SHOWCASE: Imperial Knight

Warhammer 40,000: Imperial Knight

It's finished! Those who have been following for the last couple of months (give or take—I only started the blog at the beginning of January) will know that I started this project on Boxing Day 2014. My initial progress was quite fast (especially by my normally very slow standards), but I've stalled recently in favour of other projects, in part because of my trepidation over the freehand work involved. Well, I finally plucked up the nerve to do those last few bits and now, I'm happy to say, it's done! Want to see some more pictures...?

This project has been a joy to work on. From the moment I unwrapped the box (it was a very generous Christmas present) to the moment I sat it on the shelf, it has been an absolute pleasure. I know I was dreading those freehand parts, but even those—once I started—weren't as bad as I expected.

Left side, showing the reaper chainsword

I assembled the main frame of the model, but left off the armour plates, along with a few sub-assemblies like the carapace, head, weapons, shoulder pads and front sponsons (the heavy stubber and shield). That made painting a lot easier as I could do the bulk of the metal work in one hit.

Rear view

I hadn't decided exactly what the colour scheme would be until I came to paint it. At the time I'd just bought a palette of turquoise tones (namely Stegadon Scale Green and Temple Guard Blue), which I was using for another project. It wasn't entirely a case of grabbing the nearest colours that were to hand, but the work I'd done on elsewhere had shown that it could look quite good. I'd also been playing with some glazing effects for shading and highlighting and wanted to try these on a larger surface. They don't come much larger than an Imperial Knight... certainly not in the main range anyway.

Right side, showing the rapid-fire battle cannon

The other colours were easier choices. I wanted a nice light tone to contrast with the blue. Rakarth Flesh fit the bill perfectly. This was glazed with Reikland Fleshshade and Agrax Earthshade for shading, then highlighted by glazing the original colour back on while mixing in white.

Detail of the cog freehand on the left leg

The freehand work was painted on with Khorne Red prior to shading. Doing it at this stage had two benefits. The first was that any mistakes could be corrected easily with the base colour. The second is that I could shade and highlight them all together, meaning they'd look like they'd always been there.

Detail of the eagle freehand on the right leg

This last picture illustrates just how big the Imperial Knight model is. The space marine in front is just shy of 35mm tall. My Imperial Knight—which I've dubbed 'Keira', as a suitably knightly name (pun absolutely and unapologetically intended)—towers over him. It's probably the biggest model I've painted; bigger even than my Great Unclean One.

Size comparison with my recently completed Blood Angels tactical marine

So, what do you think?