Something a bit Wyrd

Wyrds are a powerful but limited psychic in the 40k universe. Whereas a fully trained and disciplined psyker can throw all kinds of powers about a Wyrd is good at only one thing. But very, very good at it...

What we have here is the last of the warband groups for the Inq28 commission, there is one inquisitor left but he is a treat for when I finally get those Eldar tanks finished. In the group there is a beastmaster wyrd with her snakes, a summoner with her conjoured spirit and a too-skinny pilot who photographed terribly and thus is now Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Post. Lets start with snake lady.

I've no idea who makes this but with the exception of a slightly odd face it is a fun model to paint. Her whole demeanour, pose and outfit just screamed "Indonesia" at me so a quick search on the Googles brought me a colour palette and some make up (which never photographs well). The snakes in her hands and the loose one needed to be different species. Well, needed to be is a bit of a stretch... I love painting animals and having a chance to play with three snakes was too much fun to pass up. For those curious, the loose one is a rattlesnake, green is a constrictor and the little one around her left wrist is a coral snake. As normal with my animal work, reference material is essential and the colours tend to be custom mixes fiddled back and forth until just right. When doing animal markings do not skimp on the fiddly details. The darker green around the white on the constrictor, the dark edges and pale borders on the rattler "lozenges" on it's back. If you just do a dark brown shape or the pale markings without the dark it won't look "right". Take the time and be thoroughly rewarded.

The summoner and her spirit servitor I decided to handle in an almost monochrome. Blue tones across the whole thing with only the twinned gold blades (which I see as being her focus to command the spirit) and her hair providing spot colours. With her ridiculously complex robes I thus needed several colours of blue going on to separate the different elements of the garment. I wound up using all of GW's blue tones - including blue-grey The Fang - in order to paint her. I also "black-lined" the edges of the garments to strengthen the boundaries. Black lining is painting a very dark shade, sometimes black, usually almost as a wash along where you want the shadow. I used a mix of the blue and black washes to do this and it makes more difference than you might think.

Her spirit servitor was simplicity itself. Just blue highlighted through to white and glazed back down again. I deliberately didn't go fancy on it, I wanted it to look like a being made of pure energy with no personality other than what she bestows upon it. Where the energy "grounds" into the scenic base I put some limited object source lighting in. I had to keep it restrained as otherwise the base would just be, well, blue...

That's all for today folks, more soon!

TTFN