Finished - Black Knights

Done at last. Done at last. Sweet Emperor, I am done at last. 

I've written about my experiences with painting "more faster" with these Black Knights before. The basics are the client asked me to paint a lot of minis fast for the same fee that I would have accepted for painting a few minis very well. I typically paint every mini as well as I can regardless of if it is a Tactical Marine or my HQ. I may spend a little extra time on more important minis, but for the most part they are all painted to the same standard. 

With these guys I ended up doing some things that were not specifically required to have them painted to the standard that we agreed on. For example, I probably could have gotten away with only painting the metal silver but through that might look too plane. I added in some gold areas to break up the monotony. Also, while painting these Knights, I thought they looked a little too clean and near for being resurrected, undead horrors so I added a two stage rest to certain areas to add some age to the mini. I only used red rust but was tempted to use some green patina to the gold areas. 

I based the minis as well in a sand/desert theme for the client. I am of two mins about this. On one hand, I don't want the minis that I spend so much time and energy on going to their new home with black bases. I would rather send them away in the most complete state possible. 

The client actually asked me what I used for basing. Typically, I use GW sand with some playground sand mixed in for filler (2 parts GW to 1 part playground) with some Galeforce 9 Medium and Rocky basing grit mixed in. I like this because I miss the old GW basing had that had several different sizes and colors of pebbles. The current stuff is fine but is too homogenic for my taste. The problem comes in where the GF9 pebbles have a drastic different density than any sand. This means that any GF9 pebbles that you add to our mix will end up on the top of your container. That does not sound so bad but when you try to dip your bases into the sand, you will get proportionally too many large rocks. My fix for this is not to let the large rocks cover more than about half of the surface of your basing container. I've attached a picture of my tub to the right as an example with a soda cap for scale. 

I also had to cut some corners on these minis to get them done in time. I skimped on the bone areas. On the horsed, I got a good Bleached Bone base that was washed with Agrax Earthshade. Then to brighten things back up I used a wide but short-bristled brush to drybrush Bleached Bone. In reality I would have liked to taken some time to apply Seraphim Sepia to areas and paint on Bleached Bone rather than dry brush. 

I also did some short cuts on the yellow areas. I painted them Iyanden Darksun and washed them Agrax Earthshade. After that I touched up the Iyanden Darksun and for the most part I just left it. In some areas that needed some more contrast, I painted on some Seraphim Sepia but that is as far as I went. I would have liked to do some very detailed painting of Bleached Bone especially on the leaves.

For this I got two books, Crimson Slaughterer and Apocalypse Warzone: Pandorax. I have digital versions of both of these books but I like having them on the shelves. It also makes them easier to reference. 

I am happy with the trade but knowing that I could have done better on the minis weighs on me. I don't think that I am going to try to paint faster and cut corners any more. I am going to work on painting fewer minis and charging more. That is going to be the best use of my time.