Pride Marines
Pride Progress Marine 2023
Every year in June I am deeply impressed and inspired by the various Pride-themed miniatures I see being posted online. Every year I resolve that next year, I’ll actually be organised enough to paint one of my own. And every year I find myself in a Pride parade having once again not painted anything. Well not this year! This year I planned. I had a model picked out well in advance. I had almost an entire month before the Edinburgh Pride parade. I had a concept ready to go. I sat down to paint at the start of June with every confidence of completing my Pride Marine in a leisurely fashion with time to spare.
I completed my Pride Marine the morning before the parade, and am completing this write-up close to a month afterwards. Such is the reality of trying to be a miniature painter, hold down a full-time job, and do all of the socialising, exercising, and housework required to keep my crumbling flesh prison functional.
This is actually my second pass at painting this model, although the first was far less brightly coloured. I’ve never been a fan of the Phobos armour, the concept of space marines being agile just doesn’t sit quite right for me. So for my first pass I actually filled in the legs with green stuff to create something closer to the traditional chunky marine greaves. In the end, I couldn’t quite get it to work, so the model languished in ignominy for some time before I realised he was perfect for this project.
Much of the inspiration for this one came from the shape of the shoulder cape - I had the image of using it as the chevron for the Progress Flag. Once that was locked in, and by extension the stripes for the main robe, it was simply a case of selecting suitable flags for the other cloth elements. I’m particularly proud of the Trans Flag hood. If I were in the habit of wearing bright colours I’d probably try to make one for real.
“Chapter master Joseph of the technicolour dream marines. 🌈”
In order to create consistent values between the stripes, I actually did a full paintjob of the robe in off-white, accidentally discovering a really nice recipe for doing so in the process! The stripes were then created by building up thin layers over the top. The finishing touch was adding dark lines and edge highlights between the colours, creating the impression of separate panels of cloth.
At the suggestion of the incomparable @Hattieinspace, I have christened this marine Joseph, Chapter Master of the Technicolour Dream Marines. And, since painting rainbow colours on a toy soldier apparently pissed off a certain frothingly annoying section of the internet, I rather think that I shall add some further members of the Dream Marines. May their battles be glorious!
Non-Binary Marine
The 4 paints in question, along with the unprimed miniature.,
Following the Starter Set Challenge where we tried to paint miniatures using exactly 5 paints, I found myself wanting to do more painting with limited palettes. I also wanted to paint more Pride-themed marines. As such, the solution was clear: palettes based on individual pride flags!
For the first of these, I chose the non-binary flag. This is one of my favourites as it is a) the flag I find the most visually appealing, and b) is a category I actually fall into. It also has both white and black in the mix, which makes shading a lot easier!
I had a few models kicking around where I’d been mixing Stormcast and Space Marine parts, and this seemed like a good use for one. I really liked the striding confidence the pose implied, and I was once again given cause to be thankful that fantasy elements like swords have such prevalence in 40k.
As you can tell from the plastic colour, the backpack and gun came from one of the basic space marine sets. The pouldrons I sourced from bits I had left over from building the Dark Angles. You’ll probably see Dark Angel iconography pop up a lot across the Pride Marines, both because I have a lot of Dark Angel bits lying around, and because of the connection to the poet Lionel Johnson.
The actual painting was even more of a challenge than the Start Set Challenge Soul Drinker, mostly because I had one fewer paint to work with. I’m pretty proud of the armour itself, and the NMM silver and OSL yellow have both worked well, but I’m less happy with the NMM gold on the pauldron. Something I need to work on.
The finished non-binary marine, in all their glory.
I considered trying to copy the pattern Chapter Master Joseph and paint the cloth elements as the flag itself. However, I was going for quite a grimdark tone with this figure, and really enjoyed having the only yellow elements being the glowing eyes and crystal…thing at their waist. I like the finished product, although I would probably try for some more gradual blends on the tabards if I was taking a second pass.
This entire project takes a lot of inspiration from CerberusXT’s Gate Crushers, and you should definitely check out their work!
