Imperial Knight (Complete!) part 5 Cannon arm and helmet.

Painting is finished! I may go in and use some weathering powders at some point to add more colour to the shadows of this huge model and to tie it into the base more but for now I'm going to give him a little rest time and try and get in a game or two with the beastie. Having had the model knocking around for so long helmetless I actually didn't like it with it on at first but now I'm sold. I think some lights in the eye pieces would work very well for someone who likes doing that sort of thing as the shade means you can't really see inside the helm to the eye lights I painted.

For some reason my camera wanted to focus on his kneecap... might try again sometime!

And here he stands in all his glory. I've never painted anything this big before and it was quite a challenge. I've got another couple of Imperial Knight models to do and would like to buy some of the amazing forgeworld models somewhere down the line but due to the immense time they take having my own knight house isn't going to happen anytime too soon! I want to try and switch up the leg poses on my other two to be a bit more dynamic than this one and so that all three don't look identical! Sadly the kits legs are really lacking in posability which is a shame as the rest of the kit is fantastically mobile. The arms are also swappable so I'll be giving that a go too! Pictures of number two's pose to come! Thoughts and comments welcome. Particularly in regards to powder weathering I might do. I have most of the Forgeworld powders and can buy others. My basing scheme has been this pale earth colour but I'm tempted to go back and red them up for a mechanicum world as I'm very tempted to do a Mars/Industrial red planet board and it would be nice if my army actually fit on it! However... I felt this guy would look better with a pale sand colour rather than rust red dust... help me sort this one out please!

Imperial Knight part 4 Combat Weapon and head.

HAZARD STRIPES! I love them, I thought about doing them over the top of the main hull or on part of the shoulder pads but with their curved shapes felt this might be a bit ambitious and was so happy with the subtle shading my sprayed on base colours left that I didn't want to mess it up! I actually nearly gave up half way through and took a break before I could face carrying on another day.

Here the stripes have been blocked out and some shading has been done with bloodletter to tint the edges of the sword in orange and into the cracks between armour panels details as well as around rivets. (You can also see I've weathered the hull with chips and scratches as well as added more detail, as well as blacked the exhausts).

I weathered the weapon up using my chip and scratch methods over the flat areas and exposed edges respectively. I added seraphim sepia to the cracks and areas I felt would be in deeper shadow. I also painted the eyes and silvered the piping on the head as well as drybrushed over the head to bring out detail. Most of this will be obscured by the helmet face but its nice to be thorough!

Here's a close up of the other side of the sword arm. The stripes are not perfectly parallel OR of exactly equal size but I did do my best! The weathering helps to hide these imperfections and tie in the different stripe colours particularly where weathering crosses areas of different colours so I'm happy with the general effect. (You can also see some of the basing details, such as the skeletal remains of an emperor's children space marine behind the foot and the large slate piece who helps way down the base.) Thoughts and comments welcome!

Deathwing Squad

Shortly before the DA were re released I'd toyed with the idea of doing a Deathwing army. Being me that meant going overboard and buying one. Then buying more when the new awesome models came out. Then leaving them all in boxes in a cupboard. Anyway I painted up a few for fun.

I based them in army painter leather brown. the zenithed them from above with army painter bone. Shades were added with seraphim sepia and then I painted in details. I tried to give them all a slightly different heraldry. Two have forgeworld pads and one is the assault cannon guy from Dark Vengeance carved up and given a thunder hammer and storm shield.

Imperial Knight part 3 decals

Here's some more knight action! I finished off the base, by adding turf and weathered the legs. I added some of the impressive decals to my knight. I read the heresy mechanicus book recently and obviously love taranis, although I believe the heraldry was different in the heresy to on the sheet I just used the sheet ones... I like the idea of a knight with ties to the mechanicum and the imperium so my knight has both the cogged skull on his left shoulder and the aquila on his right. Another cog went on his left shin pad and the Taranis cog arrow and yellow portion went on the banner. This suited nicely as I love using yellow as a spot colour on my Blood angels and praetorian guard, and will do more yellow on this guy in the form of hazard stripes on the weapon, so will tie in with my other forces nicely. The shoulder pad decals are a little tricky to place without warping but by cutting between aquila wings and cog teeth it worked out alright! I also silvered the large area under the aquila and its counterpart on the rear,although it needs some weathering to break it up, as well as the exhaust pipes, which will be weathered black smokestains later.

Thoughts and comments welcome as ever!

Blood Angels Vindicator

For some reason I never got around to finishing my vindicators, I suppose I used them alot in game and first in 6th with my BA's and felt they were overpowered and then stopped using them. I felt it was about time I finished them. Here's one:

I did a Blood drop in yellow that I then weathered over to try and break up the 'big red box' problem with a space marine tank. I tried to do a light effect on the lamps. Not sure it worked out that great but don't really have the will to go back and change it for now! Perhaps the front plate could have used more weathering and painting in the details. Perhaps I'll go back and refinish this sometime in the future! Thoughts and comments welcome!

Imperial Knight part 2 basing

Here's a quick one with the basing colours done for my knight. I used two layers of dry bone colours and washed black and sepia into different areas I felt would be in shadow and to vary the colour. I painted up the bits of forgeworld resin cut offs to try and give the effect of tank traps that had been savaged by war and the knights toe is smashing through one. I used the dry colours on the knights feet and some of the grey on the toe that's smashing through the concrete between the two bone layers to give a hint of the new dust without it looking too grey compared to the rest of the feet.

The aim was to get the large model to look more integrated with its base as particularly with such a big guy on a pretty flat base I didn't want him to look like he wasn't really there. Thoughts, comments and ideas welcome as always! (The random white blob is a dire avengers helmet plum, I later dry brushed some bone over it to dumb it down as it felt a bit strong!)

Taurox for Praetorian's

My friends and I are planning a non- astartes campaign. The idea was to be escalation. Its been so long in the cooking up that most people actually have a good 1500pts of models done now but there we are. The plan was to provide an excuse for our gaming group to do a new army that wasn't space marines. All of us have at least one marine army and very few have other armies. I decided this was a great excuse to whip out the praetorians. I'll have to do some group army shots at some point as I've done some more infantry but haven't done photos as I've gone about it. Laid out I've got a good 2000pts plus now. My first 500pts will include two vet squads in chimeras and a command swuad in a chimera, but each increase in points will then be 250pts. This is a bit awkward frankly, so I decided to do two Taurox so I could squeeze in two more vet squads in the points. Heres the latest addition:

The model is a bit disjointed in my opinion (see below) so I wanted to use loads of heavy weathering to try and disguise this. I used the same army painter leather and bone in stripes that I've used across my Imperial Guard army and the same weathering techniques but just did more. I could have picked out more details with metal but didn't really like the pointy details much so wanted them to be less visible. A remarkably quick paintjob really, although the kit is a pain to stick together, it took me about as long to paint it as stick it, a completely new experience for me!

These models are a bit funny frankly, the pointy fleur de lis look a bit chaos to me and I think they'd probably look better with a front wheel and rear track. I've seen a few people do this with Kromlech wheels or similar but I felt the new kit was pricey enough for a unit I probably wont use that much. The front section of the thing is a cool old truck, the rear a super modern flat edged box which really looks more space marine than guard with its crisp lines and flat surfaces. The kit gives you the options to stick your weapons on a turret or on the side, this seems strange as they would obviously act quite differently in game but the codex and the box seem to suggest either is okay. It's all a bit odd to be honest, however having painted one I warmed to it and rather like the thing despite all the above. I put my guns on the turret as it makes it much better in game although I prefer the look without it.

Comments, thoughts and ideas welcome as always!

Garden of Morr Empire Regiment Filler

Actually got one of these painted: its huge and is about 50% of a unit of 50. makes deployment much easier and adds some interest to an army of three massive units.

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I used a couple of the forgeworld manan's blades models to look a bit more varied than the dull one pose ones... details just smush into the models legs rubbish... that GW are currently flogging us. One of these days I'll get the others sorted... one of these days...

Thoughts and comments welcome! Cheers for anyone whose still reading after my massive fail to post for an eon.

Imperial knight

Got a bit carried away when these came out and bought three to clog up my cupboard space with boxes... I finally got around to starting on one back in March.


Here's the chap from the front, based in citadel black spray and then zenith painted plates using army painter dragon red, angling from above for the shadows. I painted in trim with warlock bronze and base yellow. He's a bit brass chaos at the moment but a big block of silver under the Aquila should sort that out.

A top view with the all important scones. Next post will have more basing and tying the model into the base, alongside more leg detail.