Avatar of Khaine - Part III (Showcase)

 

Feeling hot hot hot.

Here is the "finished" Avatar, or at least as much as will be finished prior to transport and final assembly. There is an army to which it will belong, but I don't know how the bases there look, so I'm leaving that alone for now. The left arm is also not glued in place for transport reasons, so the final position will be slightly different.

I've had to rush through this project recently to have it ready in time, and that shows in a few places. The freehand on the loincloth is missing (mostly because I know I'd mess it up), the gemstones are done slightly unusual (there are over 80 in total!), however I think overall it came out ok. The lack of base is letting it down, but otherwise I'm happy enough.

The sculpt itself is both incredibly detailed, and yet strangely simplistic. Most of the body is the magma glow, a few pieces of armour, and a face. There's no real complexity about it. Just a lot of gemstones.

To paint all of the gemstones, I opted for an alternative approach that takes advantage of contrast paints:

• Ulthuan Grey over the gem. White could be used as well, but I try to avoid pure white whenever I can.
• Basilicanum Grey over the gem. This is a thinner paint and mostly settles around the edge to give definition to the shape.
• Black Templar, but applied so that the paint is kind of drawn across the surface to pool in the darker areas of the gemstone. This is hard to describe, and it might take some practice, but it helps in creating a transition.
• Ulthuan Grey thinly applied to the opposite area to brighten it up again. A second, strong, edge can also help for the next step.
• Pick your Contrast colour and cover the gemstone. As much or as little as you want.

White reflection dot and 'Ardcoat as normal, and the gemstone is done. Again, this isn't quite as nice a result as using more traditional acrylic paint methods, but it's a lot faster when there's so many to get done.

The armour is also something surprisingly simple:

• Morghast Bone over the entire armour.
• Seraphim Sepia as recess shading.
• Skeleton Horde (very similar to Seraphim Sepia actually) glazed into shadowed areas. Contrast paints work well for glazing.
• Wraithbone glazed as a midtone and initial highlight, with a second pass for extra highlights.
• Screaming Skull as a very thin glaze for extra highlights, but this wasn't done much here.

The trick is really using the contrast and shade paints to take advantage of the sculpt's details. With a smoother surface this would actually be much more difficult, but the model has a rougher texture to it that makes it easier to give extra interest to the light and shadow.

And that's the painting highlights. Of course it's not a step-by-step, and there are other areas that I could mention (the greys used for the head and hair for example), but that's all fairly obvious. The paint used doesn't matter, the end result and general colours are more important and visually apparent in the photo.

Final note on the loincloth: that was almost entirely airbrushed. White gives a speckled finish sometimes, and in this case I actually wanted that to make it look more like cloth material and less like vinyl. A very subtle red in places was done to tie it into the rest of the model, as glow reflection from the body, but I kept it to a minimum to not ruin the look.

And now to pack up the model for transport!

-- silly painter.

Avatar of Khaine - Part II

 

That was a very spicy curry.

The Avatar of Khaine's molten body effect is now more or less done, or at least enough that I can move on with other areas. I had initially planned on keeping the "shins" white, but ultimately decided that more black was required and so continued to keep the molten look there as well. There's still a white loincloth to be done, the head will be darkened, the hair will be smoke, and the base I've yet to decide on.

I tried Dark Reaper on some blackened areas, but ultimately it didn't do much for the effect. I wanted the black areas dark, and the Black Templar Contrast paint works well enough that I will very likely just leave it as is now. By keeping those areas black, it helps make the "lava" glow appear much brighter in comparison.

Right now the lava effect is a little too much, and draws the eye to the crotch. Not a good look really. I'm hoping that will change once more of the face is done, but the next steps are very likely going to be painting in all of the metal clasps holding spirit stones. I'm leaning towards a bronze appearance there, rather than gold, wanting a slightly darker tone that's more harmonious with the model rather than trying to stand out too much.

The white of the armour will be more of a beige, or cream, but I'm not yet certain how to paint that. I could lean towards bone colours, but I want something a little brighter than the usual paints used there. There's also the texture of the areas to consider - there's a very good chance that too many layers of paint will simply do away with it, and I would like to use the airbrush on some of those places, but that's now tricky with the molten effect now done. I could varnish and mask off the relevant areas, which is something I'm considering, but need more time to think on the matter.

-- silly painter.

Avatar of Khaine - Part I

 

Yellow Man.

This series might take a little while to get posted, as I'm intending to write out everything in steps, then post everything at once or in short succession.

This is the Forgeworld Avatar of Khaine, spear version. As is typical from Forgeworld, the detail is incredible, and will help in painting this monster. There are very few defects in the model as well, only minor places that were easily fixed with either a bit of putty, or closed up with a dot of superglue. I was concerned with the weight and how few contacts points on the base there are, so that has been pinned and glued. I intend to strengthen the pins with some putty underneath as well, but for not it's a solid connection to the base.

This Avatar will be Ulthwe, with a few tweaks to match that. Shin and forearm armour (decorative only when it comes to an Avatar) I'll go for a bone colour, and generally black elsewhere. This lends itself naturally to the typical magma appearance most commonly painted, and I'm not inclined to make something different right now.

To start with, the model was of course fully cleaned and then primed black. A necessary step with resin, as other layers will easily come off if this isn't done. I then had the clever idea of using an airbrush to spray white into all the magma cracks - only it wasn't that clever. The paint didn't really want to go into the cracks at all, so I ended up just giving the whole model a light "dusting" of White Scar through the airbrush. I'd thinned the paint well beforehand, making it more of a white ink than anything else.

Fortunately the initial white layer helped more than hindered in the end. It picks out details clearly, and serves as a good base for working with Contrast paints. It's also much finer than using a spray can, so I'm going to keep this in mind in future.

Back to a paintbrush, I thinned White Scar with a good amount of flow improver (basically Lahmian Medium) to turn it into a wash, and then directly fed it into all the cracks and left it to dry. This process was repeated about four times until a solid white built up. It's good to allow this to spill over the cracks as well, so don't worry about that.

Next step is to cover all these areas with Lamenters Yellow, the good old glaze paint. I liked the yellow this gives - a very bright, but pale, yellow that fits for the fiery core of the Avatar.

Next is Iyanden Yellow (Contrast). This is basically thinly applied over most of the "skin" but not in the deep of the cracks. Sides, and upper layers, and anywhere that should be ever so slightly cooler. Despite the name, the paint actually appears ever so slightly orange in comparison to the previous step.

Following on, Blood Angels Red (Contrast). This is quite a strong paint, so thin it with contrast medium about 1:1, or even 1:2. This mix is then glazed onto the skin, slightly back from the cracks, and blended where possible into the edges. Use as many coats as feels right.

Finally, Black Templar (Contrast), thinned with the medium in about 1:1 and applied further back from the cracks and given multiple coats to really darken the areas between the cracks.

I've not yet done anything further, but I'm contemplating a slight drybrush of something onto the blackened areas just to give them a little bit more depth. Picking the right colour will be key, so I'll wait until I've gone around the whole model with the contrast paints first, and then see how it looks.

The base has very few adornments. I'd considered buying a specialty base, but will probably just go for some freehand wraithbone styling and then build up scorch marks around it. Plenty of time to think about that step.

-- silly painter.