Terminator Chaplain - Part I

 

Biggus Stickkus

Continuing with more airbrushing entertainment, I bought this model because it looked cool and I could. I really wanted to give one of the new scale terminators a go, but painting an entire squad didn't seem right quite just yet - I've painted enough terminators recently, plenty of other red armour to go, but never had a chaplain in terminator armour.

After a lot of debate about whether to go with the shield or the storm bolter, I ended up with the shield. I could have tried to magnetise the two, but really I wouldn't be swapping them over and the rule of cool won out. Also, it's likely that a Blood Angels Chaplain would only wear such armour in some kind of boarding action where the shield could be used to greater effect.

First order of business is the pre-highlight with thinned white. This is done with multiple coats to build up the gradients, and while there is some "noise", it's no more than if drybrushing were used. Using white here means I'm going for a grey volume highlight - I could tint it slightly for blue, or purple, or any other colour, but if I want to match it against other black armour in the army then grey it is. The initial pre-highlight works really well already to give shape to the model, but it would get darkened later.

I painted most edges with Administratum Grey to ensure they would be more visible later. Following this I used Ulthuan Grey on the more prominent edges to further brighten them in the hopes they would really show through later.

When in doubt, hit it with a stick.

After all the pre-highlighting was done, I went over it with thinned down Black Templar Contrast. This once again teaches me that I need to really make edges super contrasting with the surroundings if they'll show though later, but also I perhaps should have used a smaller needle size with the airbrush. Thinning was done just with flow improver, but I'm curious what Contrast Medium might do. Something to explore later.

I'll need to add some edge highlights again in places, and probably a few select recess shade applications wouldn't hurt either. I think overall though it worked mostly as intended - enough that I would use this approach over previous methods of black armour when painting squads.

I had the idea of keeping the model virtually entirely black, but I might just go for gold trim instead. I'm tempted to try NMM for that just to keep the reflective nature of metallic paints from being too disjointed against the black. Guess I'll see how it goes later - and the dreadnoughts do have priority.

-- silly painter.