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!