Monday 26 May 2014

A Warhammer Bestiary: Chaos Cultist


The holidays are upon me once more. Lots of family time, including a trip to the beach, has been spent I have left this blog alone for a while. I often find that this is a good thing, as endless updates of every tiny Oldhammer related thing I do would be tedious, would it not? 

So to kick things off once more, let's revisit Brugal Vassel in a little more detail shall we? Those of you who have read the battle report concerning the Daemon-Prince and Woodcutter will no doubt be familiar with this miniature, as he played a leading role in that scenario. 

As many of you will know, I am working on painting fabric at the moment. I enjoy setting myself little targets and working on them through the models I select for this series. In years past, I must admit to often choosing miniatures that were well within my comfort zone (plastic Space Marines) but I grew dissatisfied that the models I was producing were not of the standard I was after. I felt that they lacked 'a style'. Now, I am forced to select models based on the Bestiary and in many cases come across things that I would have never previously thought about painting. 

For the Chaos Cultists mention in the Bestiary I chose the first model that does not have its origins in the Warhammer range. This miniature was part of the Cthulhu collection put out by Citadel in the mid '80s. Later, it was included as part of the Shadows Over Bogenhafen range as an example of one of the cultists. In that regard, I chose to paint it up as it would cover both bases - a suitable cultist model and an opportunity to paint fabric. 


As I have written before, I have always found fabric a difficult subject to get looking right on a model. So, I had a quite glance through my WD archive and read a bit of what has been published online. Piecing together all this information, I managed to concoct my own method which seems to produce good results. What struck me was how simple the technique was in the end. Basecoat over white, in this case Imperial Purple, and shade with the base coat mixed with black, probably 40:60 black/purple. I watered this mix down and carefully applied it where I though the folds were at their deepest before tidying things up with the basecoat once more. Once dry, it was very simple to add a little Bleached Bone to the basecolour and highlight the edges of the folds. I kept the paint here very fluid, almost like milk, as I find it so much easier to apply in this state. I added a little white to this highlight mix and added an extra hint here and there too. Everything else was finished off using my usual method. 

The job was done in about one hour.

What do you think?

Orlygg

2 comments:

  1. Good stuff. That's a great result for time spent. I tend to approach fabrics in the same way also, shading first, tidying up, then adding watery highlights.

    One small criticism I have is that the knife looks a little off to me above where the blade meets the guard. I think you should blend in the silver from higher up the blade closer to the guard so that it looks like just a thin line of very dark shade running parallel to the guard. There seems to be too much shadow in there. Looks fine in the rear photo.

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  2. Great painting work as always - the miniature reminds me of a full-size version of that chaos familiar with the scrolls.
    I've nominated you for a Liebster Award, in case you haven't got one already... http://woffboot.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/i-accept-this-liebster-award-on-behalf.html

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