Blood Knights finished!

Well the first half of the massive ten Blood Knight unit is completed!

Previous entries in the Blood Knights chronicles can be found here and here. The only remaining models were the last lancer and the banner bearer. I also had to do the shields and attach them to the unit:

I chose shield designs to complement the blood dragon vampire vibe. A mix of wolves, dragons, bats, fanged skulls and just plain fangs. By painting the icons in the same bone white that the scroll on the banner is painted avoids adding another colour and ties the unit further together.

While the original commission plan called for the Drakenhof banner the new vampire book kinda threw a spanner in the works. Fortunately I hadn't spent hours painting it already so no harm done when the client asked to change the banner to the Banner of Blood Keep. I took the design cues of the studio's original Blood Keep banner design and added some tweaks of my own. The bats flying across the blood toned sky and the halo around the moon. I wanted the red of the banner to be more intense than the armour to help it stand out. It couldn't be too scarlet though as it would loose the "vampire vibe". In the end I settled on a deep bloody red, this was achieved through a smooth basecoat of 50:50 Mechrite and Blood Red glazed in a 3:1 mix of Red to Chestnut ink mixed with Vallejo Thinner medium to help the glazing process. The moon was Rotting Flesh - going for Morrsleib - with darker patches and highlights created by adding black and white respectively. The halo was created with thin washes of the white and Rotting Flesh mix.

To finish off I wanted to show the lovely dynamic effect achieved through carefully positioning the charging, leaping horses to create a "flying wedge" of cavalry. Makes them look much more aggressive and interesting than just being in a straight line. This only really works with horses modelled at the gallop, most horse models (Empire knights for example) are sculpted as trotting and as such should be trotting shoulder to shoulder in formation. Orc Boar Boyz by comparison are wild nutters and would look really nice using this method.

Well, that's it for this commission, next up for commission work are some purple Emperor's Children and a High Elf griffon from the island of blood box. Good times.

TTFN

The Blood Knights grow...

Time for another Blood Knights update! As I mentioned last time I am painting each Blood Knight individually as they are almost worthy of being character models. Today we add a champion and musician to the unit. A few things to note first of all: One: They don't have shields yet. I am going to do a whole session of shield painting to get a consistant look to them and then add the shields to the models whilst ranked up to ensure that they will not interfere. Secondly, they have very heavily modelled bases. The reason for this is that part of the brief was for rocky ground and a sense of dynamism within the unit. With this in mind I decided to take advantage of the Finecast's light weight and pose them in ways that would have been awfully difficult with metal.

Each has been clipped from their runners and positioned on the base with a bent paperclip attached to a pilot hole drilled into the hoof. The wire allowed me to control the height of the model as well as the position. I added green stuff rocks to cover the wire and then used cork pieces to continue the rocky theme. While positioning the models on their base I created a loose "flying V" formation with the champion at the centre of the classic cavalry charge arrowhead. As you can see from the side view I created a very dynamic look to the unit (so far). Lets get in to the new individual models.

The musician was painted identically to the first lancer so I shan't go over the basics again. The only point of difference is the instrument. Basecoated in Vallejo Brassy Brass and then highlighted twice with first a 1:4 mix of Mithril Silver and Brassy Brass and then a 1:2 mix of Mithril Silver and Brassy Brass. Finally a wash of Devlan Mud shaded the instrument.

The champion was a lot of fun. You can see from the side view how dynamic the model is and how impossible it would have been to achieve in metal! The basics were the same again so lets pick out the interesting details.

My favourite part of this model is the giant bat pelt on the shoulder. Basecoated in Khemri Brown, a couple of washes of Badab Black and then the face was highlighted with Khemri Brown mixed with increasing amounts of Tallarn Flesh and then re-glazed with Badab Black. I think I will go back and pick out the black eyes with gloss varnish though as they have rather vanished into all the shading.

The sword is massive, the hilt is painted in the same way as the musicians horn, the blade is not terribly well cast so I decided to give it a little interes with engraved detail painted in Mithril Silver.

The steed is more mutated than most of the Nightmares. The horns and sharp teeth added to the glowing eyes create a pretty disturbing beasty.

Finally a brand new technique. I wanted a pale inhuman pallor to the vampire flesh so after a little fiddling I came up with the following method: Basecoat with a couple of thin coats of Dheneb Stone to get a smooth basecoat. Shade the flesh with first thinned Leviathan Purple and then very thinned Devlan Mud. Finally rehighlight first with Dheneb Stone and then a couple of thin highlights of Dheneb Stone with increasing amounts of Skull White.

The remaining Knight and Standard Bearer are next, hopefully to be finished before I go on hiatus from Christmas Eve to New Years. The site will still be updated with delicious miniature eye candy as I have the secret Christmas project to showcase but I won't be working until early January. I figure that the Standard Bearer will take a session to paint the model and another to paint the banner. The client wants the Drakenhof Banner:

Image (c) Games Workshop, used for illustrative purposes only

 So I reckon that will take a session in and of itself. Time to break out the sharp pencils and the fine brushes. Always up for a challenge though. Until next time:

TTFN

Knights of Blood

Greetings all, well, the super secret Christmas project is finished (piccies on Boxing Day or thereabouts) and you know what that means? Non-secret painting to share! This time it is the first in a unit of ferocious Vampire Count Blood Knights:

Now, before we go on, there is a reason that you will not see darker red-browns like this in the pages of White Dwarf. They are a swine to photograph properly. Mentally adjust the red brighter by about a tone and you should have it right. I wanted to give these Vampire Knights armour the colour of old dried blood. This colour has eluded me in the past but upon perusing my more military colours from Vallejo I espied Hull Red. This is technically the iron oxide primer that the Wermacht used on tanks in the second world war but it is perfect for this purpose. It is a really rich red brown that gives that perfect tone I was looking for. Highlights with Blood Red mixed in made it pop a little more and careful black lining dealt with the shading.

The horse needed to be black to fit with the whole eeeevil theme. Being an animal, the black would need to be brown highlighted as it would give a more natural tone. I was going to mix Scorched Brown and Chaos Black but then spotted German Camoflague Black-Brown sitting next to my Hull Red minding its own business. Given that it is already the right shade I just slapped that on! Two coats of Badab Black left it with a lovely subtle black. Mixing increasing amounts of Dwarf Flesh into the G.C. Black-Brown gave that fleshy look to the muzzle that is such an important part of making a horse look convincing. I toned it down with a thin wash of Badab Black. Finally, the eyes needed to pop a bit to indicate the semi-magical nature of the beasts. Faint glowing red seemed to do the job.

I wanted the armour to look archaic and well used so defined every edge with boltgun metal chipping. This, along with the black lining, helps to define the armour plates amongst the deep red and creates the right aged impression. The face on this one was a nightmare (badum tish) to paint as it is two tiny gaps in the helmet. I ended up painting the highlight colour as a basecoat and then carefully washing in the shading. Black eyes with a red pupil made him look inhuman.

The lance was a lot of fun, I didn't want to paint them red as that would have overwhelmed the model. Likewise, black would have sort of disappeared. I decided on a warm varnished wood tone. Starting with Khemri Brown as a basecoat I painted streaks of Bleached Bone trying to avoid regular patterns and adding knots and the like.To further define the grain I added a little black to the Khemri Brown and streaked again. To finish off I glazed the whole effort in thinned Chestnut Ink. I think it works. Well, until the next one is finished that is all from me folks.

TTFN

Kick the tyres and light the fires

The air support is here! My Landspeeders are finished:

These are configured for heavy fire support, designed to deep strike in behind enemy vehicles and blow them away before providing fast moving support for the rest of the army. At a hundred points each a lot of people tell me that they are too expensive but consider what they put out. 4 missiles a turn creating either 4 anti-tank hits or 4 blast markers, add this to two multimelta shots and you have a great deal of firepower. Compare this to a Devastator Squad. If you want two multimeltas you will only have two missiles and for this you will pay 150 points. They also cannot move and fire, I would say that 50 points is a small price to pay to have all that firepower drop out of the sky and zoom around blowing stuff up.

Painting wise, the colour scheme is the same as my normal Blood Angels vehicles. Something that will cause raised eyebrows among Blood Angels purists is the decision to paint the crews as devastators. The studio scheme has them in the yellow of Assault marines. This has never made sense to me, this unit does not take or hold ground, does not engage in assaulting. The only vaguely assault related thing is that it moves fast. To my mind this vehicle provides fire support, regardless of its speed. Thus, Devastators. Oh, and I had already painted twenty third company assault marines but only five devastators.

Markings were added with a mixture of freehand and transfers, I tried to get an aircraft feel to the markings by adding small warning labels such as you see on fighter planes. The weathering also needed thought, rather than chips and dings I went with scratches as though from flying object damage. Dust and grime were added in streaks as though from flying through explosions and smoke. The streaks were added by dragging a sponge dampened with Graveyard Earth across the paintwork.

The missile launchers also received weathering. They are magazine loaded so they repeatedly fire, the burns from the missile exhausts have left scars on the paintwork level with the missiles.

I wanted to do something extra with the bases. The clear plastic flying base is just fine but I wanted to do something a little extra with these. The scenic parts on the bases are old, old resin componants that I just can't remember the manufacturer.

I had a lot of fun with the burned out shipping contained, layer upon layer of brown, grey and black stippling went in to creating the burned effect. The peeling paintwork was accomplished by simply rubbing a paper towel over the almost dry Tausept Ochre that I had applied over Jeffrust. Both bases were drilled and fitted with a steel pin made from nails that I dremmelled down (nails, a very cheap source of hardened steel wire for heavy pinning). The lengthy pins secure the Landspeeders nicely while allowing me to remove them if I want them to be up a building of flying over a forest or whatever.

With these finished it brings Project Blood Angels to requiring just 2 sanginary priests and 3 half painted drop pods to be finished. I also have a Death Company dreadnought assembled from left over parts of the Furioso that isn't technically part of the list but is being added for variety (and because there was a dreadnought shaped space in the figure case. No really...)

TTFN