The White Dwarf - Part III (Showcase)

For such a dented axe, it's very clean.

 Before anything else, yes I know an axe like that wouldn't be so bright and shiny and clean. I just wanted to practice NMM and make the blade different to everything else. Also I can't be bothered to proof read this, so apologies for all the spelling & grammar mistakes which no doubt exist.

There's not a whole lot to say really - most of the finishing touches were NMM in some fashion or other, but before that I'll mention the base: Mechanicus Standard Grey (one of my favourite Citadel colours for anything grey) and then just random browns from the palette to make a stone tiled floor. I was originally intending to go with a green base in honour of the time period from which this model comes, but as a dwarf I thought that stone halls in the mountains was a more suitable setting, or some tavern, really anything but fields of grass.

The beard ornamentation uses the same gold as recently tried on the cape of the Blood Angels Praetor, just on a much smaller scale. maybe it's too bright compared to the rest of the model, maybe it attracts too much attention, and yet I think it still fits. It does help draw the eye to the base and view the detail there, giving rise to the scene and story I was going for. Given the overall cooler tones of the beard, and to contrast with the warmer gold, then blue gemstones was really the only option there. Kantor Blue, and then again just whatever was on the palette (I write that a lot, but it's incredibly freeing as a painter to just paint instead of trying to hunt down the "proper" colour to use).

That cloak really would get dirty.

The axe was painted initially with The Fang, and I debated for a while how I would go about shining it up. There were purples at one point (which are faintly visible still), some blues, but in the end I went with....Stegadon Scale Green. Another good choice would be Incubi Darkness, but I was following a recipe from Ph3lan's Miniatures on this one.

• Stegadon Scale Green
• Dawnstone
• Administratum Grey
• White Star (TTC)

There is an awful lot of back & forth with all of that. A lot of glazing, blending, darkening, brightening, mixing, shifting bright spots around.

I looked at Conan the Barbarian artwork to get an idea of how to paint an axe. I figured those people know a lot about light placement, and I could learn from it. One feature I noted was that the edge of the blade wasn't the widest point of bright reflection, but instead the base of the blade. This makes sense as the blade is angled, which makes a natural darker line around it.

The other thought that occurred to me was that instead of placing just bright reflection points, I should consider the metal as bright and consider where to place darker areas. Or maybe a mixture of both. I have more of an understanding of shape in any case, so victory even if not everything NMM lines up properly how the eye would expect.

Also, it really (really!) helps to not try and blend until the basic sketch is done first.

-- silly painter