Nothing says dread like gold

Okay, so that headline clearly isn't true. Gold is a colour much better suited to the celebration of wealth and power than it is for striking fear into the hearts of your enemies. It probably works okay within the confines of the Emperor's throne room – as a sign of his supremacy and omnipotence – but I'm not so sure it looks all that great on the battlefield. Especially when filtered through my personal preferences for darker, grungier colour schemes.

I wanted something that looked a little more robust. A little more dangerous. Something the Dread Guardians of the Imperial Palace would feel proud to wear while crushing the skulls of their foes.

So for my take on the Custodes, I've heavily shaded their armour in an attempt to make it look more like an old oil painting. Like a cut-rate version of something by Caravaggio. Darker and more brooding than the shining gold of, say, Games Workshop's Hammers of Sigmar colour scheme.*

I detailed the construction of these three characters in a couple of previous posts (here and here), but for recap purposes here's the image of them unpainted again.

And, simply for the sake of completeness, here's my original Photoshop sketch, from before I started this project (where I got the gold colour utterly and horribly wrong**).

And finally, these three guys are all part of my Addiction Challenge, so here's the new score:

ADDICTION CHALLENGE

REMAINING: 92

*And a paint scheme perhaps one step closer to the dark and shadowy Stormcast Eternals painted by Stats, showcased on the De Silentio Umbrae blog here.
**Except maybe his left leg, which is slightly more appealing than the awful yellow of the rest of his armour.