Painting the Inquisition

Greetings one and all! Remember this fellow? Well, last night he finally got a coat of paint:

Its a funny old profession painting, to relax after a day of Titan painting I settled down to... paint a model. Anyway, this is the Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor Bastian Vandamar. He's named for an old roleplay character who in turn was named for one half of the brilliant Croup & Vandemar, the murderous duo from Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (coincidently the subject of a nifty Radio 4 adaptation).

I wanted to paint him as an understated but authoritarian figure. A black leather duster with deep red lining seemed to fit the bill. Getting black leather right is sometimes tricky but the essence is just to use a very deep brown rather than a pure black that will look more like PVC. There is also a trick where you put wear on the edges but more of that later.

Behold, the stern countenance of Inquisitor Vandemar. I decided to make him a reletively young man so I kept the tones warm and the hair strongly coloured. The crude bionic eye replacing the patch on the right eye of the Witch Hunter model was a tiny bit off centre. Rather than having to carve up a damn near finished model I decided that the eye was able to rotate in the socket Mad Eye Moody-like.

The null rod he has over his shoulder I was especially pleased with. The mixture of metal colours (Vallejo Liquid Metal Copper; Runelord Brass and silver rivets) creates a pleasing visual interest. The jade skull in the centre is just Stegadon Scale Green highlighted by the addition of white and then washed in Coelia Greenshade. Why jade? Because in oriental mythology jade is anathaema to spirits and demons and thus felt absolutely right as an inquisitor's weapon. Equally as the skull is double sided (faces on both planes) it just wouldn't work in bone.

It is tough to see in these pictures but the overall black tone is broken up into the brownish black of the coat, the greyish black of the hat and trousers and the dark brown of the leatherwork. The dark jade/turquoise spot colours (bionic eye, feather, skull and the slashes in the trousers) was mainly chosen to balance the red and orange of the lining and copper/brass bits. Once again it's one of those split complimentary jobs:

I think it is fair to say that this is my most commonly used colour wheel trick. It creates nice contrasts while allowing you to use more than one dominant colour.

In this last photo you can see the worn leather edging and the script on the nifty purity seal. The weathering on the leather is just drybrushing with Karak Stone. The script is - as normal - painted in a dark brown rather than pure black. Makes it look like aged pen ink rather than printing. There's actually a tutorial I'd forgotten about half way down this post that talks about how I paint the writing itself. Anyway, that is all for today. Mrs PVP is in work this weekend so I'll be cracking on with the titan through the weekend. Until then.

TTFN