Character Profile: Belial and Chaplain

For the follow up to the New Contract post, I will show you the best of the end result of the Chaplain and Belial. I will explain my design choices and some of the techniques I used in their creation. Also, I just want to show off some sweet models, so come take a look.

   Let's take a look at the Chaplain. In video game design, we try to use three colour palettes in everything, using only shades and tints of the colours chosen. I have always tried to do the same with painting miniatures. The first thing to remember is that this is a chaplain, but he is also a Deathwing veteran. This means that the primary colour will be black. But we can't forget, the colours of the Deathwing are bone, red and of course, Dark Angels Green.

   In this case, I made black a non-colour. So the three primary colours were be bone, red and bronze. I did not highlight the black armour of the chaplain because I felt that doing so would add too much visual weight onto an already heavy model. There's so much stuff all over this guy, he really doesn't need any more things to distract the viewer. As for the Dark Angels Green, I did not highlight those areas either, they are merely symbolic like the black armour. I wanted the visual pull to be on his weapons, his helmet, and the ornamentation of his armour.


   The skull helm is a particular favourite of mine. I shall give you a brief breakdown of how I paint mine. Cover with Graveyard Earth. Drybrush on Bleached Bone, leaving the shadowed recesses and the cracks on the top. Do some fine touches along the cracks with Chaos Black, then go over that with 50:50 Chaos Black:Graveyard Earth. Drybrush very lightly over top of that and along the edges to make very fine, cohesive looking lines. Do a wash with Graveyard Earth in the recesses on the mask itself, not the shadowed areas. Add spots of Dheneb Stone on the highest points and at the corners of the cracks to soften the colours. Retouch and revisit any places that you don't like with any of the colours, I did that a lot.

   Now for Belial, Master of the Deathwing. For him, bone, red and green are the primary colours. I chose bronze to accent these since I feel that bronze is a manly colour, the most suitable for a captain. Following the established colour schemes, I painted the armour bone using my airbrush. I used a first covering spray of Graveyard Earth, spraying over that with Dheneb Stone. I then sprayed the highest points of interest with Bleached Bone so that only the most visible areas would be brightest. After I was done painting the rest of the model, I went back with watered down Kommando Khaki and touched up the recesses. I didn't want to make the model too dark by using my usual black, I only wanted subtle, soft hints of recesses.

   For the cloth, I painted first with Dark Angels Green, covering the entirety. I added some Golden Yellow into the mix and broadly painted the higher parts of the robe. I then added Bleached Bone to that and painted the very highest edges to finish the highlight. I used Mechrite Red, Blood Red and Red Gore for all the parts that are red. I tried to alternate so that no two touching reds were the same. The scabbard I painted Red Gore, the belt Mechrite Red, and the hafts, wires, and Crux Blood Red. I used Mechrite as the base for all of these.

   For the face, I used Elf Flesh and washed it with Graveyard Earth. I tried to pick out the recesses of the face with small lines of Graveyard Earth, especially across the forehead. The sword uses the same technique covered in the Ingemar article using Enchanted Blue, Hawk Turquoise, Ice Blue and finally Skull White. The banner I hand painted by sight from an example sent to me by the owner, found here. Next time I try this, I plan on cutting out stencils from bristol board and airbrushing on symbols like these. I took the transfer from the Space Marine Vehicle sheet and cut it to fit on the pauldron.

That should just about cover the most interesting parts of the model. If there are any questions don't be afraid to post them in the comments, I'll respond as quickly as I can. That's it for the last post of 2010. It was an interesting year, many new and exciting things appeared, and many interesting things happened. I look forward to what will come in 2011.

Signing out

Cursed13