Space Wolves Iron Priest (Part 1)

Back in May of last year (2016) you may recall I painted my Eversor Assassin in a fairly fast and focused painting session. I was quite proud of myself in fact and was sure that I could do it again. That weekend I decided to take part in a local painting competition, which stipulated that you had to buy the miniature from their store during the contest window with all entries submitted by May 31st. It was May 22nd, and I knew that if I focused on this model I could knock it out. But I was woefully unprepared for just how complex this model was, but pushed on anyway.

I had decided long ago that my Space Wolf Iron Priests would wear the traditional red armor of the Adeptus Mechanicus - at least to some degree. Either in full suits or just their helms, the red would appear somewhere. You can see where I did this with the gunner on my Space Wolves Landraider (below). Either way, this extra color palette was going to add additional time to my painting deadline.

Land Raider gunner.

I launched right into this project and didn't take any pics until I was past the base-coating stage. The pic below shows how I like to paint loose heads.

Head on a spike.

When painting models that haven't been assembled yet, I often drill a hole into the bottom of the head with my pin-vice and glue it onto a brass rod or wire. This allows me to hold the wire or rod and get to the details with my brush that I might not be able reach if I were holding it with my fingers. If I don't need the pin-vice for anything else I'll leave it on it and paint it just like that. Which is what I did in the pic above.

Above is the model at the base-coat stage.

 I was making decent progress on this when suddenly the person running the painting contest announced on FB that he wanted to see some entries and started posting entries that were already submitted. There was a bit of a back and forth online over it which left me feeling odd about the whole premature showcasing of early entries, so I dropped out. And instead of continuing on this model I put my focus onto a different model that I needed to use in an upcoming game instead.

The state this was in for about a year.

As the year came and went, I found myself once again considering painting and working on some Space Wolves and as I looked upon this model in it's exploded state, I felt a keen yearning to press on and complete him. There has been additional progress on this model, but we'll save that for part 2.