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I'm looking into making a darker themed set of Grey Knights. I do really like the traditional colors, but they are pretty overdone and I'd like to do something a little different.

As a start, I was thinking the force weapons would have shades of red instead of shades of blue. Maybe give it a lightsaber look by lining the center with white and the outer edges with red (though I do like the classic force sword look more I think). Armor is obviously going to be black, but beyond that I don't really know how to make them look detailed. Black alone is obviously going to look bad. I think I was going to give their eyes a glowing red to go with the sword, but I think too much red in the armor might be pushing it too much. I also don't want them to resemble Chaos Space Marines.

Is this a hopeless endeavor? I can't think of a paint scheme for my dark knights that doesn't look chaos marine-y or just too black lol.

Well even chaos looking paint schemes don't have to be chaos as long as there is not chaos icons adorning their armor. Many chapters have dark schemes that look very menacing. Executioners, Lamentors, Flesh Tearers, Red Hunters, to name a few.

An interesting idea would be not to use actual black as the primary colour but darken down the traditional silver and add the blue tint to finish. Perhaps add a tiny amount of black to the silver to make a dark iron colour and water down a light blue (maybe ice blue?) to the equivalent of a wash and apply the number of layers that just looks right to you.

For example, the same principle of darkening the traditional palette can be applied to a BA army to portray the Flaw.

For the eyes I would avoid doing red, and go for the light blue GK have. Maybe you can include another colour in your blue mix to give it a very subtle slither of severity and ruthlessness in their character if you know what I mean? I would add a hint of yellow or maybe green. IMO the eyes are a core aspect in portraying the nature of an army or other figure in an artwork!

It would also look very cool if the force weapons were the same colour as the eyes, as in my experience common colours for the light sources look better than different light colours which often disrupt its 'clockwork'. There are of course exceptions, such as if the weapon had a muted tone. I personally dislike the look of power weapons in colours from the red palette, but that's personal opinion.

This will not only look very cool and give that dark knight look, but also portray their more ruthless and dare I say sinister side while ultimately having benign intention, like Batman!!!

Hope this helped!!!

Thanks guys. Those are some good ideas/advice.

I was actually given a good idea by a painter. To give the normal Grey Knights Dark Angel robes. That would give them a more sinister looking regalia and make them feel darker, while still keeping the Grey Knight look you get with the helmet, shoulders, and weapons. What do you think of that?

Darknuke wrote:Thanks guys. Those are some good ideas/advice.

I was actually given a good idea by a painter. To give the normal Grey Knights Dark Angel robes. That would give them a more sinister looking regalia and make them feel darker, while still keeping the Grey Knight look you get with the helmet, shoulders, and weapons. What do you think of that?

I've kicked around this idea also. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the DA veteran robes are in one piece with the back of the torso, so that would have to be removed if you want the psychic hood on your GK.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat1400016&prodId=prod1060236

by the looks of the dark angels veterans box, it seems like the head, arms, shoulders, legs, back, and torso are separate.

I most likely wouldn't use the hood on my GKs except maybe the Justicar. In that case, I may even carve out the inside of the hood to see if I can fit a version of the GK helmet inside of it.

I would definitely avoid using the robes from the bottom right two DAs since they don't show any breastplate insignia from the GKs. For the top right one, I would cut out the lower legs and replace them with GK versions (if I chose to use those) so I could get the leg insignia.

I'm liking this idea more and more as I think about it lol. I might give this a try with one troop of GKs and see how it goes. First I have to wait for my custom DK to be done so I can get the color scheme correct.

Classic example of what I call the Paladin syndrome: In online games, 50% of all teens between 12-15 years start with the only good character (Paladin), name him something like "Dark Avenger of Death" and think, they are the first and only one who thought of playing a corrupted paladin. WOW finally surrendered to this need of all younglings and introduced the evil paladin class called Death Knight.

Grey Knights are (originally at least, one might argue with Mat Ward's view) the paladins of 40k. Making corrupted evil Grey Knights is even more overdone than painting them Silver. Just to let you know

Well there colours some times depend on their god unless they worship all of them. Use any colours you think that makes them look scary and evil.

Kroothawk wrote:Classic example of what I call the Paladin syndrome: In online games, 50% of all teens between 12-15 years start with the only good character (Paladin), name him something like "Dark Avenger of Death" and think, they are the first and only one who thought of playing a corrupted paladin. WOW finally surrendered to this need of all younglings and introduced the evil paladin class called Death Knight.

Grey Knights are (originally at least, one might argue with Mat Ward's view) the paladins of 40k. Making corrupted evil Grey Knights is even more overdone than painting them Silver. Just to let you know

lol well thank you for comparing me to the likes of a 12-15 year old.

I disagree with your statement about dark GKs being overdone. I haven't seen anything BUT silver GKs. Your area might be different, but the GK users at my local GWs use silver and there are nothing but silver GK armies on ebay (rarely do you get other colors). I haven't even really seen any Dark Knight armies here on Dakka (with a decent search). I'm not doing Dark Knights because I want to make the "Dark Avengers of Death." I've always been a fan of darker colors for my armies. My Tyranid are brown and black, my former Space Marines were black and blue, and my original Tau were black and green (then went with a white theme because of a insanely cheap army I got that was white).

Going further, I doubt any of the tweens you speak of considered doing a conversion army using Dark Angel robes and Black Templar tabards (for Termies. New discovery of mine that I may or may not do). They probably just painted the base models darker colors.

Honestly, this is more of a Sith themed army because I'm a Star Wars geek and it's my way of nerding out before SWTOR comes out . I've always been more of a Tyranid player anyway, but I could not say no to the pure awesomeness of the Grey Knight models. They are just way too cool to not paint and don't even get me started on the DK lol (I'm also a big Matrix fan so I had a nerdgasm when I saw that haha).

Eventually I'll get some pictures of these models up and show you how cool the army can be

Never make black a primary color of an army. Even the best painted black looks like you were just lazy and didn't care. It's just not possible to make black on a miniature look like anything but a miniature painted black (as opposed to making it look like a real thing, but smaller, which is usually the goal.)

Kroothawk wrote:Classic example of what I call the Paladin syndrome: In online games, 50% of all teens between 12-15 years start with the only good character (Paladin), name him something like "Dark Avenger of Death" and think, they are the first and only one who thought of playing a corrupted paladin. WOW finally surrendered to this need of all younglings and introduced the evil paladin class called Death Knight.

Grey Knights are (originally at least, one might argue with Mat Ward's view) the paladins of 40k. Making corrupted evil Grey Knights is even more overdone than painting them Silver. Just to let you know

Sorry to get off topic, but EverQuest had a fallen paladin (Shadowknight class) about.... oh 10 years ago I believe.

DarknessEternal wrote:Never make black a primary color of an army. Even the best painted black looks like you were just lazy and didn't care. It's just not possible to make black on a miniature look like anything but a miniature painted black (as opposed to making it look like a real thing, but smaller, which is usually the goal.)

Well if I do what Deathly Angel said, then the armor will never be a flat black. It will be more of a dark silver. There will probably be some black on the robes, but there will be highlight colors too.

That being said, I am still trying to work out the highlight colors to make sure the knight isn't super bland or just two colored. I may just do everything else the same as it normally would be except give the eyes some kind of glow, paint the robes with some kind of emblem, and the sword would be red.

EDIT: Found this picture http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs39/f/2008/348/9/4/Blood_Elf_Death_Knight_by_slipgatecentral.jpg ... That is a great example of what I was thinking my guys would look like (or could look like). Red sword, black armor, gold highlights, and she uses dark red cloth for those parts, which is what I could use for my cloth.

I was also in the process of painting my blades red. I think they look better. all a matter of flavor.

I had painted all of my termies at one point in primer black then white overlays (that took a while) I wanted that paladin look, came out ok, but I decided to re-do them in more traditional colors with my own accent flares to them.

you can't make blood angels in blue (well I suppose you could) so I kept with making the grey knights "grey" (read boltgun) and changing up some of the detailing a bit.

I support any amount of customizing though. have at it.

as a fellow Sith lover (major Darth Maul nerd fan here) and 40K GK lover, have at it. I would love to see them!

DarknessEternal wrote:Never make black a primary color of an army. Even the best painted black looks like you were just lazy and didn't care. It's just not possible to make black on a miniature look like anything but a miniature painted black (as opposed to making it look like a real thing, but smaller, which is usually the goal.)

False. Black paint only looks like black paint, but the illusion of black objects is entirely possible. It may be a bit harder than other colors, but it can definitely be made to look good.

Personally, I'd go for a dark, blued steel look by tinting silver paint with black and blue inks (haven't experimented, much, but I imagine inks would give a better effect than paints, whether mixed in or used as a filter). The translucency of the inks should allow them to maintain a metallic luster, giving the impression of actual bluing which, despite the name, isn't restricted to blues - depending on the temperature, the discoloration can manifest as a straw yellow, deep purple, or near black (aiming for the blue-black end of the spectrum will keep them nice and menacing). The exact recipe would take a bit of experimentation, but I think the results would be downright badass. The tinting keeps things dark, but silver/gunmetal is the primary paint, meaning you aren't highlighting pure black, if you find that as problematic as some do.

oadie wrote:False. Black paint only looks like black paint, but the illusion of black objects is entirely possible. It may be a bit harder than other colors, but it can definitely be made to look good.

Personally, I'd go for a dark, blued steel look by tinting silver paint with black and blue inks (haven't experimented, much, but I imagine inks would give a better effect than paints, whether mixed in or used as a filter). The translucency of the inks should allow them to maintain a metallic luster, giving the impression of actual bluing which, despite the name, isn't restricted to blues - depending on the temperature, the discoloration can manifest as a straw yellow, deep purple, or near black (aiming for the blue-black end of the spectrum will keep them nice and menacing). The exact recipe would take a bit of experimentation, but I think the results would be downright badass. The tinting keeps things dark, but silver/gunmetal is the primary paint, meaning you aren't highlighting pure black, if you find that as problematic as some do.

I'm not nearly skilled enough in painting to dabble in inks. I can't even really imagine what you are trying to say they'd look like. That being said, blue/black/silver is something I was contemplating after reading deathly angels post.

I did find some good examples of black being used for Grey Knights though.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/203646 - this is pretty much the embodiment of the above picture i posted of the elf in death knight armor. I would just give him a force sword or halberd instead of a hammer and he'd be set.
http://www.coolminiornot.com/53784
http://www.coolminiornot.com/64072 - this one is the opposite of the one above
http://www.coolminiornot.com/276111 - This librarian isn't really a Grey Knight Lib, but uses the colors in a darker way and it makes the librarian look very mean.
http://www.coolminiornot.com/278438 - this commander also uses darker armor and looks very cool/mean for it. I would give it more red though.