We Are Returned!

I honestly thought that the Black Legion supplement would create a frenzy of Black Legion armies but I think there's barely been a ripple... Maybe when the printed version is ready? Anyway the release has had an effect on me and inspired me to paint my Black Legion Chosen. My Chosen were always going to be Black Legion but now I've been inspired to re-imagine how I go about it.

You may have seen my previous post (click here if you haven't) about this model but now I've just got the base to do. He wasn't actually that difficult to do but he was quite time consuming because of the very large amount of small detail. If you've read this far then you probably want to know how I did it, right? Well I'm going to tease you a little longer and show you another picture.

Alright you've been teased enough, this isn't a Slaanesh worshipped after all so onto business. The shoulder and face trim was done with Balthasar, Gehenna's and Auric Armour Gold and the rest of the trim was done in Leadbelcher and Ironbreaker but in order to get the dirty look of the trim each layer of paint was given an Agrax Earthshade wash. This had a very minor effect on the gold so a watered down mix of Temple Guard Blue and Kabalite Green was applied as verdigris (I've used the mix before and it's very effective). The silver was also done on the axe but a bit more on that later. The armour plates were given a watered down layer of Abbadon Black (just to make sure I didn't miss anything with the primer really) and were highlighted with a line of Dawnstone around the edge. There is a leather patch on the front and that was based with Rhinox Hide and highlighted with Gorthor Brown and again washed with Agrax Earthshade. 

I decided to paint the tubes and tentacles in the same way to show that the tentacles are mutated from the tubing by Chaos. I also painted them in the same way as the wings from my Plague Drones to tie them into each other but in a subtle way. They were based with Elysian Green, washed with Agrax Earthshade and highlighted with Nurgling Green. As I've said before the Axe was done in the same way as the silver armour with lots and lots of Agrax Earthshade. The blue is the exact same wash as the verdigris effect that I used on the gold areas and the handle is painted as leather (Rhinox Hide, Gorthor Brown highlights and washed with Agrax Earthshade). Now the best part of the Axe is the rust. Around the raised edge of the axe and the eye I applied a liberal coating of Modelmates Rust Effect (I can't begin to tell you how much I love this stuff so any excuse to use it) which left me with a block area of rust which, while cool looking, wasn't at all realistic. What to do next? Well I had the answer gathering dust with my paints that don't quite fit into my paint draws and it is a bottle of AK Interactive Rust Streaks effect. Using the Fine Detail Brush I feathered some of it so produce the bleeding effect you can see and it also added extra depth of colour because I didn't use a thick coating of it.  The bottle says to then stump the streaks with White Spirit but because I wasn't going for actual streaks but simply a bleed I didn't feel like it was necessary.

So there we have it; my first official foray into the Black Legion and I have to say I enjoyed it. It didn't really use all that many different colours but the effect (I think) is pretty striking and all I need to do now is figure out what to do with the base (I'm thinking that the grey bases I usually do won't work too well here and they need something to complement the darkness of the colour scheme). I've recently been looking at Secret Weapon Miniatures and their range of resin bases and I have a few ideas but I think that's for another time.

Alla Prossima!!!