Imperial Knight - Part Seven

Finished!

Lots of fun... in the end I opted to hand paint matte varnish (I used Vallejo Model Color) onto the armor plates to retain the shiny bits on the skeleton and trim. I am psyched by the results. I still think I prefer hordes of infantry to lumbering monster targets, but I am looking forward to trying this out on the table.

Fellowship Friday - Aragorn (Strider)

'With hope or without hope we will follow the trail of our enemies. And woe to them, if we prove the swifter! We will make such a chase as shall be accounted a marvel among the Three Kindreds, Elves, Dwarves, and Men. Forth the Three Hunters!'

Not sure why they replaced the quote above with 'Let's hunt some orc!' in the movie when the heroes set out to rescue Merry and Pippin. Anyway, Aragorn is probably my favorite fantasy character of all time, especially as Strider.

New GNW Flags from Quindia Studios

We have three new flag sheets for the GNW - Swedish Horse at Poltava!

Of course, they are available at the LoA Shop...

Imperial Knight - Part Six

Getting close now...

I used an oil dot filter to add streaks of dust and grime to the knight. There are lots of good tutorials online so I'm not going to drone on about it here (search oil dot weathering tank on Google). The hardest part about this technique is getting up the nerve to try it, so practice on a spare bit of kit and you'll find out how easy it is. If you get too much grime on your model, white mineral spirits on a clean brush will take it away! After treating the whole model (I used dots of Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, ans a (roughly) 25:75 mix of Cadmium Yellow and White. The effect is very subtle and adds nice tone variation across the armor and enhances the recess washes. After giving this a few hours to dry, I went back with the Burnt Sienna oil and picked out a few areas where I wanted more pronounced stains (see the vent panel and hatch handle in the pic below).

I also used black oil paint and thinner to add some grease and oil stains around joints.

Whew! Last steps in a few days. I am going to add a few purity seals, blacken the muzzle of the cannon, add some mud and dust with weathering powder (mainly around the feet and lower legs), and add some soot (around the vents). Then the big guy will get a coat of matt varnish to seal in all of these oils and powders and get rid of the remaining shine from the gloss coat. Finally I will touch up small areas like the cockpit window and eyes with gloss varnish again.

The base still needs some work as well, but I'm in the home stretch and incidentally starting to assemble some more knights! My plan is to have a group of three Hawkshroud Imperial Knights, one converted Hawkshroud Imperial Warden (more on that soon), and one Freeblade Imperial Knight where I can exercise a bit more creativity.

Stay tuned!

Troll Tuesday

... and that makes three...

This model was a bugger to assemble. Trying to get the arms in the right position was a trying process even for someone who has assembled hundreds (thousands?) of models, but in the end I would not be defeated.

Imperial Knight - Part Five

Ok, now he's really starting to look like he means business...

...minus the intense shine. I sprayed on two thin coats of gloss varnish in preparation for the next step (should have taken the pics first, but it is interesting to see how the decals have completely blended into the armor plates now).

I used Abaddon Black and Runefang Steel to add some damage to the silver trim in the same manner I treated the armor in Part Four. Then I used a fine sponge to stipple Mournfang Brown and Skavenblight Dinge over the entire model. Don't be afraid of this step... it is easy to use your base colors to correct any mistakes! I also went back and applied Nuln Oil to all of the rivets again.

You can also see I finally started working on the base. It's too monochrome at the moment so I need to add some contrast because later weathering will blend it all together and if everything starts too close in value the effects will be lost.

I've glued on all of the armor now except the shoulder guards (they are held in place fairly firmly by blu-tac) because the next weathering steps need to be consistent across the entire model. I've left the should guards free so I can remove the arms... I am still holding out hope that when Forge World starts releasing bits for the knight (rumors say details may be revealed at the March 30th FW Open Day) the weapon arms will include the shoulder ball rather than just the lower bit. Failing that I want to be able to remove the arm, take a saw to the relevant bit, and add magnets - I didn't do this yet because we don't know where any conversion kits might join!

Up next... oil and grime!

Imperial Knight - Part Four

Roughed 'im up a bit...

Basically, I used my base armor colors to chew up the decals...

Then I used Mournfang Brown to paint small chips and cracks in the plates and gave each an small highlight at the bottom of the damage (using the same edge highlights I used in part three). It looks a little crude when view at ten times the actual scale, but technique is very effective when seen on the model.

I need to refine a few areas and add some minor damage to the pristine silver trim, but it's coming along...

Fellowship Friday - Gandalf the Grey

THE wizard...

Like the rest of my collection, this is the original metal model, wielding his staff and his sword, Glamdring the Foe-Hammer!

Imperial Knight - Part Three

I have decided on House Hawkshroud. Unlike the other major houses, House Hawkshroud often adopts campaign badges and Space Marine icons as part of their heraldry to show respect for those they have chosen to ally with. I've toned down the yellow a bit to match the gold on my Red Scorpions and used a... errr... red scorpion as part of the knight's heraldry.

The skeleton of the model was painted with Leadbelcher (with small bits picked out in Balthasar Gold), washed with Nuln Oil, drybrushed with Necron Compound, and washed with Agrax Earthshade. The pistons were picked out in Runefang Steel and given a wash of Agrax Earthshade where they meet their housing.

None of the armor plates are glued down yet. Many stick firmly without glue and I used a blu-tac equivalent to attach the shoulder plates and mask for the photos. The gold plates were painted with Averland Sunset, given a careful recess wash with Reikland Fleshshade, and edge highlighted with Ushanti Bone. The black armor plates were simply edge highlighted with Dark Reaper and the rivets were picked out in Thunderhawk Blue. The silver trim was painted in the same manner as the skeleton without the Agrax Earthshade wash and given an additional edge highlighting with Runefang Steel.

It could be finished if I wanted a parade ready Imperial Knight, but I want a weathered campaign look. I'm going to add small chips and cracks to the armor, some rust and oil on the skeleton, and mud and dust. More pics in a few days...

Troll Tuesday

Another Troll...

A word on the paints used... I took a departure from my Citadel paints for the hide of these trolls. I couldn't get the combinations I wanted so I pulled out my Foundry paints. The first step was to paint the entire beast with Slate Grey 32A. I used a wash of Citadel Nuln Oil and then went back when this was dry with a drybrush layer of Slate Grey 32A. Next I began drybrushing the belly, inner arms, and lower face with Rawhide 11A and gradually worked up heavier coverage as I got away from the edges. Then I began alternating highlighting these two areas with successively lighter drydrushing...

Slate Grey 32B
Rawhide 11B
Slate Grey 32C
Rawhide 11C

Each layer was blended around the areas where these colors meet and the result was a very natural transition between the shades. I went back to the Citadel paints and blended some small highlights into the Rawhide areas with Ushabti Bone and Screaming Skull and picked out small highlights in the knobby scales in the Slate Grey areas with Administratum Grey.

Another brute is up for next week!

Imperial Knight - Part Two

Here's the big guy at the next stage of assembly. I managed to work out the placement of pins on the feet so the model can be removed from the stand for the initial painting stages. It took several tries to get everything the line up properly, but it will make it easier to paint the base. The chainsword arm is not positioned properly, but nothing is glued yet. Of course most of the armor is still missing as well, but I want to paint the plates separately. With the armor removed, painting the skeleton is 90% drybrushing and washes and it will make it easy to finish a large part of the model.

I'm still not sure how I am going to paint these yet, but I have narrowed it down to one of the houses included on the transfers in the kit. I have five of these monsters and I don't want to buy five extra transfer sheets at $20 each. Actually I think I am going to paint four from one house and paint the fifth as a Freeblade so I can exercise a little creativity with that one.

There are three Imperial aligned and two Adeptus Mechanicus aligned houses include on the kit transfer:

House Terryn (I) House Terryn is blue and gold and is the guy featured on the cover of the box which normally makes me shy away from this scheme.
House Hawkshroud (I) Hawkshroud SOUNDS cool, but their main color is a bright yellow... that seems like an awful lot of yellow. I'm going to pick up the Imperial Knight Companion today (edit: grumble, grumble... none of my FLGS had the companion book yet... thought it shipped the same day as the codex) if I can find a copy and see how much latitude I have to play with the 'official' heraldry. If I can quarter the scheme, say in yellow and black, this might be the winner. I can always tone down the yellow to more of a golden color as well.
House Cadmus (I) House Cadmus is green which kinda feels like WW2 tanks... hmm... I wonder if the knight houses employ camo?
House Taranis (A) House Taranis is red and white and looks like a super hero.
House Raven (A) House Raven is red and silver, but bears a distinctive black and yellow chevron design on the carapace which seems unique.

Sadly, there are only transfers for ONE Freeblade, the Obsidian Knight, but I can either spring for one extra transfer sheet (which has lots of Freeblade emblems) or just make up my own.

I'm going to try and undercoat this monster today and get in some painting next week, assuming I actually decide on a knight house...

Fellowship Friday - Peregrin Took

... and Pippen!

On to the bigger folk!

Go Big or Go Home - Imperial Knights

Games Workshop rolled out an amazing piece of kit last weekend for Warhammer 40k... a 28mm version of the Imperial Knight from the olden days of Adeptus Titanicus. This one man titan towers above the battle filed at a height of 6.5 inches on the tabletop (or maybe a little taller as we shall see). It was such an amazing model, I bought five of them...

I'm not going to delve into the rules (I think I've said before I suck at actually playing these games because I always field the units I want to paint rather than the best combos), the implications for the future of the game (seems like a lot of tournament players are up in arms about what these types of super heavies do to the balance of the game... I don't bother with tournaments), or GW's price escalation (It's an expensive hobby). I simply thought it was a great kit and the idea of these monsters stomping across the table with TERMINATORS swarming around their knees had me sold in a big way.

I probably should have built the first one straight out of the box, but I wanted one striding through rubble like the picture above. The very fist thing I did to this very expensive kit is break out my jeweler's saw and cut the left leg in half below the knee. There is a perfect guide to follow, but be warned that your saw will not simply follow the groove. Take your time and this should be an easy conversion. I used a knife and a file to clean up the pieces once they were separated. Then I simply glued the two halves together. The angle of the bend needs to leave a small space so you can attach the hose to the bottom of the thigh.

After this, the rest of the construction was fairly straight forward. The only other fiddly bit was replacing the hose on the left leg. I used an old necklace from my bits box, but a bass guitar string would work great as well. I removed the couplings from the plastic hose, drilled out the components used super glue to attach the new hose after gluing the couplings to the leg.

Here are the results so far. The rest of the build should follow the instructions from the kit.

I haven't figured out how I want to paint my knights yet, but I'm not in a hurry. I have another conversion underway as well... stay tuned for more!

Wild Warg Wednesday

Ok, I just can't help myself with the blog headlines...

More models for my Angmar army. This warband will eventually be ten wolves plus the chieftain, but I had a little trouble getting my hands on another box... should be rectified soon. I promise I wont post the expansion on a Wednesday...

Stay tuned for Mordor Monday!

Just kidding...

Troll Tuesday - Buhrdur the Troll Chieftain

Another captain for Angmar, Buhrdur the Troll Chieftain!

This brute possesses a cunning above his trollish kind is destined to lead a pair of his less fashionable brethren. He may often serve as the leader of my Angmar force if there are no Nazgul present.