Ahriman

So Ahriman... the last of the Burning of Prospero box to get painted up. I have been working on him for a while. I had a very clear idea in my mind to paint him up in a 'Candy Apple Red' colour with the kind of glossy metallic finish. It was a bit of an experiment for me.

I had a couple of source videos that I referenced throughout this process. Particularly to help out with the armour. Unlike most of the rest of the box, I paid some attention to the 'Official GW' but also supplemented this with this groovy little video.

I will try not to reiterate or belabour points made in those videos and instead focus on what I learned in doing this model. Also a warning - this is another model that fell into the period where I wasn't taking many photos mid-work.

I started off with some quick airbrushing to get some nice textured metallic silvers down... and made my first mistake. Regular readers know my dislike of metallics and the result is that I don't actually own many. Airbrushing with the ones I have - I didn't get sufficient contrast or brightness.

When you are tinting something with a glaze, you end up darkening it through the additional layers that you are putting on top. I didn't really account for that on this model and by the time I'd laid enough layers of red glaze (Minitaire Fresh Blood Ghost tint) - I'd darkened the model a lot more than I'd intended. Although the result doesn't look bad. It wasn't really what I'd intended to make.

Another thing I discovered is that brush painting over metal can be a bit of a pain - it has a habit of beading and not really sticking to the surface so if you are planning on laying down some metal, especially with an airbrush, careful application and masking are recommended!

After having gotten frustrated with the candy apple finish. I ended up setting the model aside for quite a while. I also really struggled with a decent finish on the cloak and all in all got pretty frustrated with this guy. I put him aside while I finished the rest of the box as well as some other figures.

I got back to him eventually, built up the cloak more carefully over a few colors and am pretty pleased with the finished effect there. The texturing and the detailing both came out pretty well.

By the end of this: I got a pretty good finish without too much time. There are a couple of issues - the armour is way too dark, and really the lighting of the model is all wrong. It's actually kind of interesting as this is a great way to demonstrate how contrast and brightness draw the eye. Everything in this model draws your eye... to the loincloth... not really what I wanted! But it is one of the better painted parts of the model so it has that going for it :-/

Not perfect but it's done! Time to move onto the next.

- Raggy, signing out