Hello there Folk of the Mortal realms. We are back again to continue our journey across the Hobby
Today we'll be looking at a model from my Slaanesh army that I've been working on as part of my Cancon army (Hopefully). Really this is just going to be a whole bunch of photos of the same model as I progress from stage to stage as I talk about what I've done during the process as well as my thinking behind it.
The Model : Synessa - The Voice of Slaanesh
So Synessa. Why is she in the army when its still 6 months away and who knows what'll change in that time? Synessa is one of the newer models in the Slaanesh range, a support character with several board wide abilities, not overly pointsy. But most importantly fits the theme of looking cool at an event I'm not aiming to play to win.
The Build.
So whilst Synessa looks cool, I personally like the head from Dexcessa and have substituted that part, whilst maintaining the arm configuration of Synessa to avoid confusion. Another factor is the back mounted wing cape. During assembly I decided I really liked the look of the model without it. This has the benefit of being more compact for purposes of fitting cleanly on a display board without getting in the way. I will however need to contact the TO prior to the event to ensure it is acceptable incase someone is scared of my off meta painting project and wants to claim it affects their LOS and therefore not legal.
If this is the case I haven't filled in any holes so it will be a simple task to build the Wing cape and add it later if needs be.
Priming.
I've gone with my standard Zenithal Airbrush prime. Using Vallejo Black, followed by a couple of greys on the downwards angle as well as white from directly above. This is marginally help me with transition's but I know I don't use the zenithal as effectively as I could. But it really helps me see the details of what I'm working on which is I find a pain with solid 1 color base coats.
The Skin.
This would have to be the primary component of the entire paint job. If there's 1 thing I find most frustrating about skin, Its when its painted too flat and 1 dimensional. I've gone out of my way to firstly work with multiple different skin tone colors as well as build up some reds, purples and greens (yes) into the skin.
During this process I started off from the airbrush getting some basic highlights and shadows going before moving to the brush to reinforce these along with using some reikland fleshtone sparingly to add some more depth. Once I was happy I had everything roughly where it should be I started throwing some very very VERY thin Glazes of reds and deep purples into a lot of the recesses as well as mixing in some dark greens with my darker fleshtones to glaze into some of the shadows.
The goal of this is to try and create a much more "alive" looking skin tone. Skin is naturally quite translucent so you can see colorations of things like blood, bone, bruising. If we paint our skin using only a base coat, wash and edge highlight then we are missing out on so much potential to make the paint job more visually interesting.
The Cape
Honestly not much to say here. I worked on this at the same time as the skin to help see the whole picture together. The Zenithal highlight at prime stage gave us some preset shadows and highlights which I used to my advantage. At this stage the cape was hit with a watered down Purple ink, which has the consistency of an ink but its being used to color the surface rather then settle in the recesses, and maintains a very see through effect allowing our shadows and highlights to come through.
Where to next?
We've got the basics of the model down and can now get a good picture of where we are heading. Its time to add some details. The next stage includes painting the straps, the Golds, Gems and hair.
The gold was done using a mix of colors I first saw in one of Vincent Venturellas Hobby Cheating series on Youtube. Mixing Vallejo Metal colors Gold, Copper and Greenstuff worlds gold pigment.
This mix gives a brilliant richness and 1 coat coverage and is my "go to" Gold
The gems were done by painting each gem surface black, then progressively painting the sections of the gem dark blue, then a lighter blue as it gets further down, with just a tiny tip of white at the top corner to appear like a reflection. Idea being light shines through the top of the gem, and as it goes deeper into the gem, more light will be visible out of the gem showing off its color more.
Lucky last at this stage I also did the horns, which was built up using a combination of Brown and Black Contrast paints an washes in various different mixes to achieve a blend.
This then led to a 3-4 week hiatus. I really wanted to finish off the white portion of the cape/robes using a white ink, but alas the postal service has tried my patience, so I gave up an went back to using a Vallejo dead white mixed with very high % of thinner. 1 Error here and I was going to be a goner, as the mix was so thin in the airbrush that any amount of too much trigger would have instantly killed that section and need to be started from scratch.
Luckily my Harder and Steinbeck airbrush has a fancy button on the end which allows "presetting" of maximum trigger, so with some presetting on a piece of paper I found just the right amount of psi as well as safe amount of airflow that would allow it to spray paint and not just a big pile of liquid. At this point we also through a really light mix of a purple combine with pale flesh tone onto the cape to a some further variance to the colors as well as smooth it out a bit from its prior "inking"
At this point. We are nearly done.
Basing.
I have no intention of finishing the base at the moment an am just setting it up to complete once the entire army and display base are all together to help blend it all. However we can certainly start building up some textures. Variation is the goal, and I'm using a mixture of broken up pine bark woodchip, sand and Vallejo texture Dark Earth, from here I threw a coat of Dryad bark over the top to help hold everything together as well as give me a finish I can put up with until a time comes I'm ready to finish the base.
Conclusion.
So with a couple of small highlights on the gold out of the way. I think I'm happy with the final outcome. If you have any questions on any particular part of the project, yell out in the comments and I'll try to go into more detail. One thing I found interesting in this paintjob. Was just how hard it was to photograph the detail on skin without the light from washing it out.
Thanks for reading everyone
Spooky Luke out