Dishonored Imperium

I haven’t applied painted anything since October’s Legion of the Damned squad—which is still unfinished.  If you go back to the last thing that I painted completely, you’d have to go back to March of last year when I painted up some IG platforms for use in Apocalypse.

With an interest in making some progress, I figured I should start the year off right, and I actually spent some time on New Year’s weekend painting up stuff.  Granted, I was painting more terrain, and not models I’d actually play the game with, but I figure progress is progress, and whatever inspiration actually hits me, I might as well go with it.

In this case, it was a statue I’d purchased from Singapore that’s roughly equivalent in size as the one in GW’s “Honored Imperium” boxed set.  I wound up purchasing both this Khorne Berserker model and an Ultramarine Captain as well.  You can read more about the actual purchase and see some size comparison shots in my earlier post.

Anywho, I’d after cleaning up the model’s joints with a little putty, I wound up priming him black and giving him approximately the same treatment as I’d done with my original statues.  So, the base color scheme would be aged bronze on marble.  I was relatively happy with the bronze from last time, so I used the same formula (copied below for convenience):

• Primed: Black
• Basecoat: GW Tin Bitz
• Heavy Hightlight: P3 Blighted Gold (by the way, I just purchased this, and love this color)
• Wash: GW Orc Flesh Wash
• Touch-up: Blighted Gold
• Edge Highlight: P3 Brass Balls
• Targeted Washes: GW Chestnut Wash & GW Green Wash

In retrospect, I think I went a little heavier with the green washes this time around (although the pictures don’t really show it), but also didn’t wash all of the little rivets and such.  I’m pleased with more green overall, but probably should’ve taken the time to pick out the little details as well.

For the base, I didn’t want to copy the last models exactly and figured I’d try something a little new.  I still wanted to do marble (because I was so infatuated with how it turned out before), but instead went for a straight black marble to vary things up a tad.

The scheme is simpler than last time, but it’s essentially the same:

• Basecoat: Black (in this case, I painted the models separately from the base, so no spill-over)
• Stipple: Black/white mix (heavy on the black) – I actually went through 2-3 iterations of this, each one progressively adding more white to the mixture, but never getting very light.
• Lines: Light Gray mixed w/ water
• Lines: Light Gray
• Lines: White (edge highlighting)

Then I wound up sealing the base with several coats of gloss varnish and the model/statue in several coats of matt.

The base itself has a variety of components to it, and was made to look like a muddy warzone; however, I felt it would be find if I painted it to look like one large sculpted piece of marble—which I think turned out alright.

To kick it up a little extra, I figured I’d add a little sacrifice to the chaos gods on the base.  I simply grabbed a spare “zombie” model that I had laying around (I believe this one is actually a model from the vampire counts “corpse cart”) and used that.  I don’t know what the original model looked like, but this one was already missing an arm and had his “yoke” (the term I’m using for the spear through his chest) broken off.  But, since I wanted a sacrifice, I figured that was alright.  In fact, the only change I wound up doing myself was repositioning his foot so that it looked more slack and wasn’t sticking straight up.  This was just a matter of hacking it off and pinning it in a more natural position.  Again, since it was a corpse, I didn’t even bother to clean it up, figuring that the pin could easily pass for his shin bone.

I also didn’t do a great job of documenting the color scheme I used on the zombie, but I guess the final result doesn’t have a lot of the scheme showing.  I do know that the skin is a combination of Bleached Bone and I believe Vallejo Plague Brown with some purple washes.

The more significant color for this is obviously the blood effects.  For that, I followed Lonewolf’s tutorial from the Bolter & Chainsword wherein he used Tamiya “Clear Red” and some black ink.  I won’t bother recapping the entire tutorial here, but feel free to read up on the B&C website.  It’s really a fantastic effect, and between the light and dark it does a great job of having nasty looking clumps of dried blood in it.

I wound up sploshing the blood on most any part that looked wounded and left a good pile beneath the corpse for good measure (though it should be noted that I wound up painting the corpse separate, and putting blood on the ground before placing the corpse on top—and then painting the blood on him).  I also painted a relatively absurd amount of splatter on the front of the statue and added two bloody handprints on the leg for good measure (I envision that the poor victim tried to flee his captors during the act).

Wow, did that come off as creepy as I think it did?

Oh well, we’re already off the deep end, so what’s a ritualistic sacrifice without a few symbols.  So, to complete the piece, I added a symbol of Khorne on the back of one of the statue’s legs, and an eight-pointed chaos star to the bottom of the raised foot.  I didn’t’ want to paint anything too high, figuring that the perpetrators of the gruesome spectacle wouldn’t want to try to climb too high to complete their artwork.

I’m really pleased with the end result.  I’ve thrust it into the face of several people that have stopped by the house to let them ooh and aah at it, but nobody seems impressed.  They all seem to think I’m a nerd for playing with dolls, and don’t see the beauty in it.

It’s not to say that it’s flawless.  Looking at the photos, I see some streaks in the paint job on the model that I’m not terribly fond of at close inspection, and the fact that the hand prints are opposite of the way actual hands are can be troublesome (though the original thought was that it was just a couple of bloody hand prints that came up at different times during the struggle—but they’re close enough together to make me wonder if anyone thinks I painted them wrong).  I’m also not 100% happy with the striations in the marble (more on this in a later post), but as a whole, I think it turned out splendidly.

To add to my joy, I’m really happy with the way the photos turned out.  The lighting in them just really works for me, and some of the pictures make me feel like it’s a massive statue in an area lit by fire pits.

The actual lighting was just a light box with three lights on it: one white fluorescent light on the top, and two smaller (yellowish) lights on the sides—towards the front.  I didn’t take pictures of the deployment, but I’m sure I’ll use it again in the future.

Anywho, this is my Dishonoured Imperium statue.  Hopefully you like it… I know I do. 🙂

Feel free to click on the various thumbnails for larger images.