Imperial Fist Contemptor - Part III

 

Guess he doesn't blink much.

Some progress on the Imperial Fist Contemptor; though I'm still not far enough along yet to glue the arms in place, I am starting to get a proper feel of how it will turn out. The base colours are filled in, the large surfaces mostly done, and the colours basically sorted out - all that remains are to fill in the details and then add any finishing touches (such as the base).

Being a larger model, I made the conscious decision to keep lower areas darker and adjust shading and highlighting with this in mind. Generally that will be mean darker shades in lower areas, and less intense shades in upper areas, but still keeping the same principles of where to apply them: shades on downwards or recessed surfaces, keep highlights on upwards facing ones.

For shades I tried the following:

• Casandora Yellow, for kind of ambient occlusion across all the model.
• Fuegan Orange for panel lining in general.
• Seraphim Sepia on lower areas to add more of an earthen tone.

It came out a little heavy along the front of the legs unfortunately, but I'll continue to roll with it. I've actually missed a couple of places, including the "abs", so need to go back in to fix that up soon.

The head proved extremely problematic. The paints just didn't cooperate, particularly the reds from the palette. I am trying out a larger palette, which could be something to do with it - but same reds worked just fine on other models. In any case there's not much tone variation in the end, but that's semi-intentional because I wanted a brighter red to really help the head stand out and make it the focal point. The white stripe and aqua lenses just give a little more contrast to really make it pop. The lenses were a simple Grey Seer, White Scar, and two thin coats of Aethermatic Blue (for some reason one barely did anything, so two were needed). The large surface without any normal reflective effects is intended to give an impression of a constant stare, evaluation, and focus on duties being carried out - a very Imperial Fist response.

Grey Seer was also used to try and remove some of the pink tint showing through a couple of decals. More layers required, but it does work.

The armour trim took me a while to decide upon. I didn't want gold, silver, brass, or anything too bright. Copper is too pink, and I wanted something darker - so I don't know what metal this might represent, but I'm going with it:

• Warplock Bronze
• Balthasar Gold / Warplock Bronze (1:1) as a highlight.
• Balthasar Gold on more prominent edges.

I've not used any shades because Warplock Bronze is such a dark colour already that I just needed to keep that in recessed areas. When highlighting I also find myself using more of a "drybrush" motion to build up metallics these days, though the paint consistency is closer to a thin layer. It really depends on the level of detail - it saves an awful lot of time and actually looks better using a flicking brush motion for small areas or sharp edges, and then thinned blending for larger surfaces that should appear far smoother. This was something I picked up when painting the Titanicus models and I'm definitely carrying this across on the dreadnoughts.

The darker grey metal will receive the same treatment, but I really wanted a darker look that none of the metallics was giving me. I wanted an almost black, yet still metal, look. With a little experimentation I ended up on Iron Warriors (the irony of using a paint named that on an Imperial Fist model) then coated liberally with Black Templar. This is a very dark metal, perhaps too dark for some areas so I might need to thin the Contrast with some medium and see how that looks. In any case, the same drybrushing motion as explained above will later be used to add an initial highlight of Iron Warriors again, after which I'll probably leave it alone until after the matt varnish stage.

The other dreadnoughts in progress have also started to have armour trim filled in, hopefully more of that soon, and background models are also progressing alongside their Legion Contemptor.

The count is back down to 7, because I bought some terminators while they were back in stock. The spare pieces from that box will most likely be used to kitbash future terminators, but I do have plans to get the count back up again after I'm done with these dreadnoughts.

-- silly painter