I’ve painted my first Primaris Marine! I built this model at the tail-end of 2020, and he finally has his Black Templar livery on.
I started the hobby back in the WH40k 3rd edition days, and like countless others, was awed by John Blanche’s Black Templar cover art. Even so, I didn’t paint my first marines as Templars, and up until now that has continued.
The inspiration and the actual color guides for this model came from Maxime Corbeil (who in turn was inspired by Blanche). I’ve admired his BT army ever since seeing it in a White Dwarf (2017 Tale of Four Warlords), and dreamed of having models like that in my own collection. The black armor and all the edge-highlighting intimidated me for the longest time, but after I decided to just get on with it, I actually found it pretty fun. Highlighting the black armor took around two hours all together. Funnily enough, somehow I spent around 4,5 hours on the rest of the model, and one more on the base…
But even if I clocked in quite a number of hours on this lowly troop model, at no point did it feel like taking very long. Well, other than painting the shoulder pads white. That took quite many layers… Other than those, everything else was rather quick(ish) and enjoyable to paint. In the future I’ll try to keep the pads separate and prime them white to speed up the process.
More than anything, this model was a test piece. While I’m extremely happy with how it came out, I do see plenty of room for improvement. Mainly the (spot)highlight placement. I’ll have to study mr. Corbeil’s work a bit more before the next Templar. There will also be a more obvious change with the future models: I’ll follow Maxime’s guide for the bases as well, to get that classic orange-y dirt look (and hopefully a tad faster basing). This model was always going to join my Imperial Cult collection, and hence got the marble base.
I use this model to claim another square in the hobby bingo: paint a model in a color scheme you don’t normally use. Now, as I said, I haven’t previously painted any Black Templars, but even if the scheme was “black”, I would be OK. Ghaz was black, sure, but one model doesn’t yet mean “normally”.
Very nice- is it a MkIII helmet used on him?
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thank you! Yes it is, and the backpack as well.
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Beautiful work! Love the paint and the careful edge highlights – the very reason I haven’t done more BTs myself!
The build modifications really give it a nice feel as well – being both Primaris but more linked to Black Templars’ history!
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Much appreciated! Yeah, doing all that highlighting is quite an undertaking if you’re thinking about doing dozens of models. If/when I get to painting a whole 5/10 model squads I think I need to find a way to cut some corners. Don’t want to spend 60hrs on a unit…
I was also really chuffed with the mods. That mk3 helmet fits the Templar’s knightly image well, but my favorite bit might actually be the standard bolt pistol. I’ve always loved how in the artwork (old ones, at least), the bolters were pretty small, like real-world SMGs. Really emphasized the bulk of the marine armor. I always thought that upscaling the guns along with the primaris marines was a missed opportunity (the heavy bolt pistols being the size of the old bolters…). But thankfully I’ve got a bunch of the old guns to arm a squad or two.
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Very nice indeed! 🙂
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Thanks a lot!
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