Warhammer 40,000 - Black Templars Castellan

Whilst I had all the black and red paints out for the Black Ops Zombicide Invader miniatures, I figured I’d also paint up my Black Templars Castellan. This might seem a strange choice of model to paint as I don’t collect Black Templars and this isn’t a Commemorative Series release. But as many of you know, this particular model is based on some fairly famous artwork. For those that don’t, it’s from John Blanche’s artwork that adorned the Warhammer 40,000 3rd Edition starter box. And it was that box from which I started my Warhmmer journey all those years ago. So I wanted to pay homage to that with this model. I wasn’t aiming for an exact replication of Blanche’s artwork in miniature form, but rather to draw inspiration from it.

For example, in the artwork the Black Templars’ armour is jet black, with their tabards and heraldry background being a fairly bright white. Nice for contrast but I didn’t feel that it would work too well for my model, he would just come across as too monochromatic. Even with the accent colours. For this reason I decided to go with softer colours, like a dark grey for the armour and a bone colour for the whites. 

Before I could start painting though, I needed to assemble the miniature. I left the head separate for ease of painting and glued the rest of him to his base. I also stuck down a few rocks and covered the remaining base in Vallejo Red Oxide texture paste. Once that had fully dried I primed the model and his head black. 

For the basecoats I started by giving his armour a couple of thin coats of Corvus Black. Next I painted his chest armour, pauldrons, tabard, cloak and any skulls with Army Painter Skeleton Bone. For the red details, such as the bolter casing, the pipes across his chest and the insides of his cloak and tabard, I painted them with a few thin coats of Vallejo Scarlet Red. To give them more prominence, I painted the templar crosses on his belt and backpack with Mephiston Red. I then moved onto the metallic details, painting all the silver details like the tubing with Scale75 Thrash Metal. The gold trim I painted with Scale75 Dwarven Gold and finally, the flat of the axe blade I painted with Scale75 Black Metal. Fun fact, I had originally intended to paint his armour with Black Metal. But decided not to at more or less the last minute. 

Next it was time for washes. I started by using some appropriately named Black Templar contrast paint to shade the recesses of the armour. The tabard and cloak I washed with Seraphim Sepia, while the other bone details were washed with Army Painter Strong Tone. The gold trim was also washed with Strong Tone and everything else got a wash of Nuln Oil. 

With the washes dry, I started the next phase by layering the tabard, cloak and pauldrons back up with Skeleton Bone. For the pauldrons I then created a mix of Skeleton Bone and Vallejo Pale Sand, which I used to highlight the edges and raised areas. For the tabard and cloak, I highlighted the edges with pure Pale Sand. The armour I highlighted with Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone. The red details, excluding the templar crosses, I highlighted with Mephiston Red. For the crosses I used Evil Sunz Scarlet, and while I had the paint out I also used it for any lenses. To finish off the highlights I used a bit of Scale75 Thrash Metal on the edges of the axe. 

At this point I felt the model was complete and I just needed to finish off the base. To paint the base I cracked out the airbrush and my pot of Daler-Rowney FW Red Earth acrylic ink. I not so carefully applied this to the base, letting some of the ink get onto the boots and tabard of the Castellan. As ink doesn’t contain much binding agent, I was worried that it would be easily rubbed off. So I decided to seal it down with a wash of Reikland Fleshshade. Which to be honest, didn’t make all that much difference in terms of shading. But that wasn’t the end of the world. To finish things off I drybrushed the rocks with Skrag Brown and then while I had it out, I heavily thinned some Skrag Brown and ran it into the recesses of the Castellan’s boots. I tidied things up by painting the rim of the base black and he was done! 

Really pleased with how this has turned out. I may have to actually get some of the Primaris Black Templars models. A Crusader squad would look amazing painted the same way as I have done the Castellan. Move over Space Wolves, I have a new favourite Space Marine chapter.