Stef Paints
Last time I posted an update of my Golden Demon project, I'd almost finished building and was keen to start painting. I had intended to post an update during the painting process, but time go the better of me. So, here's an overview of how the painting process went, along with my thoughts on my experience at the event itself!
I typically won't use sub-assemblies when painting. I've just never got on with it, but for Ghazkull there was no way I would have been able to paint the model with his head and jaw attached.
With his skin I wanted to use a variety of green tones. As there is only a small amount of skin on show, mainly the face, I tackled this first. Taking time to get it looking as good as I could, with different tones around his nose, lips and ears - trying to inject as much life into the face as possible.
The next major part of the miniature I wanted to get right was the black armour and the checker patterns. The armour was painted using a recipe from Angel Giraldez, essentially mixing Vallejo Model Pastel Green gradually into black to build up highlights. This makes the highlights more interesting than simply using a neutral colour for the highlights.
It also made sense to me that his armour would be heavily worn, and so I used a mix of black and Pro Acryl Pale Yellow for these - intentionally using a different highlight colour to create some variation.
With the checker patterns, I started by painting the pattern with a pale grey, then painting over with Two Thin Coats White Scar as it is a really smooth white. I then used black to paint chips onto the white squares, and the Pale Yellow/Black mix to paint chips onto the black squares. Glazing over the whole thing with black and brown to tie the whole thing together and add some additional weathering.
There are a number of different metal textures on the miniature, so I wanted to intentionally differentiate between them.
The more grimy, functional metals such as pistons, joints and around the backpack were all given washes and shading using browns and blacks to make them look oily and dirty.
In contrast to that, his claw I wanted to really jump out as a polished shiny metal, so for this I really concentrated on getting the highlights to pop and increasing the contrast between them and the shadows.
The last thing to finish was the base. I'd left myself a few days before the event to concentrate on the base and I'm glad I did! Placing the model it just didn't sit right. Unfortunately I'd already painted the base at this point, but I had to bite the bullet and add an additional tactical rock under his left foot.
A few mushrooms and a snail later and he was complete!
And then to the event itself. It all started with fun and games to find one of my tyres had a screw in it! Thankfully I was able to borrow my girlfriends car for the weekend.
I arrived around lunch time on the Saturday and got Ghazkull entered. Seeing him in the cabinets alongside all the other amazing entries always makes the effort worth it, and I was really happy with what I'd achieved.
Then it was a case of waiting for results and enjoying the event. Sadly, it was very difficult to enjoy the event due to the amount of queueing involved! Golden Demon was the main event for me, I wasn't prepared to queue for 4 hours to try the new 40k. I remember going to Games Day events many years ago, and the events used to be full of things to do. Participation games, authors, studio staff, artists, massive displays. There was none of that. I have to say everything apart from Golden Demon, for me at least, was hugely underwhelming.
Ultimately, come Monday morning I had a shiny finalist pin next to Ghazkull. I was really happy to get another pin, although a bit disappointed not to go further and get a commended this time around. That said, it was a really good opportunity to get up close and really analyse the commended entries and try to understand what it is that takes things to the next level.
And there we have it, Golden Demon is done for another year. I already have some ideas bubbling for next year's entry, however in the meantime I'm keen to paint up some tabletop stuff I have ready to go. So expect to see me more active on Instagram and on here as I work through those.
Until next time!
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