Miniature-Painting.net - Visions in Color

To start off I have to recomend this miniature to anyone, he's big, he's detailed and has real presence on the table. The Casting was excellent and had minimal mold lines although I'll admit there's still one at the back of one of the hooves I couldn't get to. For someone that's into drybrushing this mini is made for you, from the scale pattern on the body to the papery texture on the back of the wings. I however didn't paint him that way.

When I thirst saw the B&W pic of Abyst in the Reaper catalog I thought "Hey that would make a pretty good Balrog, and I could get that 'Galadon' mage figure and do the whole Bridge of Barad Dur" reality eventually set in and 1. I realised Abyst doesn't really look like a Balrog and 2. I didn't have the space or time to build an entire diorama also couldn't decide on which minis to use as the Hobbits.

One thing from my original idea remained; the colour scheme I had in mind was to be like a Tim Hildebrandt painting. The warm yellows and reds going into a purply shadow finally to blue. Of course with the original diorama in mind Abyst would have been lit on his right by his flaming sword and on his left by the glowing sword of Gandalf.

Now to how I DID paint him. First unlike probably everyone elses demon I primed with white, I wanted his highlights to be bright and I would work down to the shadows rather than up to the highlights. This is an important bit because reds and yellows really don't cover very strongly so the order of the paints was important. So after getting him all glued apart from the wings I sprayed him all white with GW primer then I painted the sword yellow and drybrushed most of his body around the sword yellow. Next I finished off the sword with washes of orange and red and then higlights of white then (following a lengthy discussion on painting flames on the Painting list) I also topped off the flames with thinned black to create smoke. The blade I decided would be red hot so I painted it all an even red leaving an orange highlight at the edges.

Next bit painted was the staff. I did this at the same time as some other undead minis I was doing so I mixed up some bone and snakebite leather together and thinned it right down. Then I washed the whole area and left it to dry. Next I lightly drybrushed a cream colour to cleanup the highlight areas. Next I dug out RP African brown and painted in all the crevices between the bones and teath and did the streaking to the horns.

Now after pondering a few days I got onto his body and did a thinned down red all over I did a couple coats and left him to dry (also I just bought Perfect Dark and the night kind of wizzed by). The next day I found that the yellow that I had originally drybrushed was still showing through the red. I originally did the yellow just to work out the highlights so it still being there was a nice surprise so I made it stronger by individually putting stronger yellow higlights on most of his chest scales and the mounds of his muscles in his arms. Next I started darkening his shadows with a magenta colour which I had thinned to almost wash consistancy and was carefully putting into all the crevices and all over his back. Next I used a strong purple to work in even further the shadows untill finally I used a dark ultramarine blue on the muscles on his back.

Now I crazilly decided the scales weren't defined enough and painted the lines between them to bring them out more. I then moved on to the hair I based the area with a chestnut brown then gave an ink wash of brown ink to darken it and add the shadows. After leaving it it to dry till the next day I came back and dybrushed the fur with the chestnut mixed with a sandy yellow, I added a bit of orange around the sword area as well. Next I painted the eyes after darkening the eye areas with a black wash. I picked out the wrinkles around his eyes with Goblin green and then painted his eyes with a very bright lime green and then added white in the centre. This made it look like his eyes where glowing.

Next was to paint the whole belt, loin-cloth/armour thing. I decided to stick with the same pallete and use moody blue on the plates then after painting all the trim black I picked it all out with gold.

The last bit to go - the wings. I was stumpted for a while with these as I wasn't sure that I even liked them and I would also loose all that detail on his back. In the end I thought what the hell paint them and decide then. So I started with red all over. Then I went through the magenta and purple on the front side with highlights going into yellow on the boney bits. On the back I wnet over all of it with the magenta, then washed on purple and then washed blue into the final recesses. After that it seemed a bit dark so I used some orange ink on the centre areas to bring them out more.

When the wings where painted I decided I liked them so I glued them on. Then did the base with a series of red drybrushes over black.

Oh yeah one other thing, just like everyone else I was hit by the Abyst curse, after having painted most of his body and just starting on the fur I knocked him off the table where he crashed into the edge of my bin. Damage: the sword broke off, the staff was a little bent, his right horn and K9 tooth where both bent as well. The staff straightened OK the sword was all right but his bracelet was messed up. Also in straightening out his horn and tooth the paint all cracked off and had to be redone. Compared to some of the other stories I heard I think I came off lightly.

Robert Sakaluk

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