Knightfall: Chaos Knight Titan Progress, Good & Bad

Only part painted but still making it's debut.

In my last 40K campaign update you will have seen the part-painted Knight Titan, albeit only from the back, making it's debut on the table. 

However, I haven't really told you how it's coming along - last I mentioned it, I had assembled it but hadn't even undercoated it let alone done any sort "real" painting.

In the to-do pile for quite some time.

Way back in January 2015 I got the Knight Titan for my birthday, a figure I was very much looking forward to turning into an avatar of darkness.  Real life got in the way and it's been stuck in limbo for a long time, but I finally managed to break that in the last couple of weeks and get some paint on it.

First an undercoat of white went on the model, then some Tamiya pink spray.  Although I'd be painting over the pink, I figured that getting about the right colour on before that would help sell the colour.  The hue, along with some evil alterations, were going to be the main clue to my opponents that this was a force of darkness in front of them.


 So, click on for some pictures!

One or two coats of pink was not going to be enough.

I mixed equal proportions of Vallejo Off-White and Vallejo Pink to base coat the bulk of the figure.  You will note that the above picture is sort of streaky still - after the first couple of coats it clearly was going to be a many coats endeavour to get a smooth finish!

After several more smoothing down layers, the figure slowly took on a pale pink hue with the usual Mechrite Red/Rhinox Hide base. Runefang Steel and Gehenna's Gold were applied to add metallic details - the silver to mark gun barrels and mechanical elements, the gold to mark more detailed like sections.  I kept the small shield and banner as pink for now, figuring that I might end up painting over them later on.

Base coating reaches it's end - Gold, Silver, Pink and that's pretty much your lot.

So, at this stage we're looking pretty good.  Time to shade the figure to add in some detail.  I use my usual Quickshade on the silver and gold.... but, in a moment of madness, decide that the way to go isn't to dry mixing my own darker pink/red shade  but to try and use a purple wash instead.

This was possibly a mistake.

Purple quickshade turns out to be a mistake

 The whole thing has shifted from "pale pink" to "pale purple", which isn't exactly wrong but wasn't quite what I had in mind.  It also gave a lot of staining on the flat sections of armour which were a bit unsightly.

Racking my brains and my paint collection I formulated a possible solution in my head: Glazing.  This involves thinning the paint down to a solid yet translucent mixture by adding lots of medium.  (Essentially mixing with transparent paint rather than water.)  When this is painted over the figure it will apply a gentle hint of the colour to the whole piece, kind of like a coloured segment of glass or a photoshop filter.

The magic of glazes

So I mix myself up some glazing medium and some Vallejo Pink paint, in proportion of about double medium to paint, then give the whole pink body of the figure a cover.  The medium can take a while to dry so I left it overnight to see what would happen.

This was definitely as mistake.

The failure of the Quail to harness the magic of glazes

 
In the words of the Full Monty, my mixture was wrong.  If you click to embiggen you'll see that I've ended up with a very streaky finish, all blotchy and horrible.  And as mentioned before, painting over it with more paint is going to take several coats.

Some of my friends have tried to make me feel better by telling me that it's taken on a marbled, swirling vortex like appearance and that such might be a good look for a chaos model.  They compare it to the lightning bolt appearance of the Night Lords armour in an attempt to soothe my pain.

Keep telling yourself that, Quail, mate.

I'm not really buying it, to be honest, and think that I may just have to bite the bullet and block paint the pink back on.  I think a solid pink colour without much shading might need to be the order of the day, which will be time consuming but probably worth it.

Anyway, on a more pleasant note, I've not glued the weapons on and made it possible to rebuild the titan in various configurations.  I want to add some more weird and wonderful chaos arms later on like tentacles and a large sonic weapon.  If I can sort the paint job out, then we're finally able to call this one complete.

A net search turned up this delightfully perverted Slaanesh fan design stuff for titans, amongst other things.