Three Deathwatch Veterans, painted

When I started painting miniatures, I initially thought painting simple black Space Marine armour would be easy, until I tried it. I had no idea how to highlight black, and without highlighting it, the miniatures looked flat and just wrong. Naturally, I went too far to the opposite direction and decided painting black is really difficult, going as far as mixing a separate dark metallic colour for the Chaplains of my Space Marine chapter.

Of course, at the time, my brushes were of very poor quality, and my hand wasn't very steady either, so after painting a few Space Wolves, I tried my hand at painting some Wolf Priests, I found that black is actually fairly simple, and can be accomplished with simple drybrushing, or just highlighting in layers. With Deathwatch, I ended up using the same highlight method as seen on GW's YouTube channel, because it's neutral, but has a little bit of colour to it.

The Raven Guard veteran was the first one that I painted, which worked out well, since when I chose the company and team markings, the model's cloak got somewhat in the way. I probably could have used any of the other marking styles as well, but the diagonal red line of the Watch Company Quartus worked out the best. I also decided to freehand the team number rather than to bother with transfers. As it turned out, the font is surprisingly easy to paint.

 The Red Scorpion veteran was the second one I painted. The bright colours of the shoulder pad were a little challenging, especially since in the raised areas they were easy to accidentally wipe away, but not too difficult in the end.

The Space Wolf veteran would have been the most difficult one, had I not had plenty of practice with painting bare heads and wolfy talismans. As it was, the black armour made the model somewhat easier to paint than an average Space Wolves model.
I also used two different shades of grass tufts on this model, as well as the Red Scorpion. I recently bought a pack of Winter and Frozen tufts to go with my earlier Highland tufts, allowing me to glue a very simple gradient of different colours of grass on bases if needed. That should come in handy with future terrain projects.