WIP: Daemon Prince / Minotaur Conversion no.1

This Daemon Prince was inspired by the simple awesomeness of the new plastic Minotaurs, and by my desire to put those Minotaurs to work in 40K. He is still very much a work in progress –I estimate that he is currently about 75-80% completed, but far enough along that you will get the idea.

The winged Daemon Prince picture here was originally the focus of all my attention, and primary impetus for two DP conversions; however, he was rather brazenly usurped by his land-locked cousin on account of the more compelling narrative elements of that model (the WIP of which was the substance of last Sunday's post). So it goes.

And so, this monster has become something like the “experimental” model of the pair –the one on which I test out color schemes (in this case: skin, hair, wings, armor) and other sundry techniques.

More importantly, this is my first go at the lava that I’ve come to appreciate on any number of bases that I’ve been spotting on the internets, and in particular the bases in this tutorial by Tagsta. I don’t actually follow that blog (forum?), but I found this tutorial simply by googling “lava bases tutorial,” and it appeared on the top of the list. It’s that easy sometimes. Anyway, I borrow from it heavily. Cheers.

One step beyond: I have added a final layer Gloss Coat to the lava (‘ard Coat, actually, but I prefer to call it Gloss), and in that final layer I’ve also mixed in just a tiny drop of Red Wash and Sepia Wash into the Gloss in order to blend the layers and keep the tone vibrant red rather than orange. I’m not too sure about the exact effect, and I have to admit that I found the solution rather difficult to control, but the Gloss Coat alone seemed to make only a modest contribution, so I wanted to spice it up a bit. The jury is still out on this one.

Nearly the entire palate of this model revolves around Dark Flesh and Tausept Ochre. The skin, for example, has been worked up from Dark Flesh to Camo Green, and then highlighted by adding small amounts of Tausept and Bleached Bone to the mixture. This was then shaded again with a wash of Dark Flesh and then Sepia. The fleshy parts of the wings were done with Dark Flesh and Tausept with generous washes of very thin Dark Flesh and Scorched Brown. The hair, by comparison, is Tausept worked up toward Iyanden. The skulls are the same but will have additional highlights of Bleached Bone and some small touches of Skull White for sharp contrast. These will also get a thin wash of Sepia. The cloth on his weapon is Tausept and will be shaded back with Scorched Brown. Even the metal areas take Dark Flesh as their base color.

As you can see from these simplified descriptions, the same colors have been used throughout to amplify or complement one another. Although there are different hues and shades brought in to create solid variation, the basic elements are consistent and quite limited throughout the model. I don’t always work this way, but in this case I feel quite strongly that the limited palate makes for a necessarily coherent model. Moreover, this coherency helps keep him grounded against the very, very bright (potentially distracting) hues in the lava. Obviously, I didn’t want the model either to compete with its own base or seem too confused with a wildly varied palate.

So far. So good.

For those keeping score at home, there’s a clue or two about tomorrow’s post in a few of these photos. See you then.