Crimson Court, Gorath the Enforcer (Showcase)

 

So you're walking down a dark alley at night and see this guy...

For something a little bit different I've always wanted to try a model with a very limited palette, focusing on shape and form rather than colour. That's when I struck upon an idea with this model: it wasn't motivating me for whatever reason, but I considered that as a vampire he'd but out during the deep of night where colours are far more muted and with perhaps a little moonlight to to tease out that magical atmosphere.

Feels a bit like cheating, but I kind of like the end result. It's incredibly fast to do, evocative, and the yellow eyes absolutely sell that this is an undead creature and not just a statue.

The first step I tried was actually to use oils. I need more practice with them, and this seemed an ideal place to get some in. It didn't work in one sense, but has lead me to the realisation of how I would like to use oils on miniatures: not as base colours, but instead as filters over areas. Oils make for brilliant glazes, depending on the medium they are mixed with. So I think in future that's where I'll start to practice more: glazes, filters, pin shades.

Although a failure for base colours, I did recognise during some testing that nice colours for a moonlit evil are black (of course), a dark blue, violet, and a light blue. In that order, oddly enough, from darkest to lightest. Using the violet as a midtone just works - I can't really explain it proper colour theory, but the violet has a higher value than the dark blue, and so acts as a kind of value and chromatic highlight to bring out the features. Black of course is used for deeper recesses and added contrast, and light blue is the opposite - used to highlight some edges and for zenithal lighting based on relative location to the moonlight. In this case, the moon would be behind and to the (model's) left.

Caped, but not a crusader. And a notched mace.

After allowing the oils to cure slightly (and then varnishing because I'm impatient) I set to work to redo the model. The oil colours still come through in the end, but an airbrush just makes everything so much easier to do for this kind of effect.

• Night Lords Blue as a basic dark blue. Kantor Blue would also suffice, but with the oils already giving quite a dark base to work from I went with Night Lords.
• Phoenician Purple mixed with Khorne Red (3:1) for a violet hue, angled from the sides and top mostly. Focus was more on left for this.
• Lothern Blue mixed with dirty water in the cup to then gradually add some highlights.

That's it for the airbrushing. A shade of black oil paint was then done to add some more depth in places and help define the shape. Mineral spirits (artist's grade low odour) really means you can just slap it on and it will settle in the recesses without worrying about tinting other surfaces.

Lothern Blue was then added in a few places for edge highlighting, but built up slowly rather than going for strong lines immediately. Using the same colour as the last airbrushing step just helps strengthen the colour without going too bold or bright. A tiny bit of White Scar mixed in on the palette also helps to make just a few of those edges really stand out, but the key behind all this highlighting is subtlety - I overdid it in a couple of places, and it's surprisingly easy for that to happen without noticing.

White Scar for the eyes and teeth, and some Iyanden Yellow contrast on the eyes to make them yellow, and that about wraps it up. There is some of that red varnish technical paint (Blood for the Blood God) on bottle at the hip - completely out of place, but basically I just wanted to. Call it a little experiment in perhaps one day doing a grey scale model, but then picking out points of interest in some hue (normally red) to catch the eye. A very common effect in cinematography. I can imagine a diorama with a horde of creatures in the night, surrounding a hero painted in red as they prepare to do battle.

Despite the speed at which this model was painted up (all told about half a day, but with a night break to let the oils cure) I quite like the end result. I like it much more than if I'd gone the traditional route. This simple experiment really gives so much more emotion to the end result. It's not just a miniature, it's almost a small scene from a larger diorama all on its own. A good way to wrap up the Crimson Court.

-- silly painter.

P.S - and that means 9 models in the running tally of how many I'm permitted to buy.