"The Big Bull(y)" - Ogroid Thaumaturge

With snarled invocations the Thaumaturge

hurls roiling blasts of energy into the enemy ranks,

before stampeding into the midst of his reeling

foes to gore and pummel the survivors to bloody ruin.

Games Workshop

It's an exciting Friday on The Art of Caesura

Okay guys, I have an important shout-out today...Me! I'm actually on my stag (bachelor) party today, and I better not be getting my eyebrows shaved off because the wedding is NEXT SATURDAY!

Man, the model I have for you today is a BEAST! He's Silver Tower's Ogroid Thaumaturge.

"Where does his name come from", I pondered when I first heard it. Ogroid is ogre-like I guess (even though he's clearly more Minotaur). Thaumaturge is in reference to thaumaturgy (the capability of a mage to work magic). I think they could have riffed off the Minotaur (taurus = bull) part more, maybe Tauric Thaumaurge. Anyway, I digress...

Unlike much of my painting, where I spend a while before picking up my paintbrush planning out my paint scheme, I kind of just launched into these Silver Tower figures. Obviously I got inspiration from the box art, but I actually didn't really examine it per se before painting these guys. The Thaumaturge is a great example of this. In my head I was painting him really similarly to the "official" artwork, it's only when I go back to compare the two that I notice how different he turned out. 

 For his skin I used "The Fang" washed with "Drakenhoff Nightshade." This gave me a really dark base to work from, and although I originally intended to lighten him right up again, as I painted a few layers of highlights, I decided that his burning rune-tattoos would stand out much more prominently against darker skin. I even further darkened down his extremities (hooves, hands and tail) with black ink like I'd done with the blue horrors. 

 I opted to paint his fire like "normal" fire. So often these days we see ethereal fire (purple or green in Malifaux, blue or green for eldar, green for undead) and I totally think they can have their place, but sometimes I think it just looks great having normal fire. Also this would tie him in with the Blue and Brimstone Horrors.

Now, his tattoos are where things REALLY got crazy. The expression "labour of love" springs to mind...I had read others' tales of woe trying to keep the tattoos neat and that was going to be really important for me because I was going to paint them THREE TIMES OVER!

I wanted them to look mystical and fiery, so starting from the base colour of his skin (The Fang darkened with Drakenhoff) I painted all of the tattoos white. I used a lot of lahmian medium until the paint was the proverbial consistency (and colour in this case) of milk. This helped it act more like a wash, which mostly helped it pool in the recessed tattoos. 

I then repeated this process with "Yriel Yellow". 

Finally, I used "Carroburg Crimson" to change the value to orange. I was more careful than usual with this ink, because rather than just letting it pool at the lowest points, I dragged the pooled ink to dry in different parts of the tattoos to enhance the shifting magma-like look of them. To be honest they turned out even better than expected, and I feel were worth the effort!

Thanks for stopping by for another Friday on The Art of Caesura!


Drinking: everything (hey, it's my stag!)


Next Week:

Goin' to the chapel...