“I am bathed in the light of the Emperor in all my duties.
I am guided by the beacon of the Astronomican.
I have seen scores of suns rise.
I have cast shadows beneath the glare of so many alien stars that I no longer remember the warmth of my own.
Every dawn now reminds me only of what I can no longer recall.
Sub Umbra Solis.”
For my latest Deathwatch marine mini I have been trying to take the lessons from the John Blanche Fire Dragons project and move forward - and it seems to me that JB’s greatest strength is his storytelling through colour (I’m sure that anyone trained in art could have told me that before, but I never got taught this stuff).
So with the themes of duty and isolation I tried to use a lot of colour hints and cues in the blacks of the marine.
So I have
- amber eyes to resemble a fire that is still burning, but is at the tail end of its heat
- blue reflections to show a cold light from alien skies, to show a hostile environment
- brown underlying the black - to show dust accretion and the laquer of aging armour
- khaki green to show weather and scratching, catching the ambient environment around
- purple around the eyes to remind us of tiredness, exhaustion, even like an addict not able to get their fix.
Obviously on the main pic not a lot of this shows up, but when I applied a saturation of 100% it shows much more what work I’ve done trying to use this symbolic language.
I found it very interesting to see.
I’ve finally based and finished the first of my Fire Dragon - the Shrine of the Killing Moon, intricate to John Blanche.
I’ve tried to give as much of the paintings character to the mini as possible, while having to change things because of the different medium involved.
In painting the vase I paid real attention to the colours and placements to echo the flames from the right - as well as drybrishing the rocks to give a similar effect to the drifting smoke.
Having done the initial test mini I needed to broaden the scheme lessons out for the rest of the squad, especially the Exarch. So instead of the normal back banner I wanted to do something to evoke the crescent moon on Blanche’s artwork, and did this instead. Ive always found the double trigger on the firepike a strange thing and wanted to do a conversion with it in a more martial position.
So far I’ve finished all 5 of the mini’s, except the helmets. Even the helmet I’ve done is only painted on one side!
Having done the initial test time to break it down so I can repeat with the rest of the squad. A nice simple (!) 11 stage process.
They aren’t totally finished at this point - This gets them all to the level where I can glue the minis together and see them as a unity, then I can decide to add glazes or push shadows.
But the colours themselves are set.
Now to the helmets and weapons.
I saw this art for the first time last week and as my next unit up was fire dragons there was only one thing I could do… this is my test mini. Still needs some balancing as the head and gun are so much bigger in plastic, but very happy with where I am.
With the sad death of John Blanche last week I saw a lot of his art posted, including this beauty of a Fire Dragon. I have a unit of Dragons next on my queue, so I decided to do a small tribute to it in the Blanchitsu style.
Having done some planning and concepts and building up a palette and plan I’ve done a couple of little tests for the armour and helmet.
I’m broadly pretty happy with them, with a couple of adjustments I think I can get it closer.
The armour - I think needs to be a little darker - so some stippled rhinox, along with some ice yellow point highlights. I also think some dark reaper in the shadows should work - with the aspect warrior armour plate/body suit being better suited to that blue shadow coming through than the kabalite I’ve done the test on.
The helmet - I like a lot of what’s happening here, but the base colour is too warm - so I need to mix the bone colour with some cold white and/or grey blue.
It’s a really lovely little project so far. Look forward to doing an actual test mini next.
This is a big part of why I love eldar so much. The opportunity to have such diverse schemes and ideas on units that harmoniously work together in theme. I have my Fire Dragons out and I’m looking at what I’m going to do with them right now. Only Dire Avengers after that to go - but I am waiting for new plastic kits for them!
With all of them I’ve tried to keep broadly within their traditional colour palettes but without doing the exact box schemes.
I did the howling Bamshees in a stippled scheme with Sisters of Khaine parts to make them more savage looking. The Reapers I really like the Blue Grey colours and the optics. Scorpions I leant into a pseudo camouflage theme. Shining Spears I was playing around with the traditional blue/white scheme and making them big game hunters. Swooping Hawks were probably the furthest from normal colours but I loved the kingfisher scheme too much, and the Warp Spiders I found the Pumpkin Orb Spider colours and just went with that scheme.
I listen to various podcasts and a piece of terminology that seems to come up a lot is being multiple, especially when they’re talking about Sean McVey and the run game.
What exactly do they mean by this? Is it as simple as running the same basic play out of multiple formations or does it mean more than that?
Since I decided to pattern my Warp Spiders after Pumpkin Orb Weavers it was only appropriate that I should give my exarch a little spider buddy.
It was a lot of fun posing it around the rock - though how it does the warp flickerjumps with him I have no idea!
Since I decided to pattern my Warp Spiders after Pumpkin Orb Weavers it was only appropriate that I should give my exarch a little spider buddy.
It was a lot of fun posing it around the rock - though how it does the warp flickerjumps with him I have no idea!
I’m doing my Warp Spider carapaces in the style of an Orb Weaver Spider, but I’m having some difficulty with what colour to do for the weapon glows.
I did this green to yellow fade as an initial test but I’m not convinced. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I decided to have my Warp Spiders mimic Pumpkin Orb Weaver Spiders. This is my test. I think it works pretty well, although I think I need to work on the pattern so there’s a little less ‘eye of Sauron’ to it. But had a lot of fun with it.
As I do these across the squad I always have to bear in mind the gap between pretty good and perfect is important. This ain’t a display or competition piece, and while I’ll probably do a bit more with the Exarch I want this to be achievable within an acceptable timescale.