Kain the Scourge

Painting time: 34hrs.

I spent around 32 hours on this miniature I think, as well as another few hours on the base, about 1.5 - 2 weeks to paint all up - I lost track of time a bit I'm afraid. I had been looking forward to painting Kaïn for a while, I love the miniature and it was great fun to paint.

The armour was painted in a similar way to my Black Paladin about a month earlier - I had a good idea of how to approach the armour based on this earlier practice, as Kaïn, being the leader of the Black Paladin's, has very similar-shaped armour. See the Black Paladin's write-up for a short description of the method used. I tried to improve my technique on this one though, and added a few more highlight steps to smooth the transitions a little, and also a black glaze in the shadows to make the armour darker, as it became a bit too light for a black paladin.

The most important part of the NMM is the final highlight with pure white; a couple of layers of thinned (with just water) white paint to blend into the preceding colour, then a small point of concentrated, opaque white to finish. The bright, shining effect is achieved simply through contrast, as the other areas are quite dark in this case, causing the white to really stand out.

I tried to tone-down the rust on Kaïn's armour, and made it a little darker, as I think I used slightly too much yellow on the Black Paladin. I made the rust on the weapons a bit stronger and lighter though, and more yellow, as I wanted some contrast between the weapons and the armour. I also used some VMC medium grey mixed with the other greys when painting the weapons, to try to make the metal colour a bit different.

I tried to use a bit more colour on Kaïn's robes, so that he would stand out more - and also because it was fun using some stronger greens, blues and browns! This was my favourite part of the painting, working with the shapes and colours made it so enjoyable. I used a base-coat of VMC medium grey mixed with a small amount of VMC bronze green. Then I shaded by adding more bronze green to the mix and painting many thin layers in the shadowed areas, then with even more bronze green, then pure bronze green. For the darker shadows up near the top of the robes, I used bronze green mixed with VMC dark sea blue, then pure dark sea blue, always in very thin, multiple layers. Dark sea blue is a great colour, one of my favourites at the moment! For the lower parts of the cloak, I was inspired to introduce some orange-browns by the Rackham version of Kaïn, where this is also done. First I used VMC medium grey mixed with a little GW bestial brown, then more bestial brown and a tiny bit of black, then bestial brown pure, and finally bestial brown with VMC German cam. black brown. I highlighted the folds of the robes on the upper sections using the original mix of medium grey with a little bronze green, then added white to this mix for a final highlight. The mid-to-lower folds were highlighted with pure medium grey, and then with added white, although on some of the browner sections I highlighted by adding some bestial brown and a little black to the medium grey, then again by adding white to the mix.

German cam. black brown was also the colour I used for the patterning on the cloak. When I had finished painting the design, I used Arkaal's technique of painting a few thin glazes of the background robe colour over the patterns, in order to fade them a little and make them seem a more natural part of the clothing. I chose a darker colour for the pattern because I did not want it to stand out and be too lively, and draw attention away from the rest of the miniature.

I used purple for some other details such as the horns and the gems in the sword, because according to the other main colours I had used - orange-ish and green-blue, a purplish tone should be the third complimentary colour. Orange, green and purple are the three secondary colours, and are equally spaced around the colour wheel. The purple worked out well in another sense - as Weisern pointed out, through coincidence purple is also the colour of the gems of darkness markers in Confrontation!

I decided to construct a base myself this time, rather than put Kaïn on one of the resin bases I have been using recently, because Kaïn is for myself and I wanted to make him a bit more personal. The base is made out of a bark chip for the rock, with some extra sand texture added round the edges etc., and the wooden planks are strips of balsa scraped with a hard-bristled brush, similar to a steel bristled brush, to bring out the grain texture. The grass is woodland scenics, tall field grass I think it is called. I wanted the base to be quite simple, but hopefully evocative and recalling the surrounds of the wastelands of Acheron.

Guild Artisan,
Sebastian.