Dark Apostle

Well, a mammoth exercise, to say the least! I've got no idea of the number of hours this took; all I know is that it was very very many!! 2005 was my first year entering Golden Daemon, and I wanted to create something special and unique. Chaos is always fun, as there are so many opportunities for crazy conversions with things like mutations, battle damage, strange daemonic weapons and so on. And I wanted to try some serious sculpting work with greenstuff, as I was finally starting to get more comfortable with it.

As I'm sure many of you have already worked out, the base miniature was the GW space marine veteran with the power axe from the veterans' box, but the head and axe-blade were removed. Other than that, the stakes coming out of his backpack are from Abaddon I think, his mutated arm is a modified version of one of the arms from the chaos marine mutation sprue, and the banner is from the goblin sprue, although the skull was swapped for a different, bigger one. Plus of course all the random spikes etc. from here, there and everywhere!

As far as greenstuff sculpting work goes, I'm afraid I forgot to take a photo before I started painting (which would make this a lot easier!), but the main sculpted parts are his head, the faces on his knees, belt-buckle, and left shoulder-pad, and most of the bits of parchment hanging off his armour. And also the electronic bit holding the top of the accursed crozius - the strange mace-like weapon he is holding - which is carried by dark apostles of the Word Bearers chaos legion and is meant to be a corrupted form of the weapons the marine chaplains carry.

Lots of people have asked me about painting the freehand, especially the banner, but there is no secret method or anything - the main thing is to be clear about what you are going to be painting, and to be prepared to spend a lot of time working on it. I generally work out the design on a bit of paper first, and use this sketch as a guide while painting. For this banner, I actually did a trial run on paper: I painted a black rectangle the same size as the real banner, then painted a rough version of the design to see how it would fit and look at that scale, and to experiment with different colours etc. When it comes to doing the real thing, there's no easy way, you just need to be patient and prepared to keep working at it. Find a brush with a good point, and you are halfway there; then take your time - rushing is a sure way to disaster! Roughly paint the design with thin, transparent paint first, then when you have the right shape, go over it with more opaque paint. Have the background colour handy at all times - you will constantly need it to neaten and correct the design until you have it right. Good luck!

Guild Artisan,
Sebastian.