"Holy Radiance" - Excelsior Warpriest

This courageous mortal man has taken up arms

to protect Sigmar's faithful from Chaos,

and has been gifted with the power to summon forth

the divine light of Sigmar.

~ Games Workshop

Back to the Silver Tower today on The Art of Caesura!

We're adding another hero to the roster of hapless adventurers wandering the Silver Tower. He's teaming up with last week's Doomseeker, and his name always makes me think of that old chewing gum commercial, "Excel-Excelorate yooour breath!" It's the Excelsior Warpriest!

There's a lot to talk about with the ol' Warpriest, so let's dive right in. The first thing I love about him is his "I have the POWERRRRR" He-man pose! Very "Masters of the Universe"y. 

When this guy first game out, I wasn't a huge fan of the "studio" colour-scheme (lots of whites and oranges) and I could't really find a colour scheme that I liked, so I just made up my own. I know that black and red are usually associated with bad guys, and this guy's a righteous priest...but he is a Warpriest...

Not only do I just like red and black as a colour combo (probably because of my electric guitar, Vlad), but I knew I wanted to paint his skin dark, so I thought it would be a fun challenge to have his robes quite dark as well and used the gold and blue details to add some popping contrast. 

I painted the Warpriest with loads of warm tones, the red of his robes, while de-saturated (Mephiston Red + Doombull Brown then Agrax Earthshade) has a lot of warmth to it. Even the black cloak is a "warm" black, by which I mean, I highlighted it by adding Ushabti Bone to Abaddon Black, instead of Incubi Darkness (which I use for "cool" blacks).

So, his skin tone then. I've been using Scale 75's Flesh Tone set for the past year and a bit for my skin, but the last time I tried to paint darker skin, it didn't turn out too well. This time I started with "African Shade" and mixed in more and more "Indian Shade". I also used a wash of Reikland Fleshshade to keep the warm tones in there before finishing with pure "Indian Shade. I must say, I'm pretty happy with how the skin turned out. Let me know what you think. 

I have been threatening to do a review of the Scale 75 Flesh Tone set, and I just might finally be ready to put all my thoughts together on that front once I've finished Silver Tower.

For his tome I did my usual squiggles for the writing, but I "Illuminated" the first letter of each page a la The Book of Kells and the like. Here's a "The Art of Caesura Easter Egg" or something: for text, I usually make the first letter legible (as if it's enlarged on the page). I always use the letter "R" for this because it's the first letter of my name, and I think it's an easy letter to add serifs to making it look Latinate. This time I mixed it up and did a "T"; and the way the rest of the squiggles on that line turned out (with the vertical bit going up in the middle of the word and down at the end) I think it looks like the word "Today". That got me thinking that instead of some tome of incantations to Sigmar, maybe the Excelsior Warpriest is holding his old kindergarten journal "Today I played with my grifhownd, she likes to kach the bal". Man, at least I amuse myself!

Not wanting him to disappear into warm, dark tones, I made the gems a luminous blue against the bright gold metal to jazz things up a little. 

I was just looking back, and it's been about a year and a half since I painted his companion, the adorable Gryph-Hound (I just had to include a shot of the two of them - man's best friend, and all that...) man, time flies when you're painting minis!!

If I had planned it better, I might have painted the Gryph-Hound black and red as well (maybe black with orangey-red stripes, like a reverse-tiger). But I don't really feel like re-painting this little gal, because I like that she looks like a classic gryphon. 

And that's him! Another hero of the Silver Tower complete! We're getting frighteningly close to finishing off all the models in this game. Tune in next week to see who's next on The Art of Caesura

Reading: Mythos - Stephen Fry

Gaming: Warhammer Quest (PC)

Next Week:

He lurks in the shadows...