Wraithlord - Part III

 

Sparkly sword!

This model is quickly turning into a bit of an annoyance really. I've already done what I intended with it and it's mostly just going through the motions at this point.

I'm still struggling with the black armour highlights, but using Two Thin Coats paints of Trooper White and Doom Death Black I tried to see how well point highlights would work. And it works well: I managed to the right of the head to make something that looks like shiny highlight point. The only real problem is that it took so incredibly long that I couldn't justify continuing. Next I figured I would simply try drybrushing and focus on the overall highlights of the model without going into detail.

I still struggle to drybrush, but with these paints I managed...something. It's not really drybrushing, more like damp-smashing. The TTC paints have a longer drying time, so using a drybrush I loaded up some paint and initially highlighted some areas before feathering those out, before mixing in more black and kind of wet-blending it down. Think dry brushing motions to perform wet blending to smooth out the transitions. It's not terribly precise but it worked well enough to build up the overall lights and I could go back in with black to darken areas and better define certain shapes.

The head, or helm, is Typhon Ash (from Citadel) airbrushed on to build up a solid layer and then a few sepia tones to add shading. I originally went with Skeleton Horde, but that was far too soft (possibly because I used too much thinner) and so then went with Darkoath Flesh. I wasn't being careful, the airbrush pressure was too high and there was water mixed in - basically poor glazing and some speckling on there, but this is actually something I wanted. Ulthwé are bone and black, but bone here wouldn't really be ultra-smooth so I wanted some texture to show through. A thin airbrushed glaze of Typhon Ash again across the "face" and that's about all. I'll either need to freehand or use a decal at some point to add the Ulthwé symbol.

The loincloth or whatever it is, I used an old brush to kind of stab the paint on to build up texture. Again, I didn't want smooth: I wanted texture to separate it from the armour. I built up from Doombull Brown covering all of the cloth, then XV-88 (at this point it really looked like flayed skin, must remember that for Nightlords) and then Balor Brown, each step covering less than before to keep shadows along folds. This was still too stark for my liking, so I then used Typhon Ash to glaze over pretty much all of it - enough to lighten to more of an off-white cloth, but not enough to hide the underlying texture or shadows completely.

The blade I purely mucking around. Trooper White across all of it, but too little to build up a solid layer. Typhon Ash to strengthen the colour, but it was too thin and spidered across areas. Magenta ink glazed across the base, then transitioning to Aethermatic Blue, leaving the end off-white. I was going for a crystal look, and it works here more for the contrast against the desaturated colours of the rest of the model.

No idea yet on how to paint up the rest of the model, but I'll keep at it as and when I feel motivated and see where I end up I suppose.

-- silly painter

Wraithlord - Part II

 

Back in black.

Not exactly going to be a long post, but I wanted to record a small experiment with the Wraithlord. The basic summary is: highlighting black by undercoating with off-white.

I've been using Typhon Ash a lot recently, mostly because it's the closest I could get to wraithbone in an airbrush paint and I have two bottles of it and need to use it up now. After the airbrush mania a few weeks back, I had the inspiration to see what I could do about black.

Black is very difficult to to work with. It's an absence of colour, and so any colour added stands out in very stark contrast. Grey tones end up flat, but picking the wrong slightly-cool or slightly-warm tones can mess up the entire feel of it. I have trouble with volumetric highlights for some of these reasons: smooth gradients with black are extremely difficult, best done with glazes, and are very time consuming. My physical accurate black often has fewer such highlights in reality, or they're very subtle, but that doesn't help a miniature stand out and be readable by the viewer. Some liberties need to be taken, but they often just end up looking like stone.

The Wraithlord has shapes that lend itself naturally to an airbrush. It's larger, curved surfaces are ideal for building up gradients with an airbrush, and a less than perfect finish might be explained by the Aeldari material used for most of their construction (wraithbone). I'm improving with the airbrush a lot, particularly in getting smoother gradients out from multiple passes, and basically thought I'd give it a go. If I end up collecting any Eldar then it's likely I'd paint them up as Ulthwe.

Typhon Ash would give me a warmer tone to the finish, in theory. So I used that to build up where I wanted highlights and tried to keep the upper part of the model brighter. I had to correct myself while doing this step because it's easy to get lost in details and forget about the larger picture. Once happy with this step, I then used Black Templar (Contrast) to bring back a black finish, more heavily in the lower areas and surfaces facing downwards. The end result is that is looks kind of....grey, like darkened stone. This fits for a Wraithlord, but I chose Black Templar for a reason: Abaddon Black is darker still and I could use that to nudge the contrast where I wanted.

The left leg has some experimentation with colours from the palette where I wanted to get more of a feel about how this would turn out. Mechanicus Standard Grey, White Scar, Ulthuan Grey, and Abaddon Black in varying degrees to shade some areas more, and highlight others. Edges and tops of the "bumps" make them stand out more, defining the shapes without necessarily brightening things too much. Upper areas of the model I'd use brighter edge highlights. It's working well enough, but I'm not sure how motivated I am to continue. I can see how using very small and bright edge highlights can make it look reflective and smooth, where the dulled effect I'm going for definitely gives a rougher, matt finish impression. I would certainly like to explore the shiny side of things, but I'm not sure that fits theme of this model too well. Perhaps i can try that on the blade later.

Final note: I missed a lot of paint when stripping the original model, and again when priming it. Patches of red were showing up underneath, and actually it looked really cool, almost like there was some nightmare glow from below. I'll have to keep that in mind for future reference.

-- silly painter

Wraithlord - Part I

I did a thing.

To add to the pile of in-progress projects, I was rather inspired to slightly modify a Wraithlord that was standing about in boxes of spares. I hope the original owner (you know who you are) will not mind. The original pose always looked a little to statuesque for my liking, and was at odds with what are supposed to be graceful war machines. I have a small jewellery saw from working on Contemptor dreadnoughts, and I figured this shouldn't be too difficult.

I wasn't sure what pose to do: one leg crouched, or both legs bent. The former goes with a swordsman look, the latter a hunter in waiting. I figured this was not the sort of thing to be pouncing on prey, so went with the swordsman look - and it also was easier to only carve away at one of the knees.

Taking the model apart as best I could first, I cut through select areas to make it easier: the shoulders (and shoulder guards), the legs at the hips, the ankles (part cut, part rip & tear), and the shoulder weapon. The hands separated at the wrists easily enough, but the feet needed to be carved off the prior base. The head and loincloth also just popped off - most of the model was stuck with superglue I suspect, making some of this much easier. The model's right knee took the most effort and some very careful cuts with the saw, but I managed to salvage the knee itself which would later cover up pinning to bend the leg.

Stripping the model was fairly simple. I tried kitchen degreaser first, and that worked mildly ok - but probably needed several days. I didn't have such patience and decided to give isopropyl alcohol a go (aka rubbing alcohol) and that worked a treat - used outside for good ventilation, gloves on, and a very old brush.

And there the pieces remained for quite a long time. I was stuck on how to base it, which is critical if I wanted to have one leg bent and the other straight. I simply wasn't sure how I was going to setup the slope this would require, and I wasn't keen on buying materials that I wouldn't use much of. Then it occurred to me: Rylanor turned out alright and I still had some of the shattered dominion base left. I could use pieces of that, some putty, later texture paints and perhaps grass and flower tufts to build it up.

Difficulties in pinning have made some of the joints less than ideal, and in future I should definitely use some handy-hands and rubber clips to hold pieces in place to get an idea of the angle to drill. Pinning works best when the pin (paperclips in this case) are straight. The knee required some bending, and the arms, but the hips were a bit of a nightmare and I could have done a lot better. Also, better where possible to glue one end of the pin, then cover it in some putty before gluing the attaching part. This will push the putty more securely between the join and give a superior connection overall.

The forearms had something attached (not any weapons), but I felt they stuck out too much and were distracting and so removed them and filed things back. I'm not entirely sure if I'll fill in the gaps or leave them there for visual interest. I'll probably putty over it eventually. The loincloth no longer fit with the lowered stance, and I didn't want my lack of sculpting skills to try make a different one, so I simply shortened it with a dremel until it fit. The groin guard was also ever so slightly mismatched with the changed leg position and so has very small section removed either side. All of this adds extra silhouette volume to the lower areas; without this it might seem far to visually top-heavy.

The head isn't glued in place yet, and I'm thinking to add some hair dangling from the back perhaps - really not sure if that would add or detract from things. The shoulder weapon isn't glued in place yet either, but I think that will be the final pose - and I might want to pin that rather than relying on glue.

Once I've added some texture paints to the base (or sand, or whatever) and primed everything then I'll need to figure out which Craftworld. Probably Ulthwe. I'll also try really hard to lean on the airbrush a lot and not get carried away with details - while I could easily go overboard with painting, I do want to try move through models a bit quicker in future. I also have no plans to rush the rest once the model is assembled, so it might take a long while to reach part 2. Just depends on motivation and inspiration.

-- silly painter.

Jain Zar - Part II (Showcase)

 

That's an impressive pony tail.

It's been a little while since I was last intending to post, but things keep getting in the way right now. I'm having to restructure routines a little bit, so I suspect for the rest of the year painting will be sporadic again, but it certainly won't stop. And despite not getting much else done, I have at least managed to complete Jain Zar.

(note: forgive many spelling and grammar mistakes that will no doubt exist - I need sleep!)

I'll admit that I lost some motivation part way through this model and it took a bit of a change of perspective to get that back and complete it. I basically decided not to care so much about painting precision (which is very much Golden Demon style) and care more about the "feel" of everything. That's not to say I'm unhappy with the model, quite the opposite, but it's not competition level.

Last time I had some trouble deciding on how to paint the various "red" material (cloth, streamers, grips, etc). One of the differences between materials that gives visual clues to how hard the surfaces is, comes from reflections: strong edge highlights, value contrast, bright points, all give an impression of a hardened surface reflecting light. Keeping midtones and shadows, but without much in the way of highlights, will give more of a cloth impression and is exactly what I did for the loincloth. Deepened the shadows with blue mixed with burgundy, increased some areas with Mephiston Red added instead, and that was about it. The hairband increases the light/shadow contrast and has a Druchii Violet wash to help give definition, but the extremes aren't like edge highlights on armour. The streamers are just glaze highlighted with Mephiston Red and not much else.

The handles I thought worked well enough that I might start to use something similar on future models:

• Barak-Nar Bugundy
• Druchii Violet
• Word Bearers Red, focusing more on surfaces facing any light source.
• Tuskgor Fur, and more prominent highlights.

The hair I like the least, mostly because black hair is difficult enough at the best of times and yet I wanted it distinct from some of the armour. I ended up with:

• Daemonette Hide lightly brushed over the upper areas.
• Night Lords Blue mixed in and the lightly brushed over lower areas that still received highlights.
• Mephiston Red / Dryad Bark (1:1) mixed in again and sparingly added to shaded areas.
• Nuln Oil to add some depth around where the hair meets other surfaces, e.g around the mask, hairband.

Black armour is semi-NMM heavily influenced from Juan Hidalgo's tutorials:

• Skavenblight Dinge to place some reflection points and highlights.
• Stormvermin Fur glazed to increase the value of those points.
• Administratum Grey for more extreme edges.
• White for dots of the brights points.
• Black glazed as appropriate to smooth transitions or darken areas.

The real difference is that the armour is more black than steel. The weapon uses the same colours as I use for Blood Angels black armour, while a little Dark Reaper and Thunderhawk Blue (glazed back where necessary) give the shaft minor visual interest.

The eyes are very simple: Ulthuan Grey, White Scar, and then Aethermatic Blue. It's not enough to really bring focus to the face too much (at least not from the angle the photo is taken), but I'm not entirely sure I want that - I want the miniature as a whole to be the focus, not one individual part of it; it's difficult to get an impression of fluid motion if all the attention is on the mask.

Spirit stones are Mephiston red and Yriel Yellow mixed in various proportions, with the usual black darkened area and a white spot highlight (and then gloss varnish at the very end).

The blades I tried some NMM with. Very similar to the black armour, but swap out Administratum Grey for Ulthuan Grey and shifting everything into the bright grey spectrum rather than black. I played with inks a fair bit as they're very useful for glazing: black for the black areas of course, but a little crimson to reflect the streamers, and green (with a blue tint) for the tri-blades. I also had some of the Night Lords Blue on the palette and so mixed that with Ulthuan Grey and very (very) lightly glazed that on top of the other weapon as a sky reflection. That glaze is really the keystone to it all. There are of course glazes and glazes and glazes to try get some blending going on, during which I realised that very shiny metal quite often doesn't have smooth blends because it's reflecting solid objects with defined borders.

Am I happy with the blade NMM? No, not really, but I can myself starting to understand it more and with practice I'll probably be semi-decent at it one day.

With Jain Zar done, the could should be at 13, however I bought some Assault Intercessors and old-school jump packs while the latter are still available. I just think that combination looks better than the newer design, personal preference. That effectively brings the count back down to just 3. This makes me want to finish the Terminators next while I look around for motivation to get back onto the Dreadnoughts.

-- silly painter.

Jain Zar - Part I

 

"Storm of Silence", or maybe "Silent, but deadly."

Another model that has been sitting in the pile for a while is the relatively recent Phoenix Lord of the Howling Banshees: Jain Zar, the Storm of Silence. I really like the sculpt, a refresh of which was sorely needed compared to the old one. This new version is an even more dynamic pose and really sells this idea of a dancing whirlwind of blades, graceful but with terrible purpose. To do that, the sculptor obviously wasn't going for inredible realism, not with that amount of hair - and I think that's best. This is a model, meant to capture the feeling a particular character and their traits rather than be an accurate depiction of their physical form. That's always been the case for Games Workshop, but I think this model captures the idea particularly well and I've been thinking how to paint it for quite some time. I will state that I did not, and do not, intend to paint this model to the same technical level as Azrakh. That model was for learning more than anything else, and this one I want to play more with the overall composition of light and colour.

Originally I had intended to paint the armour in a similar bone pattern to the Avatar of Khaine, but when I came to it, it just didn't seem to fit. The armour has hardened surfaces, but don't really look like additional pieces compared to the rest of the bodysuit - more like they're part of it, not overlaid. Something rigid like bone wouldn't do.

Looking back at the original model there are blues and violets, which is when I was struck by an odd piece of inspiration from the background story. Jain Zar existed before the Fall of the Aeldari, and was apparently part of a precursor to Drukhari - which traditionally are painted with a hefty amount of purple. The particular power in the warp that spawned from the downfall of the Aeldari is also often painted with purples, violets, and burgundy. It occurred to me that this probably came from colours of the Eldar civilisation - and so the armour of Jain Zar might have a nod to that.

To start with the colours, the blade isn't final. That was simply messing about with blues on the palette, and I intend to paint over it later - although I do like the idea of a blue hint to the blade. The hair I had also airbrushed first, using some purples and whites in very thin layers to build up the volumes...and then promptly ruined the lot by using Black Templar over the whole thing. I thought it was thinned enough, but everything just went black again afterwards. Oops.

The main armour is a combination of six paints, however only three of them are really needed. I used six because I wanted to get a feel of the paints, not for any transition reasons, and I did blend between all of them on the palette quite a lot. The closer a paint comes to white, the more difficult I find it to glaze and blend with other colours, and it took quite a while to get this far. I also tried to avoid very strong value contrasts between "panels" and "garment" - I wanted to give an impression of a hardened surface that is also part of the more flexible material, and softening the edge transitions can help do that. The colours used are:

• Barak-Nar Burgundy, mostly in shadowed areas.
• Daemonette Hide.
• Warpfiend Grey.
• Slaanesh Grey.
• Ionrach Skin.
• Deepkin Flesh.

If I were to choose only three, I'd go for Barak-Nar Burgundy, Daemonette Hide, and Ionrach Skin. Those were the colours used the most, and mixing to various degrees between them can give close approximations to the others.

The lighter areas are the right breast, right side of the face, and right arm. I imagined the light coming from the weapon, or close by it, fading towards darker colours on the opposite side and towards her feet. This would naturally draw the eye to upper chest, and I'm hoping a spot of colour on the mask will draw attention more directly to the facial area. I've yet to decide on which colour for the eyes - red, blue, or teal. The vambrace and and other more obvious armoured parts I'm intending to borrow from something done on Azrakh by making them "shiny black" rather than silver, with a little Dark Reaper just to add interest (I'll probably using Thunderhawk Blue to highlight that just a little more later on). I'd considered using metallic paints, but that somehow doesn't gel with the concept of the Aeldari using Wraithbone for their manufacturing, and the shiny surface would almost certainly detract away from everything else. So in this case, using NMM techniques again seems appropriate.

I've used Barak-Nar Burgundy as the base colour for cloth, weapon grips, etc, merely as a colour sketch at this stage. I'll probably go for reds on the spirit stones, maybe a blue here or there, and the burgundy seemed appropriate as a starting point. I don't want a bright red, so I'll see where this takes me.

The base came about almost by accident. While I didn't want bone coloured armour on Jain Zar, it did seem suitable for the ruins of some ancient shrine perhaps. Morghast Bone, Seraphim Sepia, Skeleton Horde, and Screaming Skull. Actually Seraphim Sepia looks very much similar to Skeleton Horde, with the paint consistency more the different than anything else. While doing that I realised that it was a good value contrast to Jain Zar; she is using darker tones overall, and so a brighter and more colourful base might serve as a good contrast to that. I also reasoned that perhaps the ruins are from a time long past, maybe on a world that is now quiet from the echoes of past wars - or in other words, plants have started to grow on it. This would add a splash of colour and visual interest, and as a bonus needs no sculpting from me. I also conveniently recently was gifted some "flowers" that I wanted to try out. Between those, some grass tufts, and a small amount of flock glued in place, the base turned out alright. It needs a bit of tidying up still, and a few overhanging parts could be trimmed back, but I think overall it serves the purpose I intended.

I'm not sure where to go with the hair next. I want it to read as black hair, but some volume highlighting needs to be done. Perhaps a light "dampbrush" with a mostly desaturated violet, followed up with Nuln Oil to bring it back and better define some areas. I'll consider further as I get more of the armour completed.

-- silly painter.

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.