Stormy Teacups

Yet another figure that I’m painting for someone else. It’s a change from working on my Warriors of Chaos army at least. This one is for a friend who wanted a Belial figure but didn’t have the confidence in his own modelling skills to convert one. I had a bit of a cast around, realised it wouldn’t be too tricky and promptly volunteered to do it for him. There’s quite a nice version posted up on the Games Workshop website that I used as inspiration although mine ended up being quite different as you’ll see.

To begin with I started from Lysander, Captain of the Imperial Fists’ First Company. This is a popular choice for Belial conversions as it’s an ornately armoured Terminator in a fairly dynamic pose. The first thing to do was to remove all the Fists’ iconography which was pretty straightforwards – there’s a fist on his gorget and one on each tasset. These are simple to remove. I also cut out the hand part of the fist shape that makes up part of the head of his Thunderhammer. One of the requirements was that the figure should have interchangeable weapon loadouts. As he’s a Terminator this is a piece of cake – all you need to do is have the relevant weapon arms and magnetise them. In Belial’s case he can have either twin Lightning Claws, a Thunderhammer and Stormshield or a Power Sword and Stormbolter. As I don’t collect Space Marines myself I don’t have a stock of bits to scrounge in so I also bought the Dark Angel upgrade sprue which provided the Power Sword, Stormbolter, Storm Shield and some other small parts. I was also sent a pair of Lightning Claws and shoulder pads by the owner of this piece. Right away I had a problem; I had three left arms and only two left shoulderpads – these are the ones that have the Crux Terminatus sculpted on. One was integral to the Storm Shield arm and the other was the plastic one that I was sent along with the Lightning Claws. I solved this problem by cutting the left Lightning Claw and the Power Sword arm off just below the shoulder, magnetising them and then attaching the shoulderpad to one of the orphaned shoulders which then received two magnets (one to attach to the body and one to attach the rest of the arm).

Originally the plan was to give him a hood but I couldn’t make the hood work with the Terminator armour no matter how I tried. It didn’t look right coming from inside the armour and it didn’t flow well around the head if it was outside. Eventually I scraped off all the greenstuff and left him with just the half-cape that’s part of the Lysander figure. I added some Dark Angel iconography on one greave and the gorget by taking some of the small icons from the Dark Angel upgrade sprue, filing them flat on one side and then gluing them on to the armour. I also Dark Angelsed up the Thunderhammer by sandwiching some greenstuff between two of the helmet wings from the sprue and sticking that on where the fist used to be. The wings on his back are from the Warhammer Fantasy Empire General set, there’s a standard top which is a robed and winged skeleton carrying a scythe. All of that except for the wings were cut away and then the two separate wings were greenstuffed together and moulded somewhat to match the back of the armour. The Empire general also gave up his two handed sword which replaced the one from the Dark Angels sprue.

Once the figure was built, it was time to get on with painting it. To begin with I painted on a thin basecoat of Snakebite Leather all over the armour. I like to paint bone as yellowy, old bone rather than bleached white as it’s generally done so I start with quite a dark colour and work up from there. In this case I highlighted up with various mixtures of Snakebite Leather, Bleached Bone and Skull White. The final edge highlights are pure Skull White but the blending in between is mostly Bleached Bone. The green parts started with a base of Orkhide Shade and went through Goblin Green, Scorpion Green and Sunburst Yellow while the red was a base of Mechrite Red with blood red and Golden Yellow for highlights. I’ve warmed to the foundation paints recently, previously I never used them at all but I’m liking the depth of colour I can get with them even though I almost always start from a white undercoat.

The main problem I had with this figure was working out what colours to do the details. Particularly things like the purity seals, which are generally done with red seals and parchment tassels. In this case the red seals would have been lost against the red eagle on the cuirass while parchment tassels wouldn’t show up well against the bone armour. Eventually I decided to do them gold with greyish parchment. The cloak was another area that got redone once I realised my original plan wouldn’t work. I had planned to do it green and cream to match the Deathwing and the Dark Angels primary colours however this didn’t go well. Cream on the inside was too close to the armour colour and it didn’t frame well as a border colour. In the end I painted the inside green with a red border to tie in with Belial’s old company colours (argent a bend sinister gules). This heraldry is repeated on his back banner, his left kneepad and on two of the right shoulderpads.

These problems are why I like to ‘sketch in’ a figure before I start to work on highlighting and fancy work. Very often something that sounds sensible in your head doesn’t translate well to the actual miniature or you’ll realise that you’ve overlooked some detail that requires you to change your plans. You’ll see that the work in progress shots from the gallery are quite rough, there’s no highlighting to speak of, many of the lines are wobbly and there may even be blank bits. Once I’ve got a better idea of how the final figure will look and I’m happy with the scheme then I’ll tidy it up, work on the shading and add in the fiddly detail.

I played around a little with some non-metallic metal effects on this model. The sword on the back banner as well as the Power Sword and the bayonet on the Storm bolter are all done with slightly different nmm techniques. The back banner is done as shading with a chrome effect – very dark areas next to very light areas to suggest sharp contrasts of light. The Power Sword and bayonet on the other hand use a hatching effect to suggest a shimmering reflection on the blade.

Finally the base is from the 40k basing kit. The large pieces are a shade over 40mm across so I had to trim it down to size, the feet are pinned into it and then it was glued onto the standard 40mm round base.  It was painted black then drybrushed with Graveyard Earth, Terracotta and Fortress Grey before small clumps of static grass were added to break it up a little.

It’s getting posted off to England on Monday, let’s hope the new owner likes it!

You can see all the in-progress and final pictures of this figure in the gallery.