Painting an Imperial Knight for Warhammer 40k

I recently took on the task of completely redoing this Imperial Knight. It came to me well painted in a very traditional blue and gold color scheme but when he broke, I figured it was time for an overhaul.  So I popped it apart and in the Simple Green it went.  The knight was previously a Knight Paladin with double battle cannon and reaper chain sword.  A Knight Gallant seems to be more of what I will use on the table top so I built up the power gauntlet.  Also to keep him cheap but swappable, I magnetized the heavy stubber on.

  

After a few rounds of stripping off the old paint, the knight was ready to be primed.  I started with airbrushing the entire thing in black primer.  The under detail/ mechanical bits were airbrushed with grey, silver and nuln oil.  I later did edge highlighting and brushed on more nuln oil.  For the armor, I airbrushed target raised areas with elysian green and then the same but mixed with yellow.  Also nuln oil and waywatcher green glaze were airbrushed on to certain areas.  After day one the knight looked like this:  

At this point I was happy with the look of it and the color transitions but I was wanting more interesting texture and detail. Plus it all seemed just a bit too bright.  I remembered that a few years ago another player told me about how he had achieved a cool pattern on his eldar by airbrushing through chicken wire.  In my case, a small piece of screen did the trick as I airbrushed black through it to get some texture and darken up the piece as a whole.

The next step was adding a lot of detail and highlighting.  The armor edges were done with bronze, edged with silver and washed with agrax earth shade.  The fingers, pipes, chain blade and various other details were painted or highlighted with silver. Other details painted during this step include: tubes, edging carapace, pistons, skulls, banners, eyes and others.

Lastly, the Knight Gallant was reassembled and attached to the base.  I used Testors contour putty under some parts of the feet to allow for better contact. Next time: Basing the Imperial Knight Gallant!




The following are a few of the items used in this project.  Purchasing items using the following links helps support Born Painting and future content.

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