Deathwatch Squad [1]

So I've been reading some of the Black Library books, particularly Victories of the Space Marines, and took a fancy to the Deathwatch squad. I thought it was interesting to have the Ordos Xenos pull in these veterans from assorted Chapters and put them to work as a sort of Special Ops team. Plus it had appeal because I could kind of paint some marines that were a bit different from the usual.

So it's a mash up of a Tactical box and the Deathwatch parts - helmets, special Bolter gun, and Deathwatch pauldron. The left arm is painted in silvers, along with the silver Deathwatch insignia. The rest of the armor is a Chaos Black and Enchanted Blue mix to give it a slight off black look. I've started to do some edge highlighting with Codex Gray and Fortress Gray.

The right pauldron is allowed to be the marine's chapter insignia. This marine I freehand painted an Aurora chapter logo. I painted in the green in on the pauldron, then carefully painted in a circle using Codex Grey which I filled in. Once I had the circle looking okay, I painted in a number of coats of Skull White to get the white looking nice, then added the starburst points to the circle. The Aurora insignia was painted with Chaos Black, and was painted as an 8 with the bottom missing. I then painted out the two breaks in the logo with some more Skull White. I'm pretty happy with it - it was something I don't normally get to do, and I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the look of the Aurora chapter too. I've painted up two more pauldrons so far, an Ultramarines, and a Raven Guard.

I'm thinking I need to add some interest back into the figure though, because all the black isn't that interesting visually. I thought maybe making the weapon a source of color, either through painting its body red, or maybe putting a hazard-type marking along its body?