WIP: Horus Heresy Dark Angels Praetor in Cataphractii Armor

Greetings,

Today, I'm sharing progress on my next Heresy-era Dark Angels character; the recent Forge World Praetor in Cataphractii Terminator Armor.  This model is another great sculpt from the Forge World team and has been every bit a pleasure to paint.  Back in December, he looked like this when I shared him along with the other characters I had on deck at the time.

After a couple more sessions, the model has really come to life.  After some simple paintwork on the base, I attached the model and continued on with the project. This model is based to match the prior Praetor in power armor as well as the rest of my growing First Legion force.

The whites were painted in using GW White Scar while the trim and other metal details were given a coat of Vallejo Oily Steel.  For reasons, I have not yet put much effort into the pistol, other than painting and highlighting the wing icon.  Vallejo Brass was used for the sword hilt and spike crown.  P3 Menoth White was used on the shin scroll work. Reds, Golds, and scrolls got a pin wash of GW Agrax Earthshade.  The white is shaded with thinned Nuln Oil (aprox. 3:1 Lamiam Medium to Nuln Oil) while the metals got straight Nuln Oil.

I decided to paint brown leather under the chainmail hanging below the shoulder armor, using the same formula as pistol holsters and other equipment in the army.  The sword hilt was painted with P3 Sanguine Base and GW Spiritstone Red technical paint was painted over Vallejo Steel for the gems in the sword hilt.

Here's a quick look at the back of the model prior to final assembly.  Enough detail has been painted to allow the cape to be attached without hindering future painting of anything that can still be seen under it.

Here the model can be seen with head and cape attached.  The head was painted separately while glued to a wire as shown a couple pics above. This approach allows you to get good coverage and detail on it before cementing into the armor where it would otherwise be hard to reach in spots.  I opted for a black and white quartering of the shield hanging from the left pauldron. I also brought in the same red stripe I used on the other Praetor for the loin cloth. To be fair, this stripe comes from the Forge World example and is also featured in relief on the back of the cape, shown below. SO I'll take no artistic credit for the choice. :)

Some odd highlights have been picked out here and there, but there is much left to do.  He's already a pretty crazy looking dude.  The sword is such a great feature for a Dark Angels character.  Other characters bearing swords are going to envy this blade.

So, a little over a week into the new year and I have close to two completed characters for my Dark Angels Horus Heresy force. I hope to move onto the Blackstone Fortress models soon, but I dunno.  Squaduary will most certainly see a 10 string Breacher Seige squad painted....then either a Legio Tempestus Warlord titan for AT or a Dark Angels Leviathan Dreadnought for #MonsterMarch4.

Might has well use the remainder of January to finish this model and get as much progress as possible on the remaining characters I started in December. Time will tell.

Thanks for dropping by.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!