Thursday 14 July 2011

Flight of the Nazgul

Let me start this post by a piece of 'music'. A very crude black metal song by Summoning that I still find particularly suitable for this post. In general, even though I don't listen to Summoning as much as I used to in the past (tastes in music change), I still think that music created by this band fits Tolkien's world well (especially the shadowy parts).



Now onto the model itself. First of all, a really well-sculpted and cast one. All the parts fit nicely and putting them together wasn't nearly as difficult as I had expected. There way quite a few mold lines to be removed but that's nothing new.
I tried to keep to the codex version while painting it, though my style is significantly different. As you can see here,the painted version from GW's online store is painted using extreme highlights. De gustibus non est disputandum but I still prefer smooth highlights to this style. In my opinion it makes a model look too flat as basically only 2-3 colors are visible (especially when the painting's not top notch as in this case...).
While highlighting I also like to use some washes and glazes in the final stage to make sure the highlights look extra smooth. Working on this beast and the Witch King was no different. I'm particularly pleased with the wings. I started off with several basic highlights, followed by a devlan mud wash. In the final stage, I gave them some glazes with lighter brown washes and a purple one. As a result I got a nice solid color that doesn't look too uniform. The only departures from dark color scheme were the beast's tongue (finished off with a glossy varnish) and fire of WK's sword.
I struggled with the pics as due to the size and heavy use of dark colors it wasn't easy to take decent ones. I switched back to a blue gradient as a background as I thought it might show dark colors on the model more precisely. The only problem were the close-ups as each time I tried to take some, the pics became too grainy. In the end I chose some that don't look that bad.
Hope you like this one, now I'm going to work on the Dark Lord. Check back soon to see the final effect!
Cheers,
Viruk

3 comments:

  1. Oh my that is awesome!!

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  2. Yours looks far superior to the GW version!! Is that Citadel Shadow Grey or Vallejo 905 on the Witch King?

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  3. Thanks for the comments :)

    I used mainly colors from Andrea Black set for painting both the fellbeast and the Witch King. I cannot recommend it enough (I wrote more about it here http://independent-painters.blogspot.com/2010/04/any-colour-you-want.html ). I also used a little Grey Green and Neutral Grey from Vallejo Game Color range.

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