculpts/poses in this photo.

The helmets were a grey, followed by wytch white, Nul Oil wash and then reblocked before a bone glaze.  Details were by-and-large repeats of techniques I've slowly been developing (unfortunately my hand isn't getting any steadier) like a blue wash of the weapons etc.  The crests on the helmets took a few cycles of wash, block, drybrush and repeat; and eventually, I landed on something that felt right.  

I spent a lot of time on this crest - I think it worked nicely

I finished off with a matte varnish and only then did the gems (I'm learning from my mistakes).  I may come back to some or all of them and try with some runes on the helmets and loincloths... I've also been considering making some magnetised banners for the army so they may be back on the workbench in due course.

The batch's duration was longer than I had anticipated (months, not weeks) largely due to a combination of family commitments (end-of-school type affairs) and work pressures - 10-hour days and 6-day weeks were an altogether far too regular and unwelcome feature of life as of late!

Interesting discoveries along the way included the inconsistent use of gems amongst the various sculpts (all early metals) and learning that I have four different poses excluding the Exarch.

The left-model's gun has two gems, whilst the right-model has three.