Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Spartan painting in progress

First off, let me start by saying that it's 2/1/12 (at least for my American readers), and as such I would be remiss if I didn't suggest listening to the linked song today! For those of you across the pond, I suppose I should have mentioned it on the 2nd of January! Heh.

With that out of the way, I thought I'd put up a few pics of the Land Raider Spartan, now that I've managed to get some paint on it. All in all it's coming along fairly well - I'm pleased with the look even though it is quite obviously a scratchbuild.

Side by side with a 'real' Mk.I Land Raider the differences are rather obvious, but I'm hoping I can downplay some of the more obvious shortcomings in the painting process. One thing I have noticed is the paint tone is quite different between the two tanks which I imagine is partially due to the cardstock nature of the Spartan. I'm going to have to give it a second wash of Baal Red in hopes of darkening it down a bit.

The mix of old style construction and new-era bits does at least tie the two tanks together thematically, I'm fairly pleased with how that's come along so far. Still a fair bit of painting to go of course!

As the spartan is going to be the transport for one of the legion tactical squads I went with the big arrow on the top hatch (as I'm doing something similar with the Rhinos). Overall the spartan is quite a bit longer than the base Mk. I, as is befitting a vehicle with a transport capacity of 20!

So far so good, though it does make me itch to do a proper Spartan build, but finding both a Mk.I Land Raider and Rhino unassembled is a long shot, not to mention also likely being cost prohibitive... Ah well.