I wanted to build a retinue of stealthy spooky death-obsessed 'marines, and this is my WIP build of what I have managed to do so far. I was trying to go for a company that maybe spent more time amongst the grave worlds of the Ghoul Stars, purging hostile xenos quickly and quietly, emerging like phantoms from the mist (cue dramatic music). I want them to look weathered and maybe a bit ethereal, without going full legion of the damned, because I'm not cool enough for that.

Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions, this is just a quick dirty guide I made after coming back to the hobby after a +10 year hiatus. I should also note that I have a benign tremor, hence my reliance on drybrushing over edge highlighting.

1. First things first, you should always be thinning your paints, and applying colors in at least two thin coats. It's easy to add more color if you want it, but impossible to take it back. I recommend lahmian medium, or just plain water for the purposes of thinning out paints.
2. Lahmian Medium
3. Basecoat with abaddon black
4. Abaddon Black
5. Heavy dry brush with celestra grey
6. Celestra Grey
7. Lighter dry drush with eshin grey
8. Eshin Grey
9. Wash with nuln oil (non gloss)
10. Nuln Oil
11. Optionally, wash with nuln oil a second time to darken hues even further
12. Pick out skull, buckle, and shoulder trim with eshin grey
13. Go over previous areas again with celestra grey in a heavy drybrush, this is to emulate a sort of "gravestone" look to the grey areas. Take special care to drybrush the skull in an upwards direction, avoiding recesses and highlighting teeth, cheekbones, and spilling over a bit into the helmet above the faceplate.
14. Pick out the detail on the faceplate with corax white, and lightly streak the helmet above that we covered with celestra grey earlier.
15. Corax White
16. Optionally, highlight even further with white scar
17. White Scar
18. Pick out eyes with incubi darkness
19. Incubi Darkness
20. Follow that up with a highlight of moot green, it's okay if this spills over a bit to the faceplate, as this can evoke a spooky glowing effect.
21. Moot Green
22. Wash eyes with warp lightning contrast until it looks the way you want it to.
23. Warp Lightning
24. Pick out eyes with one last highlight of yellow. You can go with whatever bright yellow you want, I prefer something bright like a dorn or flash gitz.
25. Flash Gitz Yellow
26. Repeat the steps for the eyes on all backpack vents, working in smaller areas towards the center of the vents, to give the illusion of glowing.
27. Paint guns cases with eshin grey
28. Paint metal bits with leadbelcher
29. Leadbelcher
30. Wash metal with nuln oil
31. Highlight or drybrush metal with a bit of stormhost silver
32. Stormhost Silver
33. Clean up gun cases and highlight with a quick highlight of celestra grey
34. Paint pouches in the same fashion as the gun cases. Or, alternatively, base them with cygor brown and then wash with nuln oil before drybrushing again cygor brown.
35. Cygor Brown
36. Paint purity seals with celestra grey (sick of me saying that yet?), then highlight with corax white, then again with white scar.
37. Finally, pick out the wax bit of the seal with some blood angels red constrast paint.
38. Blood Angels Red
39. Other than basing, which is totally your preference, you are done! Congrats on your new spooky dude!