Heresy & Heroes

Have you ever not known what to paint? I have a rather large “Mountain of Opportunity” (read “Grey Tide”) in my hobby room but even with a wealth of options, sometimes I don’t know what I’m going to work on next. Then I discovered, much to my surprise, that I had two Ogroid Myrmidon minis, and this presented an opportunity. I could take one and paint it just for fun, and play around with how I did things a little bit. Be free, and not worry so much – I still have another one so this could be a canvas I didn’t mind experimenting on. And it turns out, when given freedom, I’ll just paint the Devil.

Yep. Hail Satan, or something along those lines, I guess. I won’t run through everything I did that’s a little different to how I normally do things as much of it is minute stuff that only I really care about, but I’ll go through the highlights. And speaking of highlights, I very rarely do a zenithal pre-shade to define highlights, but I did here, using Mephiston Red spray on a Chaos black base to show me what needed to be brightest. Worked quite nicely I think but I don’t know how much I’ll do that in the future. Let’s see.

But there was more fun to be had with things I’m more known for. I shaved the pattern off the shield to give me a nice flat surface because I wanted to flex my freehand muscles as usual. But I didn’t know what to put on there, so I asked my followers on twitter (@Heresyheroes if you’re interested) what I should do. The option chosen was for me to do a classic Heavy Metal album rendition, but I needed to pick the album. I thought about Iron Maiden’s Eddie of course, and Black Sabbath’s first album I thought could work nicely. I even considered doing Metallica’s Load album but knowing how that cover art was made (allegedly) I wasn’t really in the mood to really put “myself” into my art (if you catch my meaning). But then I had a better thought – I may never get my hands on the Slayer Sword, but I can make myself a Slayer Shield…

I took the cover from Slayer’s Seasons In The Abyss (google it if you don’t know it) and, well, painted that. It works really nicely as a design that something Chaotic would paint onto a shield to terrify their enemies. I really like how it came out, and just to give you a vague idea of how I did it, I even took WiP shots of it for you. Here you go:

Started off with Averland Sunset, and then outlined the head. I painted the head in its entirety and then did the rest. I know that’s not exactly detailed, but if you want to know more, drop me a comment or reach me on Twitter and ask me any specifics – will be happy to try to answer. And the whole thing reminded me how good that album is – what a record. Have been listening to it all week and it really is a masterpiece. But anyway…

What else to tell you. I experimented with the red/blue balance a fair bit. I know blue weapons are more “good guy” in Warhammer, but with that blade, the faintly glowing eyes, the highlights on the hair, and the Terradon Turquoise base, it all really helps to further push that red. I feel I need to do a post that is just a love letter to Mephiston Red and Evil Sunz Scarlet because I rarely work on a miniature without employing that combo. I just love ’em.

I also played with the idea of silver really only being on the weapons (the tail counts as a weapon) and dirty brass being used against the red (horns not withstanding). Again, it helps to frame and pop things.

And that’s all there is to really go through I think. I guess I should say that I really like the fact that this devilish looking model looks really nice painted with that cartoon/tattoo devil colour palette. There’s some changes that I’d make to how I paint it but it really is a classic look and I think I did it some credit here.

This was a lot of fun and that’s what it was meant to be. I’m not grading myself on this one – it’s like trying to assign a mark to playtime. But it was refreshing and free and just oodles of enjoyment, and I hope you enjoy it too. Onwards!