Advice needed for painting Knights

[frosteldar]

Hello everyone! While I picked up a couple boxes of Renegade this summer, I had not been able to actually start working on them until now.  So, I'm currently in the process of magnetizing my first Questoris Knight and have already assembled two Armiger Warglaives. House in progress!! 

 

Now I need your advice on how to go about a painting scheme!  I've decided on a some colors for my own house - a deep blue and Warplock Bronze (dark brown-bronze) as the main colors, but am really struggling with how to paint them. The basic metal parts I'll do in the dark metal with washes, but how did you all decide on how to paint the armor/carapace, etc? How did you decide on patterns or schemes? Did you just start painting or did you use some other technique/trick to test a scheme out some how? Any tips would be appreciated as I definitely want to paint the armor plates before gluing them on, but need to figure out a scheme!  

 

In case it helps, my house is a combination of Imperial and AdMech Knights chosen to join a Knight house dedicated to my Ark Mechanicus, and which operates as a joint force for the Inquisition and my Forge World Illuminatum.  So I will have Knights with both Imperial and Mechanicus decorations (or a combination), but they will share the House insignia and have their own personal heraldry.  

[Marshal Reinhard]

Can't really provide an interesting answer on how I chose colours, seeing as I picked an official scheme the colours were already determined. I did go with a decidedly brighter blue in my case than the standard Terryn one. 

 

I think regardless of what type of house you choose, you to pick out at least two main colours for the carapace and armour panels (besdies the metallic parts). In addition to the primary colour, the secondary colour is used as an off colour and is the colour that personal heraldry typical is set against, and the rank stripes are painted in etc. There may even be a tertiary colour in some cases, reserved for things like the backside of the shoulderpads, or used on some fields of the face armor plates. If  you've set yourself for a deep blue as you primary colour, try to come up with a secondary colour that will go well with that.

 

In addition, In the case of mechanicum houses that are typically red, black and white as their colours, there may be things like hazard stripes. Consider wether you want something like that too.

 

Ruleswise, while the idea of a combined house is a cool one, it does come with the added trouble of not being clear ruleswise. Your house needs to be either Questor Imperialis or Questor Mechanicus, as this decides what artifacts you're allowed to take etc. Honestly, if you just want justification to use either sides decorations, you don't even need a do that. Just do them how you like, and if you intend to play games with them, be clear what they are in rules. 

[Stray]

There are some canonical 'rules' for Knight paint schemes (though there are also plenty of canonical houses who ignore them completely, so you should in no way feel obliged to follow these patterns).

 

For example:

 

http://i563.photobucket.com/albums/ss78/tcgfade0ut/QuestorImperalisHerladicPrinciples_zpsp8ctrbvv.jpg

 

 

There is a lot more information on the subject here:

https://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Knight_Heraldry

 

Hopefully it'll give you some ideas or jumping off points.

[Feral_80]

Planning is fun but needs to be done carefully on such a big model.

I quickly draw on paper a rough scheme of all armor plates in their correct position and colour them progressively with crayons using the colors I had decided. Simple, easy, and effective. Just take into consideration the decals too - house and personal emblems especially, as they require light/dark background color to stand out, and you'll want to plan accordingly to where you want them on display (eg on the front of the pauldrons , which is whereI usually start from).

 

Generally speaking you'll want to avoid placing the same color on adjacent or nearby plates: alternating them usually gives a much better result. You can also find inspiration from flags, medieval coats of arms, etc.

[frosteldar]

Thanks for all the advice!  I've seen many people's models and the Imperial Knight Companion I borrowed from a friend has tons of timages of the main knight houses and freeblades and some adhere to the strict tenants and others are quite different within a house (Krast in particular).  So, it was a little overwhelming trying to collate all the data and decide what "I" wanted to do. :)  Still working it out, but getting much closer with the input above.  I think I definitely need to do some drawing/coloring !

[Charlo]

So my Knights are primarily for 30k (though I've only played 40k with them thus far ) and are for House Malinax. They're a bit more free form in terms of iconography etc as things are in the Heresy setting.

 

I'm yet to decide if I want to do any panels in red or black, but I painted them as follows...

 

Metal

• Spray Leadbelcher
• Wash with Nuln twice
• Wash once more with Nuln + a tiny bit of black in mixed in
• Apply rust weathering powders
• Highlights with silver & bronze sharpie pens (especially rivets!)
• I also changed the amount of ink in some washes to get a darker metal (especially around the upper neck). Or added in agrax to the nuln so it wasn't so uniform.

Beige Armour

• Spray Zandi Dust
• Wash with Agrax GLOSS. I find the gloss to be really important as it gives a much stronger tone in the recesses.
• Stipple on Ushabti Bone (stippling is taking a flat, old brush and then essentially drybrushing, but you are painting with multiple 'stabs' at the model to build up layers rather than going side to side).
• ....That's it! Gave me a hell of a lot of depth with minimal effort.