Raptors Army

I've recently finished taking some pictures of my Raptors army I started at the beginning of the year.

House Hawkshroud Knight

My third Imperial Knight. This time it's a Paladin of House Hawkshroud.

House Raven Knight

Well my House Terryn Knight went to a new home in New Zealand but there was a local painting competition at the GW store last Saturday and I just had to enter.

So I bought myself a new Knight kit and set about painting up a House Raven Knight for the competition.

Now this one didn't go quite as smoothly as the first knight partly because my brain had decided I already knew how to paint one so I wasn't being quite as careful as I should have been. I did some stupid things like glue the hand-holds to the top carapace before I had painted the chevrons which meant that I only put chevrons on the back half of the model.

 I painted this Knight starting with the armour plates rather than the skeleton. This was partly because painting the skeleton of a Knight is pretty much the same regardless of which house you choose so I started with the bit that was different.

I painted the yellow for the chevrons first over the entire top-carapace. I actually painted the yellow over black rather than white (as I do for my Eldar army) and while it took a lot more coats to cover properly it was easier to get some good shading going.

Next was masking off the chevrons with tape. I actually put the tape on the model then draw the chevrons on with a pencil and then cut the tape on the model. Some people cut tape to the right width first but I found this way to be easier.

Spray the carapace black. Mask off the entire chevron area and then pre-shade with some white and cover with Ferrai Red to finish up the armour plates.

The trim was painted on by hand this time using Vallejo MA Chrome. This was actually much easier, faster and neater than masking with liquid mask. I then applied a pin-wash to all the panel lines and rivets using my "Armour Wash" recipe (4 parts Nuln Oil, 2 parts Drakenhoff Nightshade, 1 part Athonian Camoshade and diluted 1:1 with water).

Everything else was pretty much the same as my previous Knight except that I painted the entire thing in a single night over about 12 hours because the competition was the next day at 11AM. I finished up with the model at 9:30AM and started at 7PM the previous day (with a break for dinner).

In the end I came in second which I put down to the competition being stuffed full of House Raven Knights. Had I known there would be so many I would have gone Hawkshroud. The winner was a custom Freeblade with custom decals and really deserved to win.

This lad is currently up for sale on eBay.

Painting an Imperial Knight - The Heraldry & Base

With the bulk of the work done it's time to paint all the details and heraldry on the Knight.

I started out by picking out the details on the top carapace. Hand holds got painted with Vallejo MA Chrome and the viewport was just painted with black paint and given a white spot highlight in one corner.

The personal heraldry on the knee and shoulder pad were painted by masking off one stripe, spraying it black and then doing the other. This was because it was too fiddly to do both stripes at the same time. I accidentally went a bit too thick on the shoulder pad stripes though.

I used some Seraphim Sepia to separate the gold from the painted armour. This was fairly painstaking and took a while but the result made the gold pop far more and hid a lot of areas where the rub n buff hadn't covered properly (if I'm honest I'm not going to use rub n buff again for this. Hand painting with Vallejo metallics would be much faster and roughly the same result).

Lastly came the decals. First I coated the model with some gloss varnish and let it dry for about an hour. If you try and apply waterslide transfers onto gloss varnish that is only touch dry then the water has a tendency to make the varnish shrink away from the model and go wrinkly.

I'm not going into detail about applying decals here. I only use water and don't use any specialist decal chemicals and I still get good results.  Once the decals are applied I coat the model with another coat of gloss varnish to seal them.

I actually prepared the base separately from the model and pinned it after I was done. I just marked where the feet would go and made sure there was plenty of room to glue him to the base. I used my standard temperate basing style that most of my 4K armies are done with using some Flock, GW clump foliage and a lot of dried herbs. I actually use water effects to secure my flock not PVA because it flows around all the details on the base just by tipping the base at an angle. I also weathered the feet with a sponge and covered them in some Forgeworld mud weathering powders.

Once everything was dry I went over the armour plates with some matte varnish so only the gold was nice and shiny. You can see some pictures of the finished product below.

Painting an Imperial Knight - The Armour

Part two of my Imperial Knight project covers painting up the armour plates. None of the plates were fitted to the skeleton before painting. They were all painted individually then glued on at the end.

With a huge model like this zenithal highlighting with an airbrush isn't as important as a small model because it's large enough to self shadow effectively. I concentrated on recreating the effects of where the sunlight had faded the paint job and the effects of the materials rather than the lighting effects.

Here are all the armour plates painted blue (they still aren't attached it's just blutac). This was super easy to do as blue is a fairly translucent colour. All of the highlighting is purely from pre-shading with an airbrush.

First prime all parts black. Next I pre-shaded using Badger Minitaire Base Grey. I could have achieved more contrast using white but the Grey tends to flow more smoothly and I didn't want to mess about thinning the white down. Pre-shade just by highlighting the middle most part of the plates. Next mask off the areas that aren't going to be blue (or gold) with masking tape (I use Tamiya low-tack tape). Now just spray some Vallejo MA Blue over the area and you're done! Let the paint dry fully before removing the masking tape.

I then painted the red parts the same way. Mask off the non-red or trim areas with tape and then spray Vallejo Ferrari Red over the pre-shading (chosen as it's just slightly darker than scarlet). 

The light yellow/cream areas were harder. I had no paints that matched the colour so I improvised by spraying them with Badger Minitaire Yellow. This was horrible so I ended up mixing in some Badget Minitaire White and some Vallejo MA Sand Yellow until I got something that looked about right. I then highlighted up from the yellow to this new "Creamy Yellow". In this instance the pre-shading achieved nothing.

Next after all the paint was dry I got out some Vallejo Liquid Mask and started to flood the interior of the armour plates with it. If you load up a brush with this stuff and just hold the brush near an area of detail (such as the corners of the shoulder plates) then the liquid will eventually just flow into the oddly shaped area without you having to push it around.

Now this stuff is messy. You will destroy a brush with it so don't use a good one. Next leave it to dry for a couple of hours just to make sure. Once it's gone completely clear it's ready to be painted over.

Prime the armour plates black again and wait for it to dry. Next up is drybrushing Gold Rub n Buff (a tip I picked up from a Forgeworld book where they were painting a Reaver Titan). This stuff gets shinier the more you buff it. Be careful you don't just rub it entirely off the model though (unless you want a worn aged effect).

Now using a sharp knife cut along the edges of the trim where you masked. This ensures the mask doesn't pull any paint off the trim when you remove it. Use your thumb to pull the masking fluid off the model and a toothpick to get into the crevices.

Tada. Your Knight is mostly finished. Just the Heraldry and base to go!

Painting an Imperial Knight - The Skeleton

For my birthday I bought myself an Imperial Knight. It was clearly meant to be as they were released the day before I turned 32. Having painted a Riptide in the past I knew that a big kit like this had to be painted in sections (a mistake I made with the Riptide).

Fortunately GW have made a very good series of videos on how to paint the Imperial Knight (hidden in the depth of their site where you are unlikely to find it). The last video also includes a good guide on using Decals, something I normally avoid on smaller models but are absolutely essential for a big kit like this.

The model was painted over 3 nights with one night for assembly.

Start with the skeleton:

Primed black with Vallejo Polyurethane primer I began by spraying the whole thing with Warplock Bronze then highlighting with Vallejo MA Steel and finnally Vallejo MA Aluminium. Wash the entire thing with Nuln oil to dull down the metals then drybrush with Aluminium.

I then painted in some details with Hashut Copper. Anywhere I thought wanted to stand out from the base metal colour such as thin pipes, the "mouth" and "ears". Anything that looked like it might be carrying some very hot fluids that need to be cooled so all the pipes to the Radiator at the back for example.

Next up was some of the details on the Skeleton.

They eyes were painted with Castellan Green then highlighted with Loren Green and Moot Green with a little dot of Pallid Wych Flesh in the middle.

The scorched metal was done by airbrushing Vallejo Gold over 2/3 of the gun barrel/exhausts. Then I used Badget Minitaire Purple leaving some of the gold visible, next was Vallejo Blue then finally I used some Vallejo Black Primer (why even own black paint with this stuff sitting around?). I then used a sponge and some Aluminium to highlight the edges.

Copper components were washed with Seraphim Sepia and drybrushed with Aluminium.

Pistons were painted with Aluminium and washed with Agrax Earthshade to make them appear greasy.

Any piping that looked like it was a rubber hose I painted with Badger Minitaire Raven Black. It's a great off-black colour that can be washed with Nuln oil to create some shading. 

So ended the first night of painting. Next up are the armour plates!