Elouchard Posted July 22, 2010 Share Posted July 22, 2010 Hi all, My latest commission work, the Bloodthirster Greater Daemon from Forgeworld was a big undertaking to say the least. This bad boy is part of an army, so the axe, whip and ankle blades are all magnetized. It is a lot easier to replace a resin part that pops off from light force than one that is glued on and breaks. This is one hell of a miniature, if one can call it that. The figure stands around 6" to the shoulder and maybe 10" to the top of the axe. It is a incredibly detailed sculpt, with texture on almost every surface. For the skin, I chose to stick to glazes and a stippling type of lining style to enhance the texture. The main base was something new for me, a coat of Desert Yellow primer from the Army Painter. It is a yellowish tan color that gives a good undercolor for the red layers that go on top. If I use white, I need to wash with yellow to start as otherwise the tone will be pink. From the desert yellow base, I applied a mix of Napthol Red Light (Golden Fluid Acrylics (GFA)) and Liquitex ink (vivid red orange). These new inks from Liquitex are absolutely the best I have used, with less gloss than old GW inks, but the same color and adhesion properties. They also mix well with paint and give a little extended drying time for detail work. Mixing white with red ink dries slower than with red paint without an extender, plus it is very smooth. The inks come in big dropper bottles so they are easy to use also. The next steps for the skin were sloppy and mean to add tone and shadow, using dark shades of ink. The main colors were Burnt Sienna for the midtone, Burnt Umber for shadow, and then turquoise for the deep shadows. The inks were mixed with liquitex matte medium for extra thickness. The armor was given a base coat of Vallejo Game Color bronze. The armor plates were shaded with turquoise ink, then give glazes of burnt umber. The trim and any other gold parts were glazed with burnt sienna and then burnt umber for shadows. The idea was to make armor bronze with gold trim. Highlights were added with Vallejo Game Color bright gold mixed with Liquitex silver ink. The silver ink is interesting as the pigment load looks poor but it dries slowly, does not clump, and can be applied in thin layers. It also mixes really well with the gold. To highlight the skin, orange ink was mixed with Reaper Creamy White (a golden bone color) and a bit of burnt sienna ink for less intense highlights. This was applied in multiple (lots and lots) of quick strokes, similar to hatching. The reason to do this was that the skin was sculpted with this type of "lined" texture and enhancing it seemed appropriate. Why fight the sculpt anyways. More white was added for highlights but I tried to stay on top of the previous darker lines. To blend things down, I applied glazes of burnt sienna and a little orange ink. The wings were different though, as the texture was crosshatched and very ragged, so I stuck with drybrushing multiple light layers with thinned paint, then glazing down with inks and adding some edge hightlights. The ends of the wings were glazed with pthalo blue ink and black paint to give a gradient transition, but everything was highlighted with orange+bone to tie it all together. Everything else was fairly simple, using the same basic techniques of light initial coat, dark washes, light highlights, color glazes and then final highlights with opaque paint to touch things up. The base was simple also, with glazes of blues, purples, orange and black to make it looks burnt and chaotic. While the techniques were simple, it still took a couple of weeks to knock this guy out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mercius Posted July 22, 2010 Share Posted July 22, 2010 That is one hell of a mini, all I can say lol. Amazing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prophet Posted July 22, 2010 Share Posted July 22, 2010 WOW!!! Yet another reason I cant stand going against the Demons in 40k. Truly friggin sweet lookin mini though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deguello Posted July 22, 2010 Share Posted July 22, 2010 I have seen this model on thier website.. Yours is clearly the superior model and paint job... Well done well done indeed.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pez5767 Posted July 23, 2010 Share Posted July 23, 2010 Very solid work. This model is AmayZING. Your paint job really helps bring it to life and make the whole thing greater than the sum of its already impressive parts. Thanks for showing. pez Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haldir Posted July 23, 2010 Share Posted July 23, 2010 Awesome work on that one. The way it's presented reminds of the Andrea & other "deluxe" figure retailers out there. RM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WizardOne Posted July 23, 2010 Share Posted July 23, 2010 [ speechless ] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elouchard Posted July 23, 2010 Author Share Posted July 23, 2010 Thanks for the compliments. This was one of those figures that I would not have done usually, as it looked like too much work, but it was not bad at all. It is like painting big dragons, just do the major coats and washes with big brushes and then do the details at the end. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreyHorde Posted July 23, 2010 Share Posted July 23, 2010 Wow. I really need to re-think my painting methods, possibly my hobby. Incredible work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dks Posted July 23, 2010 Share Posted July 23, 2010 Outstanding. Great color work with the blue/turquoise to contrast with the reds and golds, but also using the orange highlights on the blue wing-ends. Good idea to magnetize the parts, too. It must be much easier to transport in pieces and then assemble at the table. I almost agreed to paint one of these on commission a few years ago, but I had no idea how to price it. I asked Anne Foerster for advice and she suggested starting with a guess of about 100 hours of painting, possibly 150-200, and prep & assembly would have been a not-insignificant chunk of time, too. Derek Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jah-joshua Posted July 23, 2010 Share Posted July 23, 2010 whatever he charged, it was too little for this beautiful piece of work... having had one of these guys in hand, it's an absolute beast of a mini... great job, Eric... cheers jah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elouchard Posted July 24, 2010 Author Share Posted July 24, 2010 Joshua, I felt it was a reasonable price and it was actually fun to try out some new tricks on such a large scale model. I am currently about 50% through the Reaper Pathfinder Dragon that I tested those techniques on. It was basically the same colors, using turquoise for the dark stripes. This was where I found that highlighting the dark stripes with light blue did not look nearly as good as when using orange-cream. It was more natural to keep the overall highlights the same tone. I had to stop with the dragon so I could start the Bloodthirster, but it helped to test the new tricks. I have to finish a Partha diorama (The Antagonists) next but then I can finish the dragon. Eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawgiver Posted August 14, 2010 Share Posted August 14, 2010 Any updates? They are both phenomenal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Wehrmacht Posted August 14, 2010 Share Posted August 14, 2010 Any updates? They are both phenomenal. Agreed. Forgeworld definitely knows how to turn out excellent products. Wish I could say the same for GW anymore. The way you have done the blood thirster is much the way I always envisioned Angron to look! -LW Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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