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These are my three Imperial Knights. Just finished painting them for the new army I'm building. I haven't painted in a while, so criticism is certainly appreciated.

-Jim

I'm pretty intrigued by the verdigris Knight, I never thought of that before and seeing it now it doesn't seem half bad at all.

I'm a pretty novice painter, and can only look forward to the day I tackle a large project like an IK for myself.

However, there are a couple pieces of advice I can give you that I feel confident enough to:

-Firstly, the yellow on Knight 2 could probably use another thin coat or two, you can still see the undercoat through it. I know that everybody says yellow is really tricky to get vibrant on a model, especially with a black undercoat, and recommends undercoating with a brown first to help the yellow out a bit.

The whites seem okay in this, I know white is another one that people say to look out for though. The reds on Knight 1 look a little see-through though.

-Second, there's some mold lines that are still pretty harsh on some of the models. I think Knight 2 is worst off in this regard as I'm seeing it on the piping/joints between his legs and on his gun arm fairly easily, as well as his back vents. This is probably just because its a much brighter color and the silver brings it out a bit more.

Always worth taking a hobby knife or exacto knife (I use the blade from an old one myself) to run it down the mold line to clean those to help smooth them down. There's not a lot I'm seeing elsewhere on the models though, so it's not bad at all just visible in some key spots

-Thirdly, some of the lines could be neated up. This is an issue most with Knight 1, some of the whites and reds could be cleaned up.

overall, I always love seeing Knights, and I love seeing everything anybody does different with them (like your verdigris). Some minor things here and there that would really let these models shine, but I'm just learning myself and can only speak for what I've heard and done on my own models

Thanks for the input. Im really just not sure what to do with that yellow. I'll have to try another coat.

I definitely think another coat would help a lot. While you don't want it to go on thick, yellow is a color that can take more coats than some other colors to get it truly opaque. I'm going to be experiencing something very similar very soon as I paint up a yellow Khorne Juggernaut. Good luck!

now, how would you recommend making that yellow look dirty? The big problem I have with lighter colors is this: There is a fine line between "this looks dirty" and "this is a bad paint job."

hmmm, different shade or a texture perhaps? Zandri dust comes to mind....

When I made my knight dirty it was using pledge floor cleaner mixed with a sepia wash layered up a few times. Looks like this now.

Pledge? Ive never heard of that, and you've peaked my interest. What ratio did you use on that?

Pledge floor Wax is an acrylic based liquid (like our paints).

There are a couple of good reasons for using it. The problem with watering down a paint/wash/ink is that it's wet.

With the pledge its got a bit more viscosity to it so doesn't run so much.

The other useful thing is that its self dissolving. What that means its while its fresh you can apply more pledge and it'll breakdown the older pledge solution underneath with a bit of rubbing with a paintbrush (useful for fixing drops that appear on the model once dry)

Pledge is recommended by a bunch of painters if you look around the forum.

I'd say 10% colour to solution and then let it dry and then doing another layer. It's the safest way to get what you want.

Wow I never heard of that Pledge method either, guess I should put more dedication into lurking.

Love the way it looks though, and I'm definitely going to try that sometime soon.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

http://www.swannysmodels.com/TheCompleteFuture.html

Also, if any USBros want to ship some of that stuff to AUS, I would be so ridiculously happy.

There must be something local you can use, kb_lock. A cursory search on the USPS shipping calculator suggests that it'd cost about 5 times more (bare minimum - if you want it within a week, even small boxes or large envelopes are about $60US) to mail it than to buy the bottle, itself. I love my Pledge FloorCare, but I don't think I'd spend $30 to get a bottle (in a month, probably, assuming no issues with customs).

There is, but it isn't as cheap or readily available - it is another hobby product (which I can't remember right now, but it is in my notes).

The only place that actually sells that stuff here has a hefty markup.

$20 each.

Welcome to Australia

Should get someone to buy some GW stuff at the same time and stick a bottle of it in.