WiP Catchup 1 - The Colour of Knight

 

Came into work today to find that all morning classes have been cancelled bcs of student elections - Loooooovelllyy Jubbly! My Friday schedule is a bit of a bitch so having 4 classes wiped off the board certainly helps especially considering I was woken up in the middle of the night by a fething mosquito....in novemeber.....a mosquito. Not impressed. Anyways, 'nuff of that.

 

I'm gonna use the sudden gift of a few hours of time to try adn catch up with my WiPs here and over on Dakka. Yes, yes - I'm quite sure that there are much more important teachery things I could be doing but.....:P

Anywho - first catchup is about that imperial knight I bought.....a while . Magnetising a Knight I fully magnetised the brute as these knights have so many awesome weapon loadout options, it seemed a shame to just glue on one loadout and consign the rest to the bitzbox. Origninally I dug out the places to hold the magnets by hand using some crafting gouges and awls. Since then I have got a dremel and really really wish I had bought it earlier! I've started 'wrting' some fluff to go with this Freeblade (admittedly mostly in my head!) Homemade destroyed/ravaged by Chaos due to his brother knight turning to the dark powers (future project will be building his brother, Diomedes' Chaos Knight for which I hope will come even close to the amazing conversion that Krautscientist completed - check his work out over here at  Kraut Scientist's Chaos Knight - absolutely awesome inspiring stuff. ) was rescued and taken in my the AdMech of Achlys III, whom he know fights alongside in his hope of eventual vengeance against his former brothers in arms. Sarpedon is the pilot and his engine has been rename 'Orphan's Wrath'. In thinking up a colour and heraldic scheme for the Freeblade, I wanted to give it quite a 'Greek' feel as the fluff pulls a bit from ancient Greek culture and mythology, albeit in a rather loose and twisted way. Of course as ever, I do love to sketch ideas, things and bits out as I go along. The first page of doodles I bloody lost! So I started over and the new stuff did actually come out a lot better imho!

Freeblade 'Orphan's Wrath' Heraldry Ideas

Main elements are going to be playing around with a Greek(ish) helmet, laurel leaves and the trident. The main decision though was the main colour scheme was going to involved a creamy marble scheme. Now, finding good marble painting tutorials is not the easiest of things. At all :/ However after a load of searching, reading, head scratching, swearing, reconsidering, re-reconsidering, stubborness, more swearing, a lot of coffee and a final ' fuck it - I'll give it a bash anyway' - a faux marble effect was attempted.

Here's the progress -

 

 First all lots of nuln oil to tone down the incredibly shiny leadbelcher sprayed basecoat. Then lots n lots of brass fittings and bits as that ties him in quite nicely with the scheme and style of Achlys III's forces.

 Head done first and then one of the masks ansd the cowl were painted as test pieces for the marble effect

Test painting went well, so onto carapace, greaves and leg armour plates - step 1 - basecoat then staining

Step 2 -defining the cracks

 Step 3 - softening down the whole effect

Then onto the metals

Test fit - check the look so far. Happy happy with how this is going :D

More armour plates and time for some weapons!

 

'Orphan's Wrath' - Freeblade Imperial Knight

 And that's where we're at now. He's coming along pretty nicely. Really happy with the overall look. Next week (once the Kats I'm working on are done) it'll be back to the knight for the rest of the weapons, shoulder plates and other bits. After that, decals  (not that many as I've made all my own heraldry) and a load of freehand painting!