Cool Looking Chaos Sorcerer

I give you my latest masterpiece or at least the latest model I had to paint in less than a week so I could use it in the next game of the Mighty Empires campaign at Strategies. This model will actually represent a Herald of Tzeentch for which GW has not released a model. I had this Chaos Sorcerer in my spare minis box. I bought it in 1994 or 1995 to be an ally to my Orks and Goblins. In the olden days you could take 25% allies in both Warhammer and Warhammer Fantasy Battle. This lead to some unbalanced armies but it was a fun way to try stuff out. I got my entire chaos miniature collection as a result of buying some models to use as allies to my orks…

I also have a few old Dark Elves which look considerable different than the current excellent models, but those will stay unpainted for a few more years or decades.

This model got lavished a lot of care and custom blends and colours. It also made use of thinned washes and glazes, both official off the shelf ones and my own one of kind mixtures of water and ink. I also made use of highlights, lowlights, edge highlighting, even dry brushing. I was forced to paint the base out of turn as too much Vallejo Beige burped out of my tube and on to my Wet Palette.

His two companions are even a lower priority and will be finished at a more leisurely pace. With all the time I’ve been spending on test models and Warhammer Fantasy Battle models I’m going to be really sweating the next 10 days or so to get my final five miniatures finished for my Astronomi-con Vancouver army. I’ve pretty much given up on even attempting a new Greater Daemon. George will just have to get dusted off.

The sorcerer got all the extra effort because I thought it would look cool and I wanted to do something different than the Nurgle and Khorne models I’d been painting or even Goblins and WW1 models, something a little flashier. I even managed to make his grey robe look really cool by using a lot of layers, painting on extra folds, and the last trick was painting in low lights with black or a really dark grey in some parts.

The green armour involved going from the darkest green in my collection to a custom blended almost sea foam looking colour made from Emerald Green and Green Grey as detailed previously.

I actually drybrushed the fur. I first wetbrushed on Beastial Brown, two coats. Then I used Badaab Black wash in the darkest recesses and Devlan Mud over much of the fir. This left it a bit too shiny, but several drybrushes later it was mostly gone. I did a drybrush of Snakebite Leather, then Bubonic Brown, then I mixed up a vaguely orange colour using the Foundation Orange, Tau Sept Ocher, and Beige. I took a photo of some of the individual colours.

Next I painted the finicky details, but first I had to fix a tiny bit of the grey robe, where my drybrushing wasn’t perfect. The two pouches used some of the Reaper Master Series paints I bought. I eventually mixed in some Vallejo Beige to that and slowly built up to almost pure beige. I also used my favourite GW Wash Gryphonne Sepia. I also used it on the scroll. The scroll started out as the Foundation Yellow, mixed in Beige with that to highlight it. I also used an old Yellow Glaze to age it, a technique I rarely use, but an effective one. I think I mixed some white in with the beige to do the final highlight, plus maybe more yellow glaze.

With those details out of the way I planned to paint the sword and go to bed. Alas I splurted out way to much Beige on my Wet Palette. The bottle was gummed up some and squeezing it more is less effective then poking a hole in it. With all the beige I had to do all the skulls on the three models I was working on. The Bloodletter didn’t need much beige, but the Bezerker and this guy used a lot. I put several coats on, right over the black. This is not the most effective technique, I prefer to paint the skulls brown first, generally Snakebite Leather.

Models at the end of the day's painting — Models at the end of the day’s painting

After getting them pretty beige, it was time for a custom wash made from water, Rust Brown Ink, and Plasma Red Ink. After that more beige and eventually I dry brushed on some white. This wasn’t terribly effective and I painted white highlights on the Bezerker’s skulls. The skulls on the old OOP plastic bezerker lack a little detail so I painted extra on them, using lowlights of wash, black paint, even Badaab Black wash in some parts. I also used the Yellow Glaze technique on the skulls on the bezerker. I actually was able to get them looking pretty sharpe.

The skull base was also giving me problems, the paint kept rubbing off on the edges, plus I had to paint under the model, and darken in between the skulls, while simultaneously trying to lighten them. I eventually painted the eyeballs red. I used Badaab Black wash at the end to darken between the skulls, which necessitated more beige highlights and another go at drybrushing white. I realized I needed a new pot of Skull White, so the skulls are mostly beige.

With that complete it was so bedtime. I painted fairly late into the night. The next morning I didn’t get up that early, but I did get up, photograph the sorcerer, and even cleaned his blade up a bit and gave it a fresh coat of black. I also got out a fresh sheet of parchment for my P3 Wet Palette. The first colour I painted the blade was an old Deadly Nightshade. I have all these old blues that I’ve acquired but rarely use. So whenever I do paint blue I usually end up with a custom unique shade. I also bought that extreme blue the day before which I planned to try out.

I slowly blended various blues together and painted on edge highlights until I got almost to pure Vallejo Sky Blue. It might be Deep Sky Blue, I’m away from my paints right now so I can’t check. At this stage I mixed up some old GW Blue Wash with a bunch of water to make kinda a DIY glaze. After that dried I took a better picture. I then painted on more highlights, but I also painted in some low lights or a reverse gradient back towards the Deadly Nightshade, the wet palette allowed me to do this pretty easily and I had a brand new 8/0 brush I got at Deserres at some point which was the bees knees.

Then it was only a matter of trying to get the best effect I could, using my blues, my glaze, and eventually mixing in a little white to the sky blue. I also added more highlights to the back of the blade and again painted on details that weren’t necessarily there. It wasn’t my best magical sword, but it had to do I’ve spent too much time on these models. I got the next three models in my queue and I’ll slowly finish the fine details on the Bloodletter and Bezerker.

Today is a nice day, I biked and got two more ‘0’ brushes from Deserres. I also got some Skull White paint from Strategies. I even had a phone conversation with someone who could be my future boss. Tonight I will paint some more and Saturday too, but I also will keep applying to jobs, I seem to have found a number I’m a good fit for, so perhaps I soon will no longer be unemployed and updates to this blog will be a little less frequent and lot less lengthy.