Wednesday 16 February 2011

Chaplain Lemartes and Cherubael

As a little respite from the seemingly hip deep sea of Death Korps I'm working through at the moment I've finished the first of the two special characters from the Blood Angels. Hence I present His Royal Nutcase-ness Chaplain Lemartes:


He was a lot of fun to work on, one of those models that seems to paint himself. I always find it odd when painting to notice details that you had never seen in the display pictures. For me that was the bone feet overlaying his boots! Bone is very much in evidence on this figure and merits discussion of technique, so here goes:



Do please ignore the slight overspill of wash around the gem, I didn't notice it until it was magnified and am going to go back in and finish it later. Given that the gem is only about a milimeter wide on the actual size model the spill is barely noticable. The bone begins with a solid basecoat of Khemri Brown, achieved with a couple of thin coats. Follow this up with a shading wash of a mixture of Devlin Mud and Badab Black, around a 3:1 mix. Then begin highlights, starting with Khemri Brown and then working up through mixes with Bleached Bone, the more blended layers you do the thinner the paint can be and the less chalky the finished result will be. I probably used six thin layers between the Khemri Brown and Bleached Bone mix and pure Bleached Bone. I then glazed the whole thing with Gryphonne Sepia. This livens up the colour and prevents a dead white effect. I then continued highlighting up with mixtures of Bleached Bone and white. Three thin layers brought the highlights almost up to white. I then used a couple of thin glazes of white with the tiniest dab of bone mixed in on the high points to create the polished bone look. This is most noticable on the large skull on the shoulder pad:


The large skull also got shaded with black in the eye sockets and nasel cavity. I deliberately kept the parchments closer to Khemri Brown to contrast with the bone. More contrast is achieved with liberal use of the normal Blood Angels red scheme I use:


One last thing to mention is the gold on the crozius arcanum (the club in his left hand). To make it look like a separate weapon to the rest of the armour's gold I warmed it up with a glaze of yellow ink. This actually turned out problematic, largely because in the absence of Vallejo Game Colour yellow ink (what I actually wanted) I bought P3 yellow ink assuming they would be pretty much the same. Boy was I wrong. Rather than the ochre yellow I was expecting this was a day-glo affair that I shall dub Paramedic Jacket Yellow. I had to do an emergency flood of water to clear it out and then repaint all the highlights just to fix it. Destined for the bin I think Mr P3. The theory holds true though and the yellow glaze gives it an older, mellower warmth.

Lastly for this post I thought I would start showing off some of my Inquisitor models (some which are getting stripped and repainted as I have learned a hell of a lot since I bought them). Inquisitor, for the uninitiated, is a narrative wargame (read: the combat system of an RPG) played with larger than normal figures (54mm tall) which allow a range of fine details to be portrayed that would never work on a smaller scale. The best model I own to showcase this is the daemonhost Cherubael:


Now, eagle-eyed readers will have noticed the "Mrs" above the PVP logo. This is because while the model is mine it was long ago yoinked by my wife for her warband. Lucy (Mrs Pirate Viking) fell in love with the model and lavished attention on him. This was her third painted model ever. Yep, I ground my teeth in frustration too but she did train as an artist and that has to count for something!



To illustrate the size difference take a look at the picture above. Lemartes is a big model by 28mm standards and even folded in half Cherubael towers over him. The locks and straps flying out all over the place give it such a sense of motion and the tortured pose has such character. But the best part of the model is its face:


Lucy went for a creepy dead-flesh-containing-demon vibe. The cyanotic blue lips coupled with the dead eyes and the nubs of horns pressing through the flesh convey the effect nicely. Lucy also worked to make the areas where the blessed locks and chains bind his flesh seem reddened and scalded by the pressure of the holy metal against daemon-infested flesh.


Well, that is all for this post, next one will be a bunch more Death Korps so keep visiting or follow us to get the latest.

TTFN

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