Painting Space Wolves the quick and easy way: Part 2

Introduction
Welcome once again to the joys of painting the Emperor's finest! Last time I got the Space Wolves painted in a a very simple way so that they could appear on the tabletop and defeat humanity's enemies with a nice, simple paint job. This time I'm going to do a bit more to improve the look without doing anything too difficult or time consuming.

First steps
The first thing to do was to tidy up some of the mistakes that I hadn't bothered with initially and to paint some of the bits that had skipped the first time round.

I tidied up the shoulder pads where my hand had slipped with the red or yellow using Codex Grey. I painted the purity seals using red and Bleached Bone. Since I had the colour on my palette, I went over the assorted wolf skulls and claws with bleached bone at the same time. Finally I used the same colour to drybrush the wolf pelts that two of the marines were wearing.

Shoulder Pads
There's no getting away from it; Space Marine shoulder pads are there to be decorated and space Wolves probably more than most since each one is an individual warrior.  There are basically three options when if comes doing shoulder pads; you can use transfers, one with a molded design or you can paint something free hand. As you can see below I managed to use all three options of the red shoulder pads!

On the left there's a paw print decal which seemed nice and characterful. Given that it's relatively small it was also quite east to apply. In the middle, there's a molded skull shoulder pad that I painted in the usual way and on the right is a simple geometric design that suggest a gaping maw - at least in my mind!

For the yellow shoulder pads I just applied the chapter symbol decals to each. The basic procedure is on the reverse of every sheet of transfers that GW produce.  A couple of things that make it easier to apply decals:

1. Paint gloss varnish on to the area first and to apply the decals quickly before it dries. The gloss varnish helps the decals to stick. You'll need to use some anti shine later to stop it looking glossy but that's a minor inconvenience. 
2. Use a pair of tweezers to pull the transfers out of the water. A paint brush can work too but I personally prefer tweezers.
3. Use some clean, dry kitchen paper to get rid of any excess water.

Decals are bit fiddly to do on curved surfaces like these, flat surfaces like shields are much easier, but I got them on in the end. The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that one tore slightly in the process but I decided just to leave it. This isn't a tutorial for perfectionists...

Painting the wolf skin

I quite liked the brown colour of the wolf skins, but I felt that the guy with powerfist needed something more traditionally wolfy in colour. (Powerfist =  veteran sergeant = curmudgeonly traditionalist space wolf in my mind. Go figure..) I painted over the brow with a light grey and then gave it a wash of watered down Codex Grey to put in some shading and picked out the eyes with yellow just to add a little colour. 

Basing the figures
I painted the bases with thinned Vallejo Khaki which is the nice light brown colour you can see. Since I'd glued the sand on the bases before I started painting and made sure they got sprayed with undercoat, this was a nice quick process! I then dabbed on some PVA glued and added the static grass.

I'm firmly of the opinion that even simple basing like this really improves a figure. Lots of Golden Demon entries put almost as much work into the base as they do into the figure.

All finished!

There you go, three Grey Hunters painted quickly and easily. There's numerous things that could still be done to them, the most obvious being highlighting

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