Early Beginnings - First KotE HQ Choices

Alright, pumping another one of these out. In a way, I'm trying to get these out of the way. All the models of my Space Marine chapter represent a time when I was absolute crap at painting, and in a rush to get them all done. I'd much rather focus on the stuff that doesn't make me look completely incompetent, but well...it's part of the story, & part of my growth into what I do now (which still isn't amazing, but at least it's not terrible).

This was my original chapter master, librarian and Captain Sicarius, since the Knights of the Eclipse are technically an Ultramarines successor. Was gonna do blood angels, but no thunderfire cannons over there, so...nope.

Now that I've 'upgraded' to a semi-converted Marneus Calgar for my chapter master, here is Captain Clegane. He's another of my earlier, sloppier attempts at shading and blending. Sword 'effects' done with light brush strokes of orange followed by lighter strokes of yellow, followed by accidentally-not-so-light strokes of white. Added the dead termagant head on the base as a 'fluff' centerpiece, since the lore of the chapter involves enmity with the tyranids (since I've got about 10k in them too...). Still pretty fond of that, even if it's so caked with paint you can't make out the detail.

Here's Captain Not-Sicarius, painted before I ever tried to make a glow effect with the plasma pistol, and before I had a clue in hell what drybrushing was (Yes, the base is dried, but I did all of the snow basing after the army was finished; til that point, all the bases were black and bare. Yes, basing 200 models was tedious as fuck). 

And last, here's the company's designated Codicier. Caked on paint again (lot of that early on...dark days indeed). Loin cloth turned out ok though. Slightly deviated from the Codex Astartes on color scheme; all the Librarians are white to represent the purity they must maintain when dealing with the warp. Overall I was proud of this model; still am to an extent. Decent highlights on the cloth and torso, good (well, better) brush control on the axe details...May not look like it, but I *did* water down my paints here. However, this was before I had a clue in hell how to paint white, so I had to do about 5 layers of the crap before the black (STUPID) primer didn't show through.