Step by Step: WHF Chaos Lord

Hey Jungle Painters,

time for your choice from last weeks tutorial voting. You voted for the Chaos Lord by Roman and Massive Voodoo's year of the painter is proud to bring you the article. We hope you enjoy the following read.

Btw with this article MV's library grows to 247 free articles. I hope you enjoy the growth of the article section in the same way as we do.

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INTRODUCTION
Well, let's jump into the birth of the model straight away. We are talking about this Chaos Lord from Warhammer Fantasy that I've painted several weeks ago as a birthday gift to my good friend Peter:

When this model became available by Games Workshop I really wanted to paint it, but never bought him as I thought the price that was asked for him was pretty rude. C'mon, it's some parts of plastic and I should pay almost the same amount as I'd pay for a 54 white metal model from Pegaso (??).

Well, after a year passed by I could not resist to get myself one and decided to paint him just for fun with the goal to give him away to Peter as a birthday gift.

The preparation work went pretty easy. I really enjoy this with the new plastic kits by GW. I did a little conversion with a head by a normal Chaos Warrior, a piece of plastic card and nailed a severed hand from King's of War's Zombie box to his shoulder pad.

Well, the paintwork took a strange way - one I was happy with in the end - but the execution and paths I went have been far from the initial plans. Let me explain and let's keep this quote of mine as a central theme through this step by step.

"I enjoy my painting time the most, 
when I just sit, paint, play with colours 
and catch myself smiling!"                                             Roman

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PAINTWORK
The model was primed black and afterwards I used the Airbrush to sprayed covering layers of GW's Scorched Brown as my initial plan was to make him really, really rusty. Peter loves rust and that was where I wanted to head: An old, aged, battle worn, grim Champion of the Gods in a rusty armour.

I started with the brown armour via airbrush and already gave his cloak a basic tone via brush. As far as I can remember the colour I used there was VMC Green Grey.

Next I went a little crazy with Modelmates' Rust effects. First the dark effect, followed by the bright one. Well, straight following my vision of that rusty warrior, eh?

Loving how this turned out I was searching for bringing back a little structure and drybrushed the armour with a bright sand tone. I do love to work like this sometimes, simply doing stuff to find the way that gets me deeper into the model. Again, I already enjoyed how this looks. Rough, but close to my initial plan.

My thoughts went saying all is too bright, so I took Army Painters' Strong Tone Wash to dark it all down and give myself and my plans to the random results the wash and the rust effects will give birth to. The cloak also recieved a gentle wash into its later on shadow areas.

Mkay. There I was now. Initial plan already here but honestly I did not like it. Lately I came across the great metal colours by Scale75 and took them to work further on the model. Starting with the darkest one, Black Metal. I placed it not all over the model as I still wanted those rust effects visible. First I planned to paint them only to areas that are hit by the influance of zenithal light...

... but dayumn they are just too much fun to work with and so I call this the point where my initial plan changed a bit, let's say more than planned.

Great colours by Scale75. Black Metal first.

 Shiny, rusty warrior, wtf?

 For a little relaxation I painted the skulls in their brown basic tone. 

No idea which one that was.

Now the initial plan was completly washed overboard and another one of Scale75 metallic colours came into play. One of the Alchemy colours, Peridot Alchemy. It is still a metallic colour but with a very unique touch of shining and irriadiating in gentle green gold feeling. I used to paint the weaponry parts with it and dabbed it here and there on the armour parts to make the armour look more ... well, yeah what. I'd say diversified.

 Bling! Bling!

Fun. I was smiling as I really enjoyed the outcome and was happy to let loose of my initial rust plans, but I was also unsecure on how to proceed on the armour. So I went to close in on other areas of the model to get a better feeling of the overall progress. I used Scale75's Cobalt Alchemy, a bright blue metallic tone to place it on the blade, but this did not really satisfy me so I went for using a sand tone to dab the lower part of the cloak with an old, presumed dead brush. I like it dirty.

Dab! Dab! Dab!

 Skulls recieved the same colour.

I found the connection to the cloak I was searching for  and started with the use of a brighter tone than its basecolour. Just using the basic tone and added a little white to it. Now I started to paint and dab, rough structure and texture to it as I saw fit. The hand on his shoulder was painted with the same colour.

Dab! Dab! Stroke! Dab! Stroke! Bam! Bam!

 Looks rough at the moment and it is.

It was a little bit too rough and I glazed it again with the initial basetone to cover the roughness of my dabbing and to give it a more harmonic overall impression. The trick now was to add a little more green to the basic tone to bring back colour to the cloak while glazing it. I also took a wash of Army Painters' soft tone over the armour to make it look less rough. All the dabbing now blended together, kind of and all went a little more matt.

Next step was focusing on the armour again. I was in need of edge highlight to understand that chaotic armour parts with my so far chaotic paintwork on top. I went back to both the Alchemy colours I have used and worked my way through the model, already starting to check for small damages here and there.

The base was worked on with a greyish bright blue to bring it also into the game. The skulls even recieved a highlight of that too as I decided to make a snow base for that guy. So a cold athmosphere is nothing bad here. For a little distraction I have painted the helmets eye sockets red.

You can mainly see the effect of the edge work I have done if you look on top of the model, from a more alike angle as the zenithal light falls.

The blade recieved some gentle shades with Army Painter's dark tone. Thinned with water to keep it really gentle and subtle as I am finding my way into that part of the model slowly too.

Some more work on edge highlights. Focusing on reworking what I have painted before and what went too matte with all the armour washing. This can bring in nice detail to your metal colours, but honestly in my example here it does look cool I'd say but due the many armour parts it is easily defocusing and bemusing, but it's chaos. To get some focus back I changed the eyes colour to a strong Magenta. How evil, eh?

To make it even more chaotic I used some glazes of the Magenta to bring it into the armour. Thinned a lot with water I was able to bring in subtle colour changes to my metals. As it wasn't enough already, haha.  Did the same to the cloak and severed hand.

Next photo is a little bit too dark but I did something too make his armour darker. Again used Army Painters' Dark wash to bring in more shadow to the metals. Starting with one thin layer here and there and working my way to deeper shadows by adding more layers on top of the others.

The blade recived more shadows and also some metal highlights to make it more visible for the eyes. So again did the armour. I went for texturizing the cloak again with dabbing and strokes and pulled it all togehter again with some strong tourquise glazes. Rust, I completly lost my rust, so I took some and placed it in the areas where I imagined water to stay and run to make the armour look rusty again.

Masterclass Snow was placed on the base and on the lower part of the model. Blood to the severed and nailed hand.

Mkay. I went back to the blueish Alchemy metal tone to give the armour final reflections, mainly focusing on the armour parts that reflect the sky in it.



When painting big areas of true metallic metal you have to turn around your model to see what you have painted. It's all about the angles, that is why very often the models look strange on photos.

The cloak recived some more textures here and there, mainly gentle ones on the edges and was also brought into the zenithal light situation by using this highlight tone on the upper areas of the cloak, just check his right shoulder and the neck.

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THOUGHTS
Well, in the end I was happy to leave my initial plan as I somehow found back again. It is sometimes very healthy to just smile and paint on. To finish the model I cleaned the snow stuff on the base and painted the plinth black again.

Final photos of the model can be seen here on CMON.

Thanks for your time reading the article.
As always let me know what you think,
throw questions if you got some
and keep on happy painting!

Best Wishes
Roman