Infinity Father Knight - The How To

I've talked about it before, on the official Infinity forums and on here, that I planned to do a How-To on the Father-Knight (FK), Corvus Belli's Limited edition release, that is only available in their Operation: Icestorm boxset.

First of, let me say, this mini alone got me back into Infinity and liking PanOceania again. It's a fantastic sculpt, great design and to top it off, his rules aren't too shabby either.

Since he's somewhat similar, fluffwise, to 40K's chaplains, I decided that a black scheme might suit him nicely. Finally finishing Mass Effect 3 while I was in the process of painting him reminded me of the similar design aesthetics of ME and Infinity. It was then that I decided he'd also get the Shepard Stripe, or at least some reminder of the ME N7 armour. But enough talk - let's get to the painting.

In case you have little experience painting black armour, you might wanna check out my How To for the Ravenguard Chaplain. It gives a good first impression on how to approach painting black.

The Basecoat and Shading

For the FK, I started out with standard black primer and then sprayed on a basecoat of GW Mechanicum Standard Grey mixed with Abaddon Black via airbrush. 

From there I added some GW Ulthuan Grey to the mix and sprayed some zenithal highlights - meaning I sprayed the mini from above. Thus, the colour pigments catch on the raised areas and upper edges, creating first highlights. 

I ended up with a lighter overall colour then intended, so I consecutively shaded it down to a darker overall tone with some GW Badab Black mixed with P3 Black until the armour looked like pretty dark slate grey. Keep in mind that black armour should always have a dark grey tone as its basecoat, so you still can create shadows of pure black.

Then I blocked in all the other primary colours - the red tabard was basecoated with a mix of P3 Umbral Umber and P3 Bloodstone, while the leather straps and the belt received a basecaot of P3 Battlefield Brown and P3 Bootstrap Leather.

The Highlights

The trick to painting black armour is keeping the overall look as dark as possible. After the shading I already had some first definition of the plates. The first step of highlights was to use some GW Mechanicum Standard Grey and paint some highlights along the armour lines. You don't have to do that for every line of the model, but most sharp edges should receive a highlight.

From there, I mixed in some GW Administratum Grey, and painting over those highlights again, but only covering about 2/3rds of the former. Use more highlights on the upper area and arms of the model than on the legs, since these parts catch more light.

Add in Ulthuan Grey and cover about 1/3rd of the previous step and use pure Ulthuan Greay for the final highlights - only some minor dots and specks on corners and stuff.

Highlighting the tabard was done with some P3 Skorne Red on the folds, followed by P3 Khador Red Base, then add in some Khador Red Highlight and finally some GW Sunburst Yellow. Take care to cover smaller areas with each highlight. 

The leather straps, as tiny as they might be, received some highlights with P3 Bootsrap Leather. I then used some P3 Rucksack Tan, then added a dot of P3 Hammerfall Khaki to the mix and painted some really thin lines on the upper edge of the belt and the straps.

Pulling it all together

Now you might have ended up with some starker contrasts on some colours, especially the red. To get a homogenic and harmonic look, we move on the glazes. I usually thin my colours down a lot for this and occasionally add some mixing medium to get a nice glaze. 

For the black, I just went over the armour with some thinned down Badab Black, so all the highlights got toned down a bit. For the red, I first used thinned down GW Devlan Mud, then some P3 Exile Blue and Abaddon Black thinned down to a very watery consistency and went over the tabard. It is important to not let your thinned down paint pool anywhere or you will end up with ugly stains. Pull the paint into the creases of the tabard, always moving away from the highlighted areas. The leather received the same colour treatment as the armour. 

The Details

You might have noticed, that I didn't mention glowy bits, the gold hilt or the sword's blade. For the glowy bits, you might wanna check out my tutorial on OSL effects here. For the blade and NMM I looked a lot at this brilliant article (thanks to Mob of Blondes for the tip). There's also a nice tutorial for chrome here (thanks to Hooy). For the gold, the colours I used were a basecoat of P3 Bloodtracker Brown and P3 Heartfire. You need this step, since yellow itself won't cover areas very good on its own. I added lots of Sunburst Yellow to the mix and went over all the gold elements again. From there, I highlighted with P3 Menoth White Highlight and some final dots of pure white to receive a golden look. I washed over it with some very thinned down Bloodtracker Brown again, to give it a richer tone.

I hope, this article was somewhat helpful. Let me know if you have any questions about the steps, mixtures or anything else really. I'll be happy to offer further insights and help.

Cheers,
Kenza