The IDEA

The basic idea of this work comes from two main points: one stylistic and the other technical. From the stylistic point of view, I had had in mind for some time the idea of preparing a 40K piece with a completely painted and polished armour. Taking inspiration from the baroque parading armours, I wanted to create clothing that would “tell a story” made of paintings.

Here I’d like to open a small parenthesis.

The GD is GW’s painting competition, and this automatically clips the wings of a painter’s craziest fantasies (or those of a sculptor), since it forces us to put our works into a very specific background, which, as flexible as it might be, is still very much defined. Unfortunately there’s always a limit to what one can invent. For this reason I tried to twist GW’s background to my intentions, just as I did last year with the Beelakor, by creating something that would obviously belong to it but would not be anything already shown or done. Creating new Space Marine chapters is something that GW usually considers acceptable and somehow encourages as well, therefore the first idea was to build a piece that wouldn’t belong to any existing chapter but could be identified with one. In this specific example I’ve chosen the Dark Angels Chapter, because their basic idea and symbolism has always been the one that most appealed to me: I believe the hooded Dark Angel is one of the best symbols and one of the best apparels in the 40K universe. I started with the idea that this Terminator belonged to a Chapter that had derived from the DA, and would be identified with them, given the hooded imagery everywhere, and yet “original” in the interpretation of the Chapter’s and Marines’ characteristics: dark atmosphere, a “baroque and gothic” magnificence, and a certain pomposity.

As for the technical side, I’ll open a second set of small parenthesis. When I painted the Beelakor last year, I have used mainly three painting techniques together:

  • Work on the battered and realistic skin
  • The metal
  • The freehands

    After having finished that long and exhausting work, I set a new goal of trying to research the three techniques used there and trying to improve them. I made this attempt on the skin of the barbaric fatty from Ilyad (tutorial: here , trying to improve on the technique used on the Beelakor. I did the same on the "Blood for blood god" model, working on a difficult and unusual skin tone as the red one. Both pieces have helped me a lot for learning and trying to master the techniques I then used on the Terminator when I painted the face, or the base red of the armour. From a technical point of view, this piece comes from the idea of improving the freehands, starting from recognizing the limits of the first Beelakor, which you first have helped me to find, and improving by exploring new possibilities. As for the metals .. Well there is still time, isn’t there?

    The CONVERSION

    Very simple, really. The only work done is filing and assembly of parts. I took pieces off the Terminators with hammers’ sprue, and some pieces off the Dark Angels bikes’ sprue. The standard is a metal sheet which has been first painted straight and then folded (thanks to the good Rusto for kindly sending it to me ) The only care was to eliminate any prominence in order to have enough space to paint the ornamental "frescoes", remembering to leave the rivets and, in this specific case, to add others. The rivets add much realism to the armour and give a simple “cyber” touch that suits this model well. The same applies to the parchments.

    The FREEHAND

    A lot has been already said over the issue of freehands: beautiful, ugly, unnecessary, exaggerated, kitsch, smart etc. As far as I’m concerned, freehands are part of my way of painting, and this is absolutely questionable as part of someone’s style, it is just a technique like any other. It's suitable for some subjects and unsuitable for others. (this is obviously quite personal)

    In my case I just hope to be able to share with you the work done and to give you some helpful indications about this technique. Of course, it will only be from my point of view, which is questionable.

    As always for my "tutorials", imagine that there is written "in my opinion" in front of every sentence, even if I don’t write it every time