Azrakh the Annihilator - Part V (Showcase)

 

Also known as "Chainfinger".

Finally calling this model done. I could do more. I could always do more. Some of the face can be cleaned up, some of the green glow behind the head could be brightened, the base is quite plain, etc. I've just reached the motivational limit on this model however, and I'm calling it done.

What a monster to paint up, but an impressive result in the end. And I learned a lot about NMM techniques. On that note, the photo above does not do it justice at all. Between the lighting, camera settings, jpeg compression, scaling, etc, it loses some of the brightness of the extreme highlight points which sell the NMM effect. Too bad, but the actual model does look better.

Ultimately the model is very readable. The shapes are clear, the volumes are clear, the details are easily discernible. The face I actually think is one of my better ones, even if half of that is the great sculpt it's still the look of a mentally unstable and very angry character. For the face I wanted a pale look, but with deep shadows to give that kind of drawn, aged look:

• Bugman's Glow in two or three thin layers to give a solid base to work with.
• Darkoath Flesh applied all over, but not too liberally. I also removed any pooling in the eyes and mouth.
• Bugman's Glow again to start building up the more raised areas.
• Cadian Fleshtone glazed along upper surfaces, leaving some of the previous step alone.
• Kislev Flesh glazed more to act as a pale filter and offer yet more highlighting.
• Flayed One Flesh for the most prominent highlights (nose, chin, forehead, cheeks). I also mixed in a very small amount of white ink for the most extreme highlights.

The eyes are white, and then Iyanden Yellow. Nothing special there. Lips are some of the flesh tones mixed with Khorne Red for a dark pink. The tattoo on the head is purposefully a little less "perfect" than in references - I figured it was done with the blood of opponents and without much care given over to artistry. The teeth are white, then black washed into the recesses and excess removed. I could definitely do more here, but just really can't be bothered.

The green glow emanating from behind the head is different to reference pictures. I didn't make the grooves in the cowling (for lack of a better term) be the source of any lights because it would be difficult to make them not look dark while still having a glow on the outer edges. This is something that to me doesn't fit nicely on the box art, even if it's very striking on the original Mark Gibbons artwork. So I just had the glow coming from deep behind the head somewhere.

• Waywatcher Green (the old glaze paint) glazed over the head. This was actually a mistake - the paint must have gone slightly bad, or I'm using it in an unintended fashion: some areas it dries nearly white. I've had this problem with shades before as well. Mostly it ended up ok, but I'm not sure about using that paint in future.
• Waaagh Flesh to give the initial light volumes. This is actually used up to the most outer edges of the glow, where the light naturally falls off the most.
• Kabalite Green for some edges and general inner surfaces more affected by the light source.
• Warpstone Glow for edges and sharply defined points.
• Warpstone Glow / White, which was mixed and used for extreme highlight points. This is far too desaturated for the most part, so I ended up adding more white into the mix to really define the extreme highlights, and then afterwards glazing back over them with Warpstone Glow to give more of a vibrant, saturated green.

For just about every steps written above there's often not a clear application of one paint and then another. I mixed colours on the palette quite frequently to help smooth out transitions, and went back and forth between steps to fix mistakes or adjust if I felt it wasn't looking quite right.

The base I glued some brass detailing onto, and then painted it all just like with the recent MkIV Assault Squad. I toyed with the idea of adding a pile of skulls, but that would have added too much noise and taken focus away from the facial area - not something I wanted to do after putting in all that effort. I then thought about putting some cabling across the floor, but paperclip I was going to use was too heavily influenced by the magnet underneath the base. I could use putty to roll out something, but this is another item that I think is just too much effort to continue with. I did use Black Templar, thinned and feathered out, to darken the base around the feet - some of that isn't a trick of the lighting, it's actually how I painted it.

And with this model done, the tally is now at 12.5 and I can start thinking of what to focus on next.

-- silly painter.