A quick look at this blog reveals that it has been quite some time since I painted a miniature to competition standard, but when a UK Golden Demon competition was announced back in March I finally found the motivation to pick up the brushes again and settle in for the long slog that this kind of project inevitably ends up being.
I didn’t have to think too long about what to paint since GW had recently released some new Eldar miniatures and this gave me the excuse I needed to break out the credit card. I briefly considered having a crack at the Avatar of Khaine but I just don’t have any interest in painting miniatures that large, so I settled on something a little more realistic.
The warlock kit is quite unusual in that it contains parts to build two miniatures. Two bodies and four arms are supplied as well as several head options, so in principle you can build a decent number of variants (although in practice I don’t think they’d look massively different from one another). In an effort to further differentiate my warlock and inspired by a piece of art by my all time favourite artist Mark Gibbons, I sculpted a new right hand and head and added fur around the shoulders. Because I prefer to sculpt digitally, the fur was particularly challenging since I had to make measurements of the physical miniature and then sculpt a piece that I hoped would fit. After a few attempts I got reasonably close and was able to use greenstuff to sculpt additional little bits of fur to fill any gaps. I also used the rough digital mock up I had made of the warlock to design the base. Making the base before I had even started painting the miniature was a departure from my usual half-arsed cobbled together effort at the end of the project, but I think ultimately it was worth holding my impatience to get started in check. All the parts I designed were printed on my Elegoo Mars 3 printer with standard Elegoo resin.
Saim Hann Eldar Warlock by Mark Gibbons that formed the inspiration for this project. Image used without permission.
I decided not to try and replicate the colours of the artwork precisely as my experience suggested that at miniature scale they were likely to look a little drab, and my preference has always been for maximum saturation bright colours! I painted the miniature in sub assemblies, even going so far as to paint texture on the inside of the robe before gluing the two parts together. Doing it this way meant that I had to fill and sand the seam on an already partially painted model but it is possible to see inside the robe from some angles and because I don’t prime my miniatures this kind of procedure is not too much of a problem.
There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about the painting techniques I used. The early stages involved a massive amount of somewhat tedious stippling on the robe, highlighting the 1:1 evil sunz scarlet and mephiston red base coat through wildrider red and fire dragon bright up to lugganath orange. I shaded the robe with naggaroth night, and also used this paint extensively elsewhere on the miniature in order to tie everything together. (For example, the gold nmm also has this paint in the deepest shading, and it is also used in highlights on the armour, the gems and of course the base!)
The idea behind the piece is that the warlock is engaged in some psychic shenanigans, so I made extensive use of vallejo magenta paint for these aspects and even mixed in some warcolours fluorescent pink to really get that visual punch, although sadly it doesn’t really come across in these photos. The base is supposed to be breaking up around him due to the power of the eldritch magics, and I used the magenta in these areas to try and get that narrative across.
There was a decent amount of freehand to get through, with the robes, sash and helmet all having these elements. No matter how many times I paint freehand designs, I always find it a slightly stressful experience, as there is always the knowledge that you can’t really make too many mistakes or you will quickly find yourself building up texture that is the enemy of a silky smooth finish. I’m happy to say that it went reasonably well on this occasion! The only other areas of note that occur are the light weathering I painted onto the pouches and the very fine texture on the sash, making it look like a different fabric to the robe.
During the course of painting this miniature I was forced to accept that time has definitely started to catch up with me and my ability to focus very closely is now on the wane. Fortunately I found that using a pair of reading glasses enabled me to achieve the level of finish I was after. Unfortunately this does further affect my motivation for display level miniature painting, as it’s even more difficult to justify putting in the hours when I can’t even fully appreciate the finished piece without some kind of optical aid!
It was my intention to enter this miniature in the 40k single mini category at the 2022 UK Golden Demon and take Fuegan along to put in the open category. Sadly I won’t be able to attend this event because someone at GW decided that having not had a Golden Demon for three years it would be a good idea to hold it at Warhammer World, which has a very limited capacity. When the event was announced it was obvious to me that ticket availability was going to be a massive problem, and so it has proved! I’m not particularly bothered about being denied the opportunity to collect more trophies, but I was looking forward to seeing all the great people in the community that I haven’t spoken to for a very long time. I know many other painters have missed out on getting tickets too, so all in all it is very disappointing.
And finally, it would of course be a crime to write any blog post about Eldar without acknowledging the mighty Jes Goodwin, without whom none of this would have been possible. You’re a legend sir!
Part 1 of this project is here (if you’d like to read me waffling on about the 90s and how amazing Jes Goodwin is). There didn’t seem much point in producing a painting guide for this miniature since no one else will be painting it, so I didn’t take any work in progress photos but I have made more of an effort than usual to explain my approach and the colours I used. It’s a lot of information but hopefully a few people will find it useful.
After a few test prints of Fuegan on my Elegoo Mars, I was fortunate enough to be able to get a really high quality print on a much more expensive machine from a friend. Although the budget resin printers are getting really good these days, there is still a noticeable difference in the sharpness and dimensional accuracy that a £10k machine can achieve vs a £200 machine (as there should be)!
The test prints afforded me a great opportunity to test out colour schemes before committing to the top quality print. I looked first at the current ‘Eavy Metal miniature, and although I really liked the moody, brooding atmosphere that the dark helmet evokes, I was concerned that if I did something similar on my miniature I risked losing focus on the head, as I knew there would be bright elements elsewhere.
I knew that I would definitely be using suitably fiery colours ranging from deep red through to yellow for the armour, so the main things I needed to resolve were the complimentary colours I would use and what to do with the helmet.
Inspired by some vivid sunsets, I was attracted to the idea of using magenta and violet for the scales, gems and cape. The test looked good, and I liked the tie-in with the narrative (since the eldar are in the sunset of their days). I very nearly went this way but ultimately I went with the less adventurous green because I felt it gave more pop as a spot colour.
I tried a few different options for the helmet, including having the helmet itself dark and the face plate light, and painting the whole of the helmet in yellow for maximum brightness. Although I didn’t particularly like either of these, I did discover that using pure yellow on the miniature just wasn’t working for me so in the end I didn’t go more yellow than a 1:1 mix of trollslayer orange and yriel yellow. I used this colour around the face plate to really draw the viewer’s eye and then faded through to gal vorbak red. The wings on either side faded in the opposite direction, and I found that I liked the ambiguity between light reflection and flames in the highlights I painted towards the bottom of these.
I considered using metallic paint on the miniature for metal elements, but I decided against it because I thought I would be able to achieve a better looking result on the axe head with the glowing rune if I went with non metallic metal. If I had only to consider the copper elements I probably would have gone with true metallic because I love the way it looks in the hand but as it was I had to work out a recipe for copper nmm, as I couldn’t remember how I’d approached it before!
It had been quite some time since I had attempted to paint to my highest standard and discovered that it took a little while to feel comfortable with my techniques again. I do sometimes feel that my painting is being left behind by the incredible advances in the wider community but sculpting has to be my focus at the moment and sadly that means that I don’t have as much time to devote to trying to improve my painting game! I ended up painting this miniature very gradually over the course of a few months in my spare time.
Because I had already done my colour tests I was able to paint the miniature in sub assemblies with confidence that it would work when put together. In practice this just meant painting the cloak, banner and head separately, and also the barrel of the pike because it’s so long I knew I’d keep snapping it off if I attached it too soon! I hadn’t decided on the colour of the base (or even finished sculpting it) when I started painting the miniature in order to continue my long held tradition of leaving it as an afterthought. 😉
Armour
I began the painting with the armour since it is the bulk of the miniature. I started with a base coat of 1:1 mephiston red and evil sunz scarlet that I painted directly onto the resin (after fully curing it and washing it with warm soapy water of course). It’s amazing how well paint goes onto the resin that you get from 3D printers (or at least the resins I’ve encountered), and I was pleased not to need to break out the airbrush for a smooth base coat, which always feels like a hassle.
Those who have purchased one of my painting guides will be familiar with the techniques I like to use to achieve the area highlights and I used the same approach here. I worked up through highlights of wildrider red, firedragon bright, lugganath orange and then added to white to this. Shading was with gal vorbak red and I then added some black to this.
I smoothed the transitions with very focused glazes made from all of the colours I had used plus pure evil sunz, but I felt that the armour still lacked a little punch so I glazed incubi darkness into the shadows and added very thin glazes of 1:1 trollslayer orange and yriel yellow over the highlights. The smaller reflection highlights on the armour were added after I’d painted the rest of the miniature. I just placed these anywhere I thought the miniature could benefit from them – there was certainly no science behind it! The incubi darkness ended up being a unifying colour that I used across several elements of the miniature (including the base).
I painted the undersuit of the armour using the same colours but didn’t apply the yellowish glaze, just to provide a subtle little difference between the two areas.
Helmet
For the helmet I started with a base coat of bone, again painted on with a large brush onto the bare resin. This enabled me to get the brightest colours possible when I painted over the top of it, and the helmet was going to be all about bright colours!
Over the base coat I started with my 1:1 mix of trollslayer and yriel yellow in the areas that would end up this colour and extending out until about half the area of the helmet and wings were covered. I then switched to pure trollslayer orange and painted layers with the brush strokes starting in the yellow and moving away into the area that was still bone. I thinned the paint so that I was able to gradually build up a smooth transition (although a certain amount of remedial glazing was still needed later). This process was then repeated with evil sunz scarlet (starting in the orange) and gal vorbak red (starting in the evil sunz), finally adding some black to the gal vorbak for the deep recess shading. I then used the incubi darkness glaze into the shadows.
With the colour transitions done I then moved on to highlighting the helmet. I used the same colours as I had used on the armour for this and I applied edge highlights at the same time as the flame-like larger highlights towards the bottom of the wings. Towards the top of the helmet I didn’t use oranges in the edge highlights and just added white into the colours I had used.
Black elements
The armour trim, the pike and the handle of the axe were all painted in the same way. I began with a black base coat and then highlighted with eshin grey, dawnstone, and administratum grey before adding a little white to this last colour. I made the highlights on the upper edges brighter than those below and I found that quite a bit of glazing was necessary to tidy up some of the highlights, particularly the very long thin ones on the pike. Fairly late on I glazed a little incubi darkness over the highlights on these elements and re-established the brightest dots to make these elements colder and contrast more strongly against the armour.
The other black elements are the trim around the tabard and the strap across Fuegan’s chest. I wanted these to be warmer and didn’t want to bust out more paints, so I ended up mixing lugganath orange and vmc sunny skintone into the black and then adding a little white. I think it looks ok but I discovered that lugganath orange really doesn’t play nicely with black and it took some pains to get the transitions smooth.
Cape
The outside of the cape was base coated with a mix of incubi darkness and black and I highlighted this with incubi darkness and then added sunny skintone. After applying some fairly rough highlights I switched to stippling in order to add some interesting texture (I have covered this approach in more detail in the aforementioned painting guides). I also painted a few fine little scratches here and there, since I imagine that whatever beastie it was taken from probably had quite a hard life.
The scales on the cape were painted in the same way as those on the tabard and the side of the helmet. A base coat of caliban green was highlighted with warpstone green and then sunny skintone was added to the warpstone green. Shading was with black and a little incubi darkness.
I wanted a warm tone for the inside of the cape so started with a basecoat of rakarth flesh and shaded this by mixing in skavenblight dinge. I highlighted with vmc deck tan and again employed stippling to add texture. In this case I picked out a few areas and made them a little darker to try and make the surface feel less uniform and artificial. With this process complete I felt the inside of the cloak still looked a little lifeless so I glazed a little incubi darkness over the darker areas and stippled a tiny amount of sunny skintone into the highlights.
Banner
The banner was base coated with gal vorbak red and then highlighted with the same range of colours I had used on the armour. I practiced the freehand design on one of my test prints and then took a deep breath and dived in! I used leather white (from reaper) as my weapon of choice to get a smooth white for the strip along the bottom, the circle around the dragon and the fire dragon rune with a fair amount of winsor & newton acrylic flow improver added. The key is always to start with a heavily diluted paint and sketch in the design before gradually refining with slightly thicker paint until you get something that looks half way decent.
For the eldar runes along the bottom I added some winsor & newton black ink to black paint. I have experimented with using pure black ink for this type of thing but I don’t really get on with it – it seems too easy to remove it from the surface and I don’t seem to get quite the same sharp finish. I added just enough black ink to make the paint flow nicely with some water in the mix. To be honest I probably could have just used the flow improver – all that matters is that the paint comes off the brush easily. I used a size 1 brush for all the freehand work. Actually I used size 1 brushes for pretty much the entire paint job, but I reserved the ones with good points for this kind of work.
I wanted to the banner to feature a dragon breathing fire so that when viewed from the front, the flame colour combined with the glow on the two weapons forms a triangle around the helmet. I used the same colours for the dragon and the flame that I used elsewhere on the miniature.
Non metallic metal recipes
For the copper areas I base coated with doombull brown and highlighted with mournfang brown and deathclaw brown. Shading was with rhinox hide and then black. I added white to deathclaw brown for the extreme highlights and applied some thin glazes of the same 1:1 trollslayer orange and yriel yellow mix that I used on the armour before re-establishing the extreme highlights with white.
For the axe head I base coated with mechanicus standard grey and highlighted with administratum grey and white. I shaded with a mix of gal vorbak and black rather than pure black to add a little visual interest. I glazed some of the highlights with the orange/yellow mix and some with incubi darkness, particularly those on the underside since by this stage I knew that the base would also be using this colour.
Glowing effect and gems
For the fiery glow on both the axe and the pike I first applied pure white directly into the recesses to maximise the brightness of the subsequent layers. I then built up the glow working from the outside in, starting with gal vorbak red, then evil sunz scarlet, trollslayer orange and then adding yriel yellow. The paint was thin enough that it took several applications to build up the full opacity so that smooth transitions could be created. I reapplied white more sparingly into the deepest recesses and tidied up the glow anywhere it needed it with focused glazes.
For the gems I started with black and painted most of the area with caliban green, leaving a small area of black towards the top. I then highlighted the bottom of the gems and around the edges with warpstone glow and then moot green within this area. I added white to the moot green for the extreme highlights and pure white reflection spots of course.
Base
For the base I used a mix of incubi darkness and little black and then built up quite a rough stippled texture with incubi darkness and then with administratum grey added to the incubi darkness (to differentiate it from the back of the cloak which used warmer highlights). The inlaid runes around the edge and on the top had a little moot green added in to dawnstone and then these were stippled and edge highlighted with administratum grey and white.
And with that, the project was done! To finish, here’s a few close ups:
First up – I’m sure most people won’t bother to read the lengthy waffle below, so I’ll put this right at the top in the hope that it deflects a few questions: please don’t bother asking me for the STLs of my Fuegan sculpt. It’s Games Workshop IP and I won’t be distributing it, sorry.
Background
The eldar were featured in the very first white dwarf that I owned (issue 138, June 1991) and they made a huge impression on my young mind. The sublime elliptical curves and the riot of bright colours across the various aspects epitomised the aesthetic that has appealed to me ever since.
White Dwarf 138 back cover: eldar and blood angels. Clearly this had no influence on me at all…
In second edition warhammer 40k I owned a very small amount of eldar alongside my slightly larger blood angels force. I don’t recall exactly what miniatures I had but there was definitely a squad of fire dragons with exarch. The phoenix lords were added to the game around this time and I have painful memories of the original Jain Zar – a massively top heavy chunk of metal connected to her base by only the point of the toes on one foot! For some reason I never got hold of Fuegan, the phoenix lord of the fire dragon aspect but I always admired the miniature.
Back then I didn’t give much thought to how these miniatures were designed and I had no idea that one towering colossus of the citadel miniatures studio was responsible for so much of what I loved. I speak of course of the mighty Jes Goodwin, who among other things was responsible for creating the entirety of the eldar range! During my all too brief period working as a citadel miniatures designer I was fortunate enough to work alongside Jes for a short while and it only increased my sense of awe for his work.
It’s a testament to Jes that most of the original phoenix lord miniatures, released in the early 90s are still for sale in 2021, more than 25 years later! I doubt that many of the miniatures sculpted today will prove to have such longevity. Jain Zar has now been replaced with a superb plastic version sculpted by Neil Langdown in collaboration with Jes, but there’s no telling how long we will have to wait for the other lords to receive this treatment. After all, we wouldn’t want to slow the production of variant number 14,538 of primaris space marines in order to update a few filthy xenos now, would we? 😉
Some time in mid 2020 I decided I wanted to paint Fuegan, so I took a good long look at the miniature on the GW store and I just couldn’t bring myself to click buy. It’s not clear whether the current incarnation is metal or finecast, but I’m not a fan of either material. And undoubted classic though it is, that dude is old and you can clearly see the limitations of the casting technology of the time in how it has been designed. I’m guessing he’s probably quite small by today’s standards too.
Original Fuegan, complete with 25 mm round base!
Unfortunately, while Fuegan may be immortal, I am not. So if I was going to get to paint him before completely succumbing to the ravages of age waiting for a plastic version it seemed to me that I’d better think about sculpting my own. And so, armed with a copy of Jes’ eldar sketchbook and various google images like the one above I embarked on my latest project.
Sculpting
I started sculpting Fuegan by constructing a dolly so that I could get the size and proportions right before I started thinking about the pose and the details. I based this on current eldar miniatures but then made him a little larger, as befits his status (he ended up measuring approx 35 mm to the eyes). At this stage I was working with low poly, just getting the main forms sketched out. As always I used blender for my sculpting, together with my trusty old Wacom Intuos small tablet.
When I had something that felt about right I started thinking about the pose. I knew I wanted to retain the classic huge pike and axe and I found that the pike limited the options for posing. (Or maybe I just wasn’t imaginative enough!) It really only looks good in an upright position and it has a tendency to interfere with both the left shoulder pad, upper arm and thigh. I was focusing on trying to get a strong composition for the miniature when viewed from the front and after some experimentation I ended up with a pose that is reminiscent of Prince Yriel and very similar to a 90s sketch of a ‘fire dragon exarch’ in Jes’ book.
I made the decision to add the cape and the banner quite early on. The original miniature doesn’t have these elements of course, but I thought they were befitting of Fuegan’s status and would provide me with some area for a little freehand painting. Although I didn’t settle on the final form of the base until after I’d started painting the miniature, I knew that I wanted the large curved element on the right for the composition.
With the pose set I gradually worked my way around the miniature defining the details. The axe was one of the first elements I worked on – I kept a similar shape to the original but also looked at the version in the sketchbook to make some modifications. I decided to put a recessed rune into the blade with the intention of painting it with a glowing flame effect and at this point I ran into a little conundrum – the paint job on the old miniature and Jes’ sketches feature a rune with a curvy tail but the modern fire dragon rune is straight lines. In the end I decided to retain both on my miniature. I decided the curvy version could be Fuegan’s personal rune, but he also bears the rune of the fire dragon aspect that he established.
I kept the helmet very close to the original but added some more curvature to the big wings to make them a little less flat, and made some changes to the face plate just because the original isn’t completely to my taste. I kept the armour design more or less the same, but changed the greaves to be something closer to the modern designs. I’ve been working on a lot of small scale stuff recently and I really enjoyed the opportunity to lavish attention on some lovely large curved surfaces (yes, I really am that strange)!
One of the details I ended up spending a surprising amount of time on was the little dragon head clasp that sits on the right of his chest. I wanted to make that element more understated than the original but I really struggled to find a shape that simultaneously conveyed fierce dragon and eldar, and fitted neatly in the available space! I’m still not happy I really got this right but in the end I had to just accept what I had and move on.
I didn’t make big changes to the pike weapon, although I did redesign the stock to feature the curvy tail of what I had decided is Fuegan’s personal rune. I wanted to keep the concept that his left vambrace is connected to the weapon, but I changed the way this is integrated. After looking at all my sources, I wasn’t sure if the element that sits below the main barrel is intended to project a secondary blast but I decided it made more sense to have this as a power node for the weapon and would provide me with another opportunity to paint some glowing effect on the other side of the miniature for balance. I did strip out many of the power cables that original miniature has all over it. While I certainly appreciate the elegant s-shape that they create when viewed from the rear, I just felt that there were too many to read as a sleek eldar design so I only kept one of the main ones for the pike.
Originally I had intended to leave the cape with the classic sleek eldar look, but with the rest of the miniature sculpted I thought that it would benefit from being more organic. In the sketchbook, Jes makes a note that the 90s exarch should have ‘craggier’ detailing and I felt this was an opportunity to capture a little more of that intent. The design I ended up with borrows heavily from Steve Buddle’s superb Adrax Agatone salamanders space marine.
As previously mentioned, the base was sculpted a while after the rest of the miniature, mostly because as usual I lacked good inspiration for what it should look like! I considered various designs for steps but in the end went for something similar to one of the elements on the webway gate kit and then went to town carving eldar runes and craftworld symbols into it. And obviously it’s broken, because 40k.
One of the joys of sculpting for 3D printing rather than injection moulding is that I no longer have to spend hours worrying about how to split a miniature up, whether it will fit on the frame and a myriad other engineering concerns. But I still elected to split this miniature into a few pieces purely to make painting easier. And with that, it was off to the printer!
Overall it was a slightly odd experience working on this sculpt. I was trying to use my experience of working in the studio to anticipate what I thought Jes would do if he were making Fuegan today, while simultaneously trying to satisfy my own artistic taste. It was also a little weird not being able to ask any of my ex-colleagues for feedback. I’ve always been very happy working in isolation but I did find giving and receiving feedback one of the most valuable aspects of working in the studio and it’s definitely something I miss! If the great man himself ever sees this fan art, all I can hope is that he won’t find it too much of an insult to his vision.
When I left Games Workshop I was surprised and overwhelmed by the generosity of Gaku Matsubayashi, who gave me a copy of Jes Goodwin’s Eldar sketchbook as a leaving gift. Of course, I had to do something to try and repay such generosity, so I painted the Howling Banshee Exarch as a gift for Gaku (he sculpted the excellent plastic banshees kit).
I wanted to try a different colour scheme, and settled on the classic combination of magenta/purple and teal, despite some misgivings about it being a bit too Slaaneshy. I decided to retain the pale armour, but moved away from the bone into warm grey (I used pallid wych flesh shaded with skavenblight dinge). I didn’t want to make this look super reflective and shiny (I imagined more of a plastic, super advanced lightweight material), so I just shaded towards the recesses and in one or two other areas to add some visual interest, and edge highlighted with white.
I decided to try something different to the classic Eldar crystalline sword, so I used more of a conventional non metallic metal approach, but introduced more teal towards the body of the miniature to try and guide the eye inwards. The small details are painted with true metallic paints, which I always find add an extra level of contrast when viewing the miniature in the hand (but unfortunately doesn’t translate so well to photos).
I don’t want to criticise the ‘Eavy Metal team, who I think do wonderful work (to tight deadlines). But I do think that they sometimes have a tendency to go too far with the shading on female faces, with the result that to me they often look quite masculine. I’ve gone for a more subtle approach here, which is much more to my taste. Fortunately Gaku has sculpted some lovely big, well defined eyes so I was able to paint the irises without too much difficulty!
I also painted one of the optional exarch helmets to see how it would look, but in the end preferred the unhelmeted version, so that was the one I glued in place before giving the miniature to Gaku.
A full painting tutorial for this miniature is available here.
The plastic Autarch has been around for several years now and although I’ve always thought it was fantastic I’ve somehow never got round to painting it! I decided to put that right and paint up a version in Alaitoc colours, using the box art from the old finecast version as inspiration.
I chose to paint this miniature in more of an ‘Eavy Metal style than I often do, by which I mean edge highlighting and recess shading rather than trying to apply large area highlights. Working in the studio and seeing the amazing work that the team do first hand almost certainly influenced this choice!
Since I’m not currently able to produce full tutorials I’ve been doing my best to share step by step images and recipes on instagram, so follow me there if that’s something that would interest you! (My handle is nicholas.gareth)
My painting of the Triumvirate of Ynnead continues with Yvraine, the second miniature for which I have produced a full step by step painting guide that you can get here. Faces and texturing were the most requested topics from people that got in touch following the chaplain tutorial so hopefully this will do the job!
This was another of those miniatures that took far longer than I expected, partly because I took the insane decision to stipple the large surface area of the dress! I wanted to come up with a completely different colour scheme to the ‘Eavy Metal version and I’m quite pleased with what I ended up with.
As is often the way with me, the base is probably not up to the standard of the rest of the miniature. I have to admit that I found it difficult to come up with any good ideas, since the dress requires a very large perfectly flat area to sit on. But regardless, I think Yvraine herself has come out quite well.
When I first saw the Triumvirate of Ynnead I knew straight away that I’d end up buying it. I’ve been a big fan of the Eldar since I started in the hobby and I seem to remember that the first White Dwarf I ever owned featured them quite prominently. (Complete with back banners and goblin green bases!) I love what Jes Goodwin and co have done with all three miniatures in the new box – they’re definitely right up my particular aesthetic street!
The ‘Eavy Metal paint job on the Visarch is pretty special (Aidan Daly’s handiwork I believe) and I referred to it often during the painting of this piece, but I wanted to try and put a unique spin on the piece.
I chose to paint the helmet and parts of the armour black to try and make him more menacing, and the fiery sword is intended to be a nod towards the old Avatar of Khaine. There’s absolutely no good reason for this in the 40k background as far as I know, but I just thought it looked cool! Of course, the danger in having such a colourful sword is that it can draw the viewer’s eye too much. I’ve tried to balance this with the eyes and the gems but I’m not sure I’ve been wholly successful.
This was one of those projects that sat in an unfinished state for many months, so it’s good to finally clear it off my desk! I had to park it for a while due to all the commissions I’ve been doing recently and I was struggling with the armour anyway. It turns out that it’s very difficult to make all that embossed detail work with my painting style. It’s a tough miniature to paint anyway – sub assemblies are definitely the order of the day! I’m trying not to think too much about the Yncarne right now…
The Visarch is for sale, so if you’re interested in acquiring him then drop me a line and he could soon be travelling through the webway to you!
Gareth Nicholas Blog 