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Well, another year has passed, so it's time for another Christmas painting project!

This year it's Imperial Knights. Now, Knights are freaking expensive, so I've reached into the past (the past being my closet full of untouched boxes of minis purchased at far less money than today's prices) to pull out the following:



That's the 2nd release of Renegade, with 2 cheap(er) Knights and Forgeshrine (which won't be part of this blog, but won't be built as a Forgeshrine, because those suck), the Imperial Knights Apocalypse Box, which was a Castellan and 2 Helverins for the price of a Castellan, and a box of Helverins. Funny to note that the Apocalypse box is now a bundle on GW's site for basically 120 (Canadian) bucks more than I bought it for a year and a half ago (from a discounted retailer, but still).
And in May of 2020 I actually painted some of this stuff! I lost steam when I ran out of vacation in May, but I got these two done:



So I'm basically cheating this year but I don't care. There's still 2 big Knights and 3 baby Knights to do.

Now I was very happy the way these turned out with only some shading and basically zero highlighting. Knights are so big they basically don't need highlights for the shapes to stand out. I skimped a bit on heraldry and markings - but again, I really don't think they need it.

And yes those are the old plastic jungle trees (plus barbed bracken) on the bases. Lots of room on the bases for some decoration.

So now it's time to finish this mess off! I've been spending the last week building and building and building...



Note that the Imperial Knights (but not the Castellan) are magnetized so I can swap arms and carapace weapons. Renegade doesn't let you build 2 of everything but it's enough weapons for 2 Knights with some spares, which is nice.



For painting, all arms, leg assembly and torsos are kept separate, as are the armor plates. This makes painting these beasts SO MUCH easier. The first Knight had the armor panels all painted by hand, but then I did the first Arminger and did the white by airbrush and the blue-green by hand afterwards. I'll probably do even more masking this time around so I can do the blue-green by airbrush as well, we'll see how it goes.

Yesterday I got the Castellan airbrushed with primer coat and basecoat. Today was a whole lot of pin shading.



I could have just overall shaded it but the gold ends up brighter if I just put it in the recesses. Since the gold is airbrushed on it's very smooth and reflective and even if I worked it back up it just wouldn't be the same.

Tomorrow I can work on armor plate colors (I decided against masking and airbrushing) and cable details. I doubt I'll get it done tomorrow, but we'll see.

I love that even the interior metal portions are gold. It looks gorgeous underneath the white and blue. Looking forward to seeing more!

 Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll wrote:
I love that even the interior metal portions are gold. It looks gorgeous underneath the white and blue. Looking forward to seeing more!

Admech don't skimp on the bling.

I was just wondering if you’d be treating us to another Christmas project. It’s good to not be disappointed! The knights look very snazzy in gold, is that just Retributor Armour through your airbrush?

So yesterday didn't work out so well on the painting front. The plan was to get up early, do some painting, have lunch, more painting, then my Saturday evening Pathfinder (1st ed) game over Discord...

Then I find out that our Christmas dinner with my brothers and mother are that day, at my place (I knew this was happening but expected a bit more notice than "hey it's tonight" and the house isn't nearly clean enough and I still have to do regular grocery shopping (at least my oldest brother was buying the dinner), so I only got a little painting done. At least I didn't have to cancel my RPG session, but I was pretty miffed at the short notice!

But I did get the white panels a first pass and today I've been hitting the blue panels. All of them will get a second pass to even out the color coverage as it's not 100% covering the gold everywhere opaquely. I'll have to do a bit of clean up here and there but the second pass on the color goes a lot quicker.



I've been trying out some new brushes, as I picked up a pack of sable and squirrel brushes from Rosemary & Co recently, and I'm really liking them.


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Well, nose to the grindstone and I got this guy through final assembly and can tackle basing tomorrow.



Still a few mistakes on the mini but honestly it's not worth going back to fix them if I want to get this project done. I probably should have broken up the color of the volcano cannon's barrel a bit but I didn't want to go crazy with blue and white on the guns because honestly they're really, really fiddly - I'd rather soldier on to the next miniature!

Got to work on the second knight today, after doing the airbrush work yesterday.

Those are certainly some shiny robots! Very bright and clean John Prins, good work.

 Thumpingbear wrote:
Those are certainly some shiny robots! Very bright and clean John Prins, good work.

Thank you!

Today I got the armor plates, minor details and final assembly done. Only basing elements to go.I probably won't post finished basing until after varnishing, which I tend to do en masse, but here's the finished mini.

Nice IK!
I wish I was as fast as you are. I've been chipping at my current IK all week, and it's only halfway done with a game set for the 26th!

That burnished gold makes me jealous as I went with a more utilitarian sand tone.

M.

Impressive work!

 Miguelsan wrote:
Nice IK!
I wish I was as fast as you are. I've been chipping at my current IK all week, and it's only halfway done with a game set for the 26th!

That burnished gold makes me jealous as I went with a more utilitarian sand tone.

Power through! You got this.

Anyways, progress report; another stomper painted (though it's more of a stamper, being smol).





This one is just a straight palette swap from my first Arminger. The next two will probably get something different, I haven't made up my mind yet.

Another Arminger painted.





This one I decided to split into color halves. Not super happy about it, as it's a lot less visually interesting than the quartered/alternating Armingers. But done is done, I'll think of something else for the last one!

Thanks to your photos I managed to push trhough and finish my 3rd IK. Cannot say that's it looks as shinny as yours but I painted the base

M.

 Miguelsan wrote:
Thanks to your photos I managed to push trhough and finish my 3rd IK. Cannot say that's it looks as shinny as yours but I painted the base

M.

That's great!

Last Arminger! Woo!



Since I have 3 for a squad, this is the fourth man out, so I decided to give him a bit more quartering so he stand out a bit.

Hopefully tomorrow all the texture paint on its base will be dry and I can move on to varnishing and adding base flock and get this proper finished off!

Nicely done! I need to add some Armigers myself.

M.

I generally don't like 'clean' metalics, but your painting is really on point! I love them.What colour is the light blue? Vallejo Electric Blue?

Vajello Model Color Blue Green


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Basing Complete, which means project complete!





Always glad to get some use out of the old Citadel plastic jungle trees.

And the full army shot everyone's going to ask for, even though I can't fit all this into my lightbox (so you get to deal with the glare from fairly fresh varnish).

Great work John, and yes, we would’ve asked for an Army shot if you hadn’t posted one already. The trees on their bases finish them off well.

It never hurts to give your public what they want from time to time. Striking army.