So a while back I was reading [URL="http://aarondembskibowden.wordpress.com/"]Aaron Dembski-Bowden's blog[/URL] and saw a photo of a Relic Contemptor there that his friend Eddie Eccles had done for his Heresy Dark Angels army and I loved it. This is what his looks like:
And this is what it looks like painted:
I badly wanted one of my own, though not exactly the same and so I went about getting the various bits I would need in order to assemble my version for my Imperial Fists army. I decided against the Autocannon arm and would go for a pure close combat monster with a flamer in the leading hand and a stormbolter on the sword arm (as it counts as merely a regular dreadnaught close combat weapon). I didn't go for quite as much bling on mine either. This is what mine looked like after a couple days spent sticking and pinning the darn thing together:
I've used bits from all manner of kits on this, most obviously the Relic Dreadnaught itself and the Dreadknight sword hand, but also the resin scenic base and severed Ork head from the 25th anniversary figure, Ork skulls from the Space Marine Sniper Scouts, various bling bits from the Ravenwing and Dark Angel veterans sprues, the Imperial Fist logo disc from the Drop Pod, the laurel wreath on one shoulder from the Space Marine Commander and the underslung stormbolter from a regular GW Dreadnaught.
After assembling this I realised that my own painting skills weren't really up to doing this justice so I turned to those of my friend who takes commissions to paint to a much higher standard than I'm capable of. He had just gotten himself a Contemptor at the Forge World open day so was keen to have a go at mine before tackling his own. After a couple days he posted up this pic of it at the half way stage on his Alpharius Painting studio's Facebook page:
I loved it but had to point out that the Fist logo on the shoulder had the colours the wrong way round which needed fixing.