Death Eagle... and a quick way to paint black armour.

I've just finished off this Death Eagle... He was originally meant to be painted green and become part of my Salamanders army but in the end I decided to paint him in the black and white Death Eagle colours. I have two chaplains to paint for my main marine army so I decided to use this model as a way to learn  how to paint black armour.

Here's the finished mini:

The white parts are GW Ceramite White painted directly onto the back undercoat with a couple of thin coats, with a black wash the recesses to provide some shading. I can't recommend the stuff enough - I've never really painted white before and the results I got with this paint were excellent. If I did this mini again I take a lot more care over the black wash which was little slap dash in the end.

Here's a step by step for the black armour. Firstly, the model is undercoated black as you might expect...

Next, a dry brush with a white or off-white colour is used to bring out the detail. If the dry brush highlights end up being too much they can be washed back down with a black wash... Brown or sepia would probably work nicely on the right model.

This gives you a really nice base to work from, and once some details are added to you've got a mini with really nice looking black armour that doesn't take that much time (or frankly that much skill!).

 White / gunmetal etc go on next..

And some washes to finish off... (the black wash is still wet in this picture).

Notes for Rogue Trader Nerds:
This mini dates back to about 1989 and was scuplted by Mark Copplestone. Here's a Stuff of Legends page showing it in that year's Citadel catalogue. What I didn't realise when I started this little project is that these aren't the original Death Eagle colours. Similar to the Salamanders, they had totally different colours back in the day which have been replaced by a much less unusual scheme now. Here's the original scheme (picture from the Death Eagles page on Lexicanum)