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.