Death Guard 2

Painting time: 24hrs.

This is a miniature I painted for a bit of fun, and for something less stressful after working hard on my Golden Demon entries for this year! I also wanted to try out a few new things, such as working on more defined zenithal lighting, varying the lighting levels slightly from top to bottom. I still need to work more on this; it's still not very noticeable but it was good practice, and a good lesson in working out what is required.

The miniature is another one of the old GW plague marines, great minis with lots of personality and interest I think. I made a few changes: the right arm was replaced with a plastic arm, and the pitchfork added - the shaft is brass rod. The right arm is a plastic from the chaos mutation sprue, with a shoulder pad added from the fantasy orc sprue. I gave him tanks on his back rather than the usual backpack; I hate painting those marine backpacks for some reason, and I thought the tanks would be more enjoyable, and more interesting as well. I thought they would make sense as some sort of breathing apparatus with the tube come from his face mask, and I added another tube to the tanks from his head. I also filed off the skulls on his upper shins and right shoulder pad, because I felt like working with a smooth surface.

The basic concept and colours were inspired by Allan Carrasco, and his dark mutants. I just love the atmosphere he creates with his miniatures, so I thought I would try to create a dark atmosphere and environment with my own version of an Allan C type plague marine. The armour colour was based on VMC bronze green mixed with VMC basalt grey and black, with the addition of VMC olive grey towards the higher parts of the mini for a slightly warmer tone. In the same way, the highlights for the lower areas were made by adding VMC medium sea grey to the original mix, whereas the higher parts had some lighter, warmer tones by adding some VMC yellow green and white. In the end, the effect was a little too subtle and the difference is noticeable; next time I will need to be braver and use a little more colour!

Guild Artisan,
Sebastian.