Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I thought that it would be fun to start an blog to show of my projects. To be honest I work slow and a bothersome back makes it hard to get any long hobbying sessions in, but I think that having a place to document my progress will make wonders for my progress.

Anyhow, currently I´m working on a Imperial knight of house Hawkshroud. Nothing too fancy, my painting is not of a high standard. Yellow and white I always find hard to get smooth even with proper thinning. If everything goes according to plan this knight will look new and shiny with a weathered renegade knight to follow as an adversary some time in the future.

Currently I´m working on the armor plates one at a time as I find it possible to get one done in an sitting.



I would be really happy for any and all feedback and ideas!

Yellow and white are always tricky, but yours looks nice and clean and sharp - new and shiny, as you were shooting for!

Looking forward to seeing more!

Slow and steady wins the race!

I understand your problem. So much plastic, so little time. I’m of the age where long sessions have severe repercussions to my general well-being, so only work in small chunks of time. My goal is one mini a week, with larger things like vehicles taking a whole month. It’s not an aggressive goal, but manageable, but yields a tidy pile at the end of the year.

Yellow is one of those classically difficult colors to pull off, but you have done an excellent job here. Do you airbrush?

If I had to pick one thing to be critical about, it would be the sigil on the tilting shield. I don’t know if it’s a decal silvering in the light, or something about how you applied it, but it looks like it was cut out and glued on. The white halo around the black. Generally we go for something that looks painted on, so this is a bit of a disconnect. Especially since none of the other details have this going on.

That Knight is looking smooth! Too bad I find painting Knights a bit of a drag :/

Looking forward to what you have in store. Are you planning to do something special for the black primed parts?

 Nevelon wrote:
Slow and steady wins the race!

I understand your problem. So much plastic, so little time. I’m of the age where long sessions have severe repercussions to my general well-being, so only work in small chunks of time. My goal is one mini a week, with larger things like vehicles taking a whole month. It’s not an aggressive goal, but manageable, but yields a tidy pile at the end of the year.

Yellow is one of those classically difficult colors to pull off, but you have done an excellent job here. Do you airbrush?

If I had to pick one thing to be critical about, it would be the sigil on the tilting shield. I don’t know if it’s a decal silvering in the light, or something about how you applied it, but it looks like it was cut out and glued on. The white halo around the black. Generally we go for something that looks painted on, so this is a bit of a disconnect. Especially since none of the other details have this going on.

Yeah I believe it´s my painting posture that is causing my back problems, I do not have a steady hand and have to lean my wrists on the table to get stable enough for painting, that makes me way too bent over. But I have been painting for far too long in this way to easily relearn painting with my elbows on the table.

I do use a airbrush for basecoating but I can not get the citadel yellows to behave trough a airbrush so the yellow I do by brush. I agree with the shield looking off, it´s way too clean to look realistic, so any suggestions would be nice. Maybe some sponge weathering? but on the other hand then I should weather the whole knight to get it to fit together as a whole.. any suggestions?

WarbossDakka wrote:That Knight is looking smooth! Too bad I find painting Knights a bit of a drag :/

Looking forward to what you have in store. Are you planning to do something special for the black primed parts?

I´ll face that battle when I get there, but I think going for a more "coppery" style could work. I´m planning to do the weapon shield and chainsaw cover in the same kind of yellow as the rest of the armor. I´m already planning a heavily weathered chaos knight as a kind of contrast to this one. Thanks for your comment!



Automatically Appended Next Post:
So one step forward and two back..



Finally after some messing about with the airbrush I got a solid coat of yellow and some shading done on the carapace. But my masking tape turned out to be useless as I´m going to have to redo the gold after some serious colour bleed. And the yellow turned out the wrong shade..

The whole thing ended up in a bath of cillit bang to strip it so I can begin anew. Oh well, live and learn.

They yellow does look good, even if it’s not quite the right shade.

I’ve only done a little work with masking tape. Basically just the stripes on my Saim-Hann Eldar. Lots of bleed under. Still, it gives me a straight line that I can then tidy up. I hear certain brands work better. I use some random roll I’ve had kicking around a decade or so, but a friend of mine who does scale cars recommends tamiya. He does amazing work with an airbrush, so I’d trust passing on his advice.

As for the decal, weathering might cover up the transition a bit, but I’m not sure if would correct it. Then again, I am far from an expert on both decals and weathering.

If it is silvering (it should be transparent, but the decal shows up as white-ish) as opposed to a white bordered decal, there is an easy fix. Well, not a fix, but preventable. If you put down a gloss coat under the decal it gives you a smooth base, so the tiny bubbles of the rough surface don’t cause the effect. You can then put whatever gloss/matte/satin/whatever coat over top of the whole thing to match the rest of the model. (So it doesn’t have to stay glossy)

There is also micro sol/set, a pair of products designed to help with decals, but I’ve not used them.

If it is a white bordered decal, I’d adjust your paint scheme to embrace it. Or omit it.

So after I stripped the top of the carapace and started over this is what I ended up with (it´s still wip and the metals un-highlighted):



I decided to paint the trim copper instead of gold as the gold did not look to my liking. Now I am considering redoing the trim on the shoulders as well.
The decal borders on the shield is white, which is why it does look quite odd, I am yet undecided on how to proceed with it.

Copper looks nice, but then, I liked the gold as well.

Hmm, I have to say, I'm more of a fan of the copper. Gold was too similar to the yellow, so didn't contrast with the main colour. With the copper, there's much more contrast and is more interesting to look at.

 WarbossDakka wrote:
Hmm, I have to say, I'm more of a fan of the copper. Gold was too similar to the yellow, so didn't contrast with the main colour. With the copper, there's much more contrast and is more interesting to look at.

Yes I do belive it works better. It´s quite a learning process, as I have never painted something this large before.

False advertising - not a piece of grey plastic in sight, at most it's black undercoat!

Your yellow is great, and that re-done carapace is so much better than the failed experiment

 RiTides wrote:
False advertising - not a piece of grey plastic in sight, at most it's black undercoat!

Your yellow is great, and that re-done carapace is so much better than the failed experiment

The grey tide is hidden away in shame under my bed
I got reading glasses between the different versions of the carapace, for better and worse I can now see what i´m doing.

I have gotten started on the body of the knight, but I´m a bit sceptical at the moment if there´s to much bronze going on, we´ll see.



So that I don´t do anything stupid with the knight, I have taken some time off and have been practicing some freehand on some ultras. Sorry for the crappy phone pic.

So I got one of the ultramarines finished. The red helmet marks him as one of the "red-marked", maybe familiar to you from the Horus heresy series. It was quite fun to do as I haven´t painted space marines in ages, certainly not ultramarines!

Been working on some more ultramarines. I still struggle with highlighting, but that is probably something more practice (hopefully) will take care of.

The highlighting looks fine IMO. I really like the Ultra's base, looks great. Is it that agrellian undergrowth stuff?

 WarbossDakka wrote:
The highlighting looks fine IMO. I really like the Ultra's base, looks great. Is it that agrellian undergrowth stuff?

At least it looks ok at arms length, but browsing the other threads here on dakkadakka easily makes one depressed with all the awesome going on. The base is undercoated rhinox hide and then covered with agraellax earth. When dry, I then wash it with agrax earthshade. Finally, a drybrush of zandri dust and some selective drybrushing of ushabti bone. The grass is a tuft from army painter.

Thanks for the tip!

Did some freehand (odd that inspiration to paint always comes at night) on a pauldron. I´m quite pleased with it, I just need to buy some new white paint as my has dried to a semi-solid state, which of course makes it come out quite chalky. In my mind the five stars represents the 500 worlds of Ultramar, with the half omega/half laurel is just your standard Roman/ultramarine symbolism. Any thoughts?

Very nice work.

Don’t get too discuraged looking at other people’s work. There are some amazing guys here on Dakka who I’m pretty sure sold their souls, and possibly their first born for the painting skills they have. Us mere mortals just do what with can with a brush.

The freehand could probably be a bit tidier. That said, it looks amazing. The scroll could be a little tighter, the laurel more consistent, etc. And I know that it can be done in theory, due to seeing some of the aforementioned soul-selling painters do that level of work. Not because anything that clean has come out of my paintbench. At tabletop distance, all the little flaws the close up shows will disappear.

The one (more practical) thing I think might have been a better idea is to use a shoulderpad that had something across the bottom (like a sculpted scroll/plate) just to help tie the two pieces together. Not that it’s required, but I think would help him look more cohesive.

Is he just a rank-and-file guy, or does he get a rank/special position? Feels like with freehand like that, he should be in a command squad or something.

 Nevelon wrote:
Very nice work.

Don’t get too discuraged looking at other people’s work. There are some amazing guys here on Dakka who I’m pretty sure sold their souls, and possibly their first born for the painting skills they have. Us mere mortals just do what with can with a brush.

The freehand could probably be a bit tidier. That said, it looks amazing. The scroll could be a little tighter, the laurel more consistent, etc. And I know that it can be done in theory, due to seeing some of the aforementioned soul-selling painters do that level of work. Not because anything that clean has come out of my paintbench. At tabletop distance, all the little flaws the close up shows will disappear.

The one (more practical) thing I think might have been a better idea is to use a shoulderpad that had something across the bottom (like a sculpted scroll/plate) just to help tie the two pieces together. Not that it’s required, but I think would help him look more cohesive.

Is he just a rank-and-file guy, or does he get a rank/special position? Feels like with freehand like that, he should be in a command squad or something.

Thank you for taking your time to give very much appreciated feedback! The marine is just another trooper, I plan to continue doing the same freehand on the others, that way I will force myself to practise detailwork. Good idea about using pauldrons with readymade scrolls alas it is a bit late for this squad but I will keep it in mind for future squads. The good thing about asking people for feedback is that they see things that oneself might not notice. For example, about the scroll, I didn't even notice that it is too "open". I will try to make it a bit tighter henceforth.

Btw, about the selling of souls, do you know somebody that would be intrested in one? I cant even comprehend the level of skill one must have to accomplish some of the things we regularly see here on dakkadakka. The good thing about trying your best and still coming up short is that you can really appreciate the work of others and the dedication they put in.