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| Daethskar snapped on the workbench. I can now see a few finishing touches will need to be made. Look at those splodges on his toes and the green staining around his lettering. The camera doesn't lie! |
Daethskar stands sentinel on the front cover of the third edition of Warhammer today just as stoically as he has ever done. Remote, indifferent, inimical... Oddly ambivalent to the chaos swirling around him. When I was much younger, I used to study the front cover of my for hours and devise backstories about each of the characters depicted, much like I'd do with the Heroquest cover a little later in my youth. I had no inkling at that stage that many of the personalities shown there were actual models. As many of you readers will no doubt remember... we only had the rulebooks, White Dwarf, our friends' collections and the blister pack wall for reference.
So much was easily missed.
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| If only I could make him look like this! |
For those of us a little older, we may have recognised the brass armoured warrior instantly when WFB3 was revealed in White Dwarf. This blurry snap was taken from my own copy of that seminal issue. He was part of the C35 range of Chaos warriors released in 1985 with the then brand new slotta bases. The range was sculpted by '80s heavyweights Bob Naismith, Alan and Michael Perry and Aly Morrison. I have no idea which of these sculpted Daethskar but if I were to guess I'd say Aly Morrison by the feel of the figure.
He is a figure of some pedigree. He is also very difficult to photograph. None of the images I've shared on this post do justice to my paintjob but this is still the best I can do with my crappy old Samsung phone camera. I'm hoping to lay my hands on MFM's fancy iPhone one of these days and see what I can achieve with that. As you can imagine, she isn't too keen about me taking down the workshop.
This figure has been in my collection for about ten years. I bought it on eBay in a very poor condition. The axe head had been bent off and the model was rather grimy and tired. He looked like he'd kicked about in a boxes for a very long time and got a good bashing. I repaired the break and cleaned him up but never stripped the paint from him as he'd only been based coated. I also liked the lettering that the unknown grognard who sold it to me had presumably done. Having got a small part of my collection back a couple of months ago, I've spent what little free time I've had trying to sort everything through. I have my WD collection back pretty much complete as well as all of the 3rd Edition associated rulebooks, save WFB itself! I'm sure I've seen that book amongst other possessions so here's hoping that I eventually locate it.
Daethskar ended up plonked in a large pile of uncompleted figures and old projects. My unfinishables. Over the last couple of months I've happily tinkered out in my workshop, listening to ghost story podcasts and audiobooks and just painted on whim. I've not actually completed anything until today, I've just restarted a large number of older projects. With Christmas finally here, and time at last on my hands I have in my mind the concept of 'The Twelve Days of Citadel'. Each day of my holiday, I am going to try and finish a figure from that looming pile of unfinished models.
Why Daethskar? Well, I've always wondered about the unknown grognard who owned this figure before me. Who might they have been? Why did they go through with the effort of skillfully painting the model's name of the slotta-base but never finishing the paintjob? I decided to keep this relict of his former owner's efforts and complete the model in the guise of the character shown on John Sibbick's fantastic piece of cover art. I assume that the Citadel staff just sent him a pack of models and instructed to paint them into the artwork.
He is also a link to the past. I can remember repairing him in my old front room in my former life when my son and daughter were much younger. To find him once more in the remnants of my old belongings was a link back to that moment but also a sign that things are rapidly moving forwards in my new life. The heating is in and finally working (please don't ask about that odyssey- haha) while a functional kitchen will be installed in April after two and a half years without one. So to complete Daethskar is like starting again, again!
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| How hard can it be to take a photograph, Orlygg? Can you spot the repair on the axe? |
Painting him was quite simple. Shining Gold over the original base coat before washing over with some chestnut ink. I then cleaned up with Shining Gold. Once the surfaces were pretty consistent, I highlighted with e 50:50 mix of Mithril Silver and Shining Gold before edge highlighting with just Mithril Silver. Trouble was, he looked too clean and bright. More of a kid's knight in shining armour than a devilish and dark warrior of the Warhammer world. For a while, he sat on my paint station while I tinkered with other things but suddenly at school in some random moment it dawned on me to give him a green wash. Using my trusty '80s Citadel Colour green ink for a few glazes brought out the character marvellously. The verdigris effect made Daethskar seem more ancient and remote, just like on the cover of the WFB3. I added a further wash in places using Hawk Turquoise (a fantastic colour if I might say) to deepen this shading and then left him alone. I toyed with a final silver edge highlight but I feared I'd just end up with a figure who looked too shiny again.
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| This rear shot probably gives the best sense of what the figure looks like in terms of colour. |
Having completed the base in my traditional way, I left the lettering untouched and felt satisfied that I'd actually completed a model after two months of procrastination. As I said before, trying to capture a decent image of the finished model was rather challenging. All the photos you can see here were taken on my rather basic Samsung phone camera using the lighting in my workshop so please do give me a break.
So, nearly ten years in the making Daethskar is finally finished and the process of getting him ready to post about and energised me to get some more figures done. With plenty of free time ahead I hope to get down that workshop each day over Christmas and New Year and try and push my rusty skills a little.
Thanks for reading,
Orlygg
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