The Duelist

The Duelist began life as a Concept sketch drawn by The Green Witch on 40k Online after a brief disucssion thread about my plans for a Praetorian Kill Team along side a number of these sketches. This was by far my favourite though and couldnt help but to make it the first model I created.



Looking at the pose I choose to base the conversion on the Praetorian Missile Loader which had a similar body pose, only the extremities would need altering.



I removed the arms including the epualette on the models left arm as well as the strap and missile bag over the models shoulder, this left much of the tunic needing work however due to either non-existant detail or damage caused while I removing the pieces, in the end I also decided to rebuild the belt.



I continued to rebuild the tunic, belt etc including adding the pouch on the models belt and began to work more seriously on the arms, a mistake I made at this stage was too make the arm behind the back a tad too long, something I later recitified, I probably should also have included a metal frame for the arms to make them a little more robust though on completion this does'nt seem to be a problem.



With the tunic or less complete I spent more time on the arms adding cloth folds, incredably simple to do with the thin edge of a sculpting tool but really does make it a whole lot more realistic, the same method is used to build the epualette which was done in two stages, first the braid folding a piece of green stuff over the arm before detailing it, then building the board ontop once thats dried. I also added some facial hair at this point and the sword and scabbard, this was taken from the current Commissar Yarrick model though some detailing needed to be removed. The base shape of the hands were also added (working in stages is so much easier then trying to sculpt such a fidley bit in one go), with the frame of the pistol fitted in one, this simply a piece of metal paperclip.



Now onto the final stage of converting I finished work on the hands, tidied the legs, added the scarf around the pith helmet (again stages, first the cloth around the helmet, then the ends dropping onto the soulders before adding the 'knot') and finally worked on the pistol. Again this was done in stages, first the barrel, then the stock and finally the detailing. At first I was'nt 100% sure about the pistol but it really drew on me, a heavy, slightly stubby dueling pistol in the style of a flintlock pistol, it seems quite a fitting weapon for such a character.



Last of all came the painting, spent a bit longer on this one then I usually do, not a display model but more then an average gaming piece I'd like to think with generally 6 to 7 shades for each colour from basecoat to highlight (usually my models are 3-4). The only bit I did'nt end up happy with was the scabbard's grey which looks terrible in this first picture, subsequently I've added an addional highlight moving each of the others down a level since this picture was taken though which I think improves it alot. Job done!