Vex Machinator, Arch Lord Discordant, WIP

 Now this is an interesting figure. I absolutely love the demon/machine blend on this model. So from the first time I saw it I knew I need to paint it. So as soon as it was released I bought it, and it has been sitting in the do do pile ever since. Not that I was not tempted, but I felt that I did not have the right inspiration to take this model on at that time, but now I got the flow.

The model itself must be the most complex GW sculpt that I have tackled to date. It is crammed full of details and small parts that are partially or completely hided behind each other, so the only way I see to paint it is to break it down into sub assemblies. But not even that was enough for some parts, especially around the head. It is almost as if you need to paint, at least parts, of it while it is still on the frame to be able to get to all the small hidden parts (which I did not do).

So far I have only worked on the Helstalker. The paint scheme on this is pretty straight forward but requires a lot of time. I started with the metal underside and tail which got more or less my standard treatment for metal, trying to get a large variety of tones in to break it up and give it more life. Next step was to paint the armor black. I have several recipes on black that I have used on several different models. For this one I went with my pre-heresy DA scheme which gives a blue grey tone to the black. My Helldrak and Forge fiend has a similar scheme but a more grayish black so I hope that they will not look to much out of place next to each other. The reason for choosing this one though is that it gives a more vibrant tone to the black, more like a beetle than the more dull grey of my previous models. After that it was just to add the border trim, which was very difficult to get right as there are so much other stuff overhanging the areas so it was difficult o get to all parts with the dry brush. The organic parts of the model got the standard zombie flesh that I have used on previous chaos models.

That is as far as I got with it this week, we will see if I can finish it in the coming week but it is competing with my newfound enthusiasm for Fenrir (I will make a post on that later). I have not decided on the lord discordant himself, what color he should have on his armor but I am leaning towards the purple that I did for my raptors just to get some contrast to the Helstalker.