Blood Angels Praetor

I spent quite alot of time on this fellow, using decals I normally can't be bothered with and all!

The model is lovely and has so much detail to paint. Although mine had a few mold errors in albeit in quite discrete places. I did something different with the sword although I'm not completely sold on it to make it look unlike my other power weapons. I hope you like him!

I gave him turquoise eyes to contrast the red armour and go with the sword.

Probably went a bit overboard with the weathering on the forward leg there.

A tiny decal seemed easier than trying to paint the droplet in.

A decal!

Giving us the old grumpy eye.

Slightly from above so you can see his odd head stuff implant things.. I prefer helmets as a rule and sometimes like to put a helmet on the belt if not on the head but I really couldn't find room anywhere for one and liked this head just too much. It goes well with the old Baal scarred wasteland look if not the new golden locked covermodel vampire thing GW seems to have rolled into for the BA.

Blood angel Razorbacks with FW bits and Assault Cannons

I picked up two lovely base coated and transfer stuck razorbacks from ebay and enjoyed the very easy process of weathering them and finishing off the details. I also did a quick weapon swap from the heavy bolters they came with to assault cannons taken from the dark angels ravenwing upgrade sprue.

3000pts game with my three imperial knights!

It will probably be the only time I get to stick down all three of these at once for along time and it was the first time I had all three painted to be able to so this was quite exciting. I may have got a bit 'pre battle' picture excited and then failed to take any more pictures as the game went on.

My opponents were two friends playing allied eldar and harlequins. They took a knight too, but a much better eldar one. That for some reason costs way less points. GW sort your rule books out for goodness sakes!

Their view.

My view.

Definitely better to be behind these guys.

The three big boys in formation.

Turn 1 saw me kill a viper and assorted harlequins, almost a whole guardian squad and glance a prism tank, limited somewhat by nightfighting. I lost my vindicator and a knight to a charging eldar knight.

My remaining knights charged the single eldar knight and one survived to remove it from play. (its worth mentioning if my opponent has split its attacks he'd have killed both, eldar knights are needlessly amazing.)

Then I forgot to take anymore photos... whoops. The eldar army spent the next few turns concentrating on removing my knight from play. I went for his prism tanks but left on a single hullpoint and cleaned up two squads of firedragons in vipers alongside the last guardians and a harlequin squad.

The game finished early on turn 5 with both sides on 9KP's, we had decided to use no other win conditions because sometimes its just fun to smash face. A well earned draw for everyone involved and great fun was had by all. Probably particularly me as I got to enjoy that freshly painted models on the table moment.

Imperial Knight 3, completed in just one post and four days!

I got a bit technical with this guy and painted the machinery parts first and based armour plates individually while trying to spray as if they were attached while thinking about light zenith. He's also magnetized so he can weapon swap and to help his body and legs hold together. I did the faceplate completely first because I just wasn't sure on it but its grown on me and now it might be my favourite. My affections are clearly fickle when it comes to faceplates. Next up was sponge weathering and brush painted scratching.

And finished the guy suddenly! Yeah so in my painting fervor I forgot to take more photos of my progress but I'm very happy with how he's turned out. I followed the same steps as with Knight #2 although he's configured more like Knight #1 armwise.

Based! I used the airbrush to get his feet and bottom of the legs and armour good and dirty. Rather than do something scenic and complicated like knight #2 I decided to do a much more simple but busy base using mainly elements from the basing set and some GS to give it a bit of depth. I seem to have put vast numbers of helmets onto the base so gave them a variety of legion colours to mix it up. Maybe I should do a FW one next... or just some warden's... tough choices.

Imperial Knight 2 part 5 Complete! Weapon and faceplate.

The other knightly faceplate here, I wanted them all to have different ones. I guess for number three I'll have to use the skull one I don't like or pick up a Knight Warden helmet... but then what will I use when I impulse buy three knight warden's?! I'm tempted/miffed by the new Knight renegade box set, it seems insane value!

Close up time! You can just about see his eye lenses, if you squint hard and use a torch..

I called this one Ares after the god of war. A short name for the scroll so I fancied up the letters to add some bulk! The 'S' looks a bit Dollar signy... ah well. ARE$ god of profitable war.

And with a gun, the housing is a bit curvy on the wrong side being designed for the other arm in classic GW shortsightedness before they did dakka ones and all the new gubbins. Still I'm very pleased to get this guy onto the finished shelf. Ooo I also gave him a coat of varnish to seal in the decals and help them blend into the model better and I used some tuft bits on the base, a great use for the needlessly massive ones army painter and GW insist on giving you so many of. I'm going to try and speed paint number three, painting the under armour and the armour plates seperately. Of course I might get distracted and just do something else... but that's the plan!

Imperial Knight 2 part 4 decals

Popped some decals on him, these are always a bit of a pain being so large and delicate, I find I need to do things like slice between all the eagles 'feathers' to ensure there is no warping over that massive shoulder pad. I also painted the mechanicum icon on his right knee and totally failed to get a close up... whoops. I used white as I lost one of my three transfer sheets to make my remaining one go a bit futher but actually really like the white/red contrast.

Again I slice around all the clear bits to help avoid warp and two slices in the skull around the middle of the forehead. They're not quite even at the bottom but it helped to even out the massive cog difference at the top!

Banner and knee cog.

Blood angels contemptor dread 30k

It's just the Calth plastic dread with a deathwing terminator cyclone missile launcher on top who I carved up and stuck back together with a little more motion as I don't generally see the Blood angels as a stand about statically kind of legion. 

The deathwing launcher from above, perhaps I should have removed the sword detail but was lazy.

"Sorry son!" I wanted to fill the base with something interesting that might help pull the eye away from the deathwing launcher and Calth dread knee pads that blend into the metal joint too much, etc. so I knocked out this guy out of a calth torso, reaver head, palatine blade empty hand and some GS to give the impression of legs (well... leg) and a back pack.

The back, if you look closely at the leg and torso joins you can just about see where they've been cut apart and restuck but I think its not obvious enough to ruin the model.

Some fist action. I had thought about doing some freehand on the spaces but ended up quite liking the minimal detail.

Dakka dakka.

Imperial Knight 2 part 3 weathering and details.

So here's pretty much where I'm at, closing on a year since I got this guy base coloured. Who says I never get around to things eh? I weathered the red with a sponge using the highlight orange (wild rider red) and dark brown(rhinox hide). Minor chipping in places with the brown and metal on a few sharper exposed edges. Brass scorpion with watered down nihilith oxide and silver trim were both toned down with agrax earthshade. You can see the legs are yet to be shaded and weathered here but I got round to it below!

The mighty chainblade, swapped to the other side on this chap to give some variation between the knights.

A closer look at some weathering.

Eyes ready to be very slightly visible under the faceplate later.

Leg weathering! Sorry about that crummy camera shadow...

Legs again!

And everything so far all together. Hopefully I'll keep up the paintng vibe on this guy and update sooner than a year away.

A lesson in changing the paint plan. Blood angels kitbash Chaplain

Today I got down to the details on my pet chaplain project. I knew as soon as I saw the Night Lords terror squad heads I was going to use one for something like this and I had picked up Evanus Enkomi's body sometime back and so I got to it and bashed out a chaplain and primed him black. He doesn't have a crozius so I might pinch the one from calth and pop it on a belt loop or something later but I like him as he is:

I had a vision of my average idea of a chaplain, resplendent in bone, black and golden armour.  With a little red spot colour to blood angel him suitably. However I did the bone in a shade of blue grey as a nod of the head to the night lord head. and then the red contrasted with this rather well and I had to rethink my plan.

I had thought to do the sanguinary guard shoulder pauldron's and the metal plates on his legs a gold/brass colour, I then thought maybe some heavy verdigris could help to keep the temperature balance between the cool bone and black highlights and the red but in the end after a discussion with a friend via whatsapp I went for a more neutral dark silver with a light verdigris and nuln oil wash.

This was also a cooler tone and then the addition of the scrolls and basing in warm browns helped to keep everything in line.

For those who are wondering about the blood drop, when I carefully trimmed off the minotaurs chapter symbol from the chest I was able to carve the resin into a fairly centred drop shape. (It is slightly askew but the leaning pose hides it well!)

A back view. I chose (all but one) blood angel bits that had blood drop gems on to push the obvious chapter tie given I was going for two fairly distinct pieces from other chapters to make up the bulk of the model and have a more even distribution of red bits all over the model to draw the eye.

Not my best script but it will do. Perhaps I'll repaint it sometime I have more light.

I added stronger highlights to the shoulder guards than on the rest of the black armour to help their details not be completely lost beside the paler skull and rib cage detail.

I love a yellow stripe. It's probably a bit much against the rest of the model, but it ties in with the unit he will be deployed with who are all very red to his black armour. 

I'm very happy with the final result although I can't help but wonder how he would have looked if painted in the other scheme to compare. I think this is the first time I've made a major change to what I'd had planned mid way through painting something. Short of a full repaint, changing a minor detail or adding more detail to what I'd set out t do.

I hope you like him and the moment of insight into the painting process. What do you think about the yellow? Or my decision to change my colour palette plans part way? Would gold have looked better?

Blood Angels Ven Dreadnaught

This has been looking at me for the last 6 or so years wondering when I'm going to show it some love. So I did! I'd bought it off ebay with a base coat and highlight done and I'd shaded it then put i aside. I did a bit of various weathering effects all over to break up the red and did some details and based. The eyes look a bit over the top straight on but fine on the tabletop. Niggley details were what I wanted to avoid and enjoyed painting something different to tactical marines.

 

Contrasting green seals to help the red look bright and break it up with the other details in neural colours.

Filthy exhausts!

Slightly lazy on the skulls I admit.

I was quite pleased with all the scratch effects.

A Stormbird's eye view.

A bit of base, I'm not sure all my bases colours are quite matching at the moment, its something I need to work on a little!

I'm quite excited to get onto my Calth Dread now! Hope you like him!