Saint Arabella

Not much to report this week. I have been slowly chipping away at a multitude of projects and it is only saint Arabella that has made it to the photo range...

As for the paint scheme it is not much to report either, it is black on black with some more black. I would have wished that the all saints would have been more like Katarine were the armor is more prominent and could have been painted in the respective order color. But as it is it is just black robes and some small parts sticking out.

And as usual I have to protest against the "special effects" on the model. I do not like when they add smoke etc that needs to be painted but can't be painted realistically...  but that is what it is...  but if some designer is reading this by mistake... please make the smoke etc optional...

Well, next up is Fenrir's head... I finished the GS work and have started painting. I am doing this as a test piece to see if the whole armor peeling of thing works or not. If it works I will add it to the rest of the armor panels.

Surtr head WIP

Finally inspiration struck like a thunder bolt from a clear sky. I just knew what Surtr would look like. First of is the head as I already had it washed. I started out with a picture of the Warbringer head and pulled it into paint. I split the head down the front, moving the central pieces apart and added a shin guard (or beard as it turned out). Also rounded of the eyes a bit on the top and cut back the forehead shield.

Once I had done this digitally I when into the garage and brought out the jewelers saw and started carving the head a part, much as I had done in paint. I had to use a scalpel to cut away some of the pieces that needed to go to open up the front of the face. That was a bit fiddly but resin is really easy to carve so with some patience it was all done. Once the pieces were glued back on in their new positions I started working with green stuff. For the helm all the joints etc had to be covered to smooth things out. Also the beard needed some smoothing, and still does. There is still a lot of details needed like rivets etc but that would have to wait. First I needed to fill out the gap with some underlying texture in the recently created gap. First I thought of adding a grill like on the warlord head...  but then inspiration struck again...  off course there would be a demon face looking out form behind the face guard...  and there we are. Once the face is done and I see that everything fit I will move on the the final details and the head will be done. At least for now. I am thinking on adding a horse mane to the to top of the head like a roman helmet... but that will interfere with the neck shield of the body. I could just leave it of as I did on Varangian but I am not sure how that will look just yet. Need to build the body box before that so I can try out some options. At least I am started. I also have some radical ideas for the decorations of the armor plates...  but more about that later.

The Triumph of Saint Katherine WIP and Custodes Vertus Praetors

This week I finished the last of the Custodes Vertus Praetors. Not much to say about it really. It is painted in the same way as the other two, in white and gold metal with some brown leather and crimson robes. I like this models a lot. If I was making an army I would have liked to have a bunch of them as they are really cool.

Then I started a new project, The Triumph of Saint Katherine. When I first saw the model I just know that I would need to get one and paint it. I think this is probably one of the coolest character models that GW has produced. It is crazy detailed and some very nice poses on the sisters. The only thing I don't see how I will pull of is the writings on the parchments... but we will see how that turns out. The first model to get painted is Saint Katherine her self. This is by far the coolest of the sisters around the bier. It is sad that there is no regular sisters with shield and sword. Might have to convert some sisters as crusaders to get that. As for painting this it will be a challenge as it is mostly black, and black is notoriously hard to paint, especially when there is so much of it. So I will try to put some color nuances into it to break it up a bit. So Katherine's armor was painted a dark metallic and then washed in a thinned down green to make it contrast a bit against the robes. The inside of the robes got a more crimson color than what is depicted on the box. I also kept the out side black instead of read to tine in white the rest of the saints that are all covered in robes. This is a WIP so I am not really done whit here yet, as I saw from the photos. But it is a good start. Also the base is just started and need some additional dry brushing to smooth it out.