Chief Librarian Mephiston (finecast) - Part IV

Yeah, go for a staring contest with this guy.

This next update on the progress of Mephiston mainly centres around the face, although other details have been filled in. They're small, so I'll get them out of the way first.

The plasma gun glow is Corax White, with Aethermatic Blue over it. That's it. I'm not sure I want to do more to the charging coils - it's good enough, and I daresay would work better on more precise sculpts. I have some Hellblaster marines that this should be tried on at some point.

The wings of the Blood Angel symbols purposefully have an edging of black. This signifies the Black Rage that Mephiston had to overcome, and is a part of who he is. The rest of the wings:

• Corax White
• Apothecary White (Contrast), applied over the entire area.
• Talassar Blue (Contrast), but thinned with water (not Contrast Medium) and with a very fine brush kind of shaded into select recesses to outline the wings. The water in this case helped it settle only into recessed areas, and thinning is important because I didn't want a stark blue against white wings.

Mephiston's face I wanted to be very pale, and so it's very different to the usual approaches I've been using.

• Corax White, very thin, mostly used to generate a little depth so that I could pick out details. Part of this was painting in the eyes, but they were painted over later so I won't go into detail there.
• Rakarth Flesh over the entire face, except for the eyes.
• Druchii Violet, using a very fine brush, under the cheeks, lips, a little around the brows, and just under the eyes.
• Reikland Fleshshade over the whole face, excluding the eyes.
• Rakarth Flesh again, to highlight the nose, cheekbones, chin, forehead, and to lighten areas where the previous shading steps were too dark.
• Deepkin Flesh for additional highlights. At the time I though I might have gone a little too pale, but with white hair (something Mephiston normally has in the artworks) it turned out quite well in the end.
• Talassar Blue, thinly applied around the eyes, and a little on the upper cheeks. This is meant to be a glow of power emanating from his face; originally I had "normal" eyes painted in, which looked good, but I basically wanted to experiment and try make the model feel more like some kind of powerful psyker.
• White Scar, applied across the eyes.

I'm still debating adding back in pupils to the eyes, but that might end up making him look like he's wearing blue makeup, so for now I won't touch it.

The hair is quite simple, and though an older model it was also designed very nicely and so I didn't have much trouble here. Still, a fine tipped paintbrush is really useful here, as it was for the face.

• Administratum Grey, two or three layers to get an even coat.
• Nuln Oil, just enough to add to the recessed areas without overloading everything with black.
• Administratum Grey to highlight the hair.
• Ulthuan Grey to further highlight the hair.

I didn't do any further steps. There seems no need. White Scar could be used later to add further highlights, but it might be too much in this case, so I'll likely just leave it as it is.