Tuesday, December 20

Custodes Dread Knight

Hey everyone, Today I am bringing something to you that I haven't done in a while... wait for it... a painting log!  I know, I know, I gave you the best christmas/Kwanzaa present ever but don't tell your wife "Awww, this  watch is nice honey but Duke wrote a painting log article and this Rolex just doesn't stack up." Trust me your groin won't feel pretty for about 4-170 days.  Anyhow, enough with the delusions of grandeur (and groin kicking). Lets get on with the show.




First things first.  This is a "Hitech miniatures model," (http://hitechminiatures.com/).  It is called a "Hell Cruiser." When I saw this bad boy I immediately thought that he would be my Custodes Dread Knight.  In all honesty I am not a 100% fan of the model.  I love the legs and torso but the shoulder pads were kind of lacking, and were also a bit over-sized.  In the end I like it a lot more than a GK dread-knight converted into a Custodes one, so I went with it. 



Here is my gold recipe: 
* note: 'wet brushing is a technique like dry brushing, but you use it with a good amount of paint on the brush.  It works particularly well on blending metallics (IMO). If you do it too heavily it on't blend right and if you just dry brush it the model will look 'chalky,'

0. Paint the whole model Scorched brown as a base. 
mixed pot of 1:1 scorched brown and Shinning gold
1. Paint entire model in 1:1 mix of scorched brown and Shinning gold. 
done through stage 1

2. take pure shinning gold and apply it by wet-brushing the model.  Make sure you get good coverage though.
3. wash recesses blood red, then Devlan Mud, then Badab black going more into the corners and such with each step. this will leave behined some red and some devlan, effectively layering the washes.
4. Go over 'direct light,' areas with Burnished gold (Wet brush)
5. mix a pot of 1:1 Burnished gold and Mithril silver.  Apply this as a broad highlight. you can wet brush or not here, up to you and how much area you are working with, small areas shouldn't be wet brushed.
Mixed pot of 1:1 burnished gold and Mithril silver
6. take pure mithril silver and run it along selective edges where light would reflect naturally.
7. Take skull white and apply in small areas as the focal point of the reflection.
8. gold is done!

Gold is done!




At this point I was pretty happy with how the gold was looking.  I just needed to add in other colors to see how the gold looked next to other stuff (sometimes colors look good alone, but not so much after other colors are added to the model.)

Next I went on to the red areas.

1. base-coat all the red areas with macharite (sp?) red.
2. 1:1 mix macharite red and blood red blended up towards highlight areas
3. Thinned out blood red blended towards highlight areas (do a few layers of this to get it right)
4. Wash recesses in thraka green and blood red.
5.. 1:1 mix of Blood Red and Blazing orange as a broad highlight.
6. Blazing orage as a main highlight
7. 1:1 mix of blazing orange and skull white as an extreme (spot) highlight.

For the flames:

Follow the same red recipe, but add more yellow steps after the 1:1 orange and white mix.  Then use skull while as an extreme highlight.  All said I think I used something like 12-15 different colors on the flames... Perhaps they will be a post in an of themselves.
shields part 1

Shields part 2. All done with brush, no cheating with pens!
Shields part 3.

Steps I didn't include: I went in and painted all the skulls brown, then drybrushed bone, then highlighted skull white.  I also painted some green in there to give some 'more color,' to the model.  I kept texting my buddy Thomas "Goatboy," and his response was usually "too much gold." So I kept adding colors other than gold to distract the eye from it all.  Honestly though in a Custodes army I can't get too far from gold.  All in all though I am really happy with the way this guy turned out.  Now on to Sanguinius (Driago)!


HERE HE IS ALL DONE (I'll do basing another day)


So, what do you all think? Does he look like crap? Is he amazing? Something in the middle?


DUKE



P.S.- Now that is dedication! I painted this model all last weekend (about 10-15hrs total) you have to find ways to multitask when a project takes that much time.

15 comments:

  1. Don't get wet paint on your baby!

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  2. Lol, that would be one helluva dread knight

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  3. That looks pretty amazing! And it's a good recipe for gold, I always have a hard time painting that. I do think some areas of silver plate might look good too, to break up the gold, but otherwise I think it looks good.

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  4. I do believe that you just sold one of their models for them. :)

    I had been curious about this fig for awhile and wasn't sure if it would work as a Dnight or Dnought. Looks like the Dnight is the way to go.

    Also, a small correction...it's Mechrite Red and Macharius Solar Orange, which with all the blending you did to get these fantastic results explains the conjunction.

    The only thing that's a little disappointing about the figure is what appears to be a lack of options with the hands. It would be nice to be able to do something with those hands.

    Excellent article. Thanx!

    Cheers,

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  5. @honda: yea, I was being lazy not looking up the color names, thanks for the clarification.

    I also don't like the hand options. I wanted to put a hammer in a hand, but it is impossible withou cutting off a finger and moving it around in weird ways.

    I'm glad you like the Article, I'm going to do more of them as I build the army.

    Duke

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  6. Great fig! The lower chest plate/rib cage looks good in contrast to the gold.

    The green is a good choice too.
    Keep painting! lets see the rest of this army.

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  7. amazing job Duke. Would be even better if you had painted a tourney legal model. Should look good on the shelf. Maybe you could do another one and have bookends.

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  8. It is a Tourney legal model - most Tourneys allow some non-GW products in them. Only officially GW run tourneys are extremely hard on that rule.

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  9. Would it be possible to get a shot of this guy next to a real dreadknight or dreadnought?

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  10. @Tigerg1: lol, good one... I almost fell for that one. Thanks for giving me crap, bud. I think Ill put a SM helmet on the base so I can point at it and say "see, GW model," lol.

    @Jake: Right, Most tourneys don't care as long as it is WYSIWYG and you can tell what you are playing (i.e. scibor, etc.)

    @Honda: I have moved on to my contemptor dreads, but Ill post up a shot of him standing next to a furioso one of these days.

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  11. nice post dear blogger

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  12. Hey there, awesome paint job! Just wondering what head you used?

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  13. The head is from scibor miniatures. Great stuff over there. (just google "scibor,")

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  14. Dear Duke

    Be careful with your back as your baby grows. When summer comes you might find a funny photo is using the toes as paint brush holders. lol.

    Now about the paint job ... I love the colors.

    The green contrasting the red is a great finish.

    You have achieved a really stylish look.

    I would be temtped with a tad more highlight around the flame areas, expressing a little more light, on the top areas of the sculpt, but hay then I would over do it and ruin it.

    Nice work (and extra points for knowing when to stop).

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  15. Very nice gold, and the heraldry is cool too.

    My only point would be that you appear to have painted your flames the wrong way round. With flames, the lightest (hottest) colours go at the bottom and the darkest (coolest) colours go at the top.

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