Today I got down to the details on my pet chaplain project. I knew as soon as I saw the Night Lords terror squad heads I was going to use one for something like this and I had picked up Evanus Enkomi's body sometime back and so I got to it and bashed out a chaplain and primed him black. He doesn't have a crozius so I might pinch the one from calth and pop it on a belt loop or something later but I like him as he is:
I had a vision of my average idea of a chaplain, resplendent in bone, black and golden armour. With a little red spot colour to blood angel him suitably. However I did the bone in a shade of blue grey as a nod of the head to the night lord head. and then the red contrasted with this rather well and I had to rethink my plan.
I had thought to do the sanguinary guard shoulder pauldron's and the metal plates on his legs a gold/brass colour, I then thought maybe some heavy verdigris could help to keep the temperature balance between the cool bone and black highlights and the red but in the end after a discussion with a friend via whatsapp I went for a more neutral dark silver with a light verdigris and nuln oil wash.
This was also a cooler tone and then the addition of the scrolls and basing in warm browns helped to keep everything in line.
For those who are wondering about the blood drop, when I carefully trimmed off the minotaurs chapter symbol from the chest I was able to carve the resin into a fairly centred drop shape. (It is slightly askew but the leaning pose hides it well!)
A back view. I chose (all but one) blood angel bits that had blood drop gems on to push the obvious chapter tie given I was going for two fairly distinct pieces from other chapters to make up the bulk of the model and have a more even distribution of red bits all over the model to draw the eye.
Not my best script but it will do. Perhaps I'll repaint it sometime I have more light.
I added stronger highlights to the shoulder guards than on the rest of the black armour to help their details not be completely lost beside the paler skull and rib cage detail.
I love a yellow stripe. It's probably a bit much against the rest of the model, but it ties in with the unit he will be deployed with who are all very red to his black armour.
I'm very happy with the final result although I can't help but wonder how he would have looked if painted in the other scheme to compare. I think this is the first time I've made a major change to what I'd had planned mid way through painting something. Short of a full repaint, changing a minor detail or adding more detail to what I'd set out t do.
I hope you like him and the moment of insight into the painting process. What do you think about the yellow? Or my decision to change my colour palette plans part way? Would gold have looked better?
