"The Boss of the Game" - Gaunt Summoner

And

 wrought with weeping and laughter,

And

 fashioned with loathing and love,

With

 life before and after

And

 death beneath and above

Algernon Charles Swinburne - Atalanta in Calydon

Welcome all to another special week on The Art of Caesura!

This week marks my completion of painting all 51 of the miniatures in Warhammer Quest Silver Tower; and who better to finish out on than the boss of the game, The Gaunt Summoner of Tzeentch himself!

A quick note before we begin, now having completed the painting of the entire box-set, my wife and I have picked up our adventures where we had left off - on the third-to-last trial: Chamon. So don't get to remaniscent about Silver Tower yet, I'll post some pics of our adventures in a couple of weeks' time.

Okay, I've got a lot to discuss when it comes to my painting of the Gaunt Summoner...

Overall, I know that from the lore, being a demon of Tzeentch there should be loads of bright colours, but I also wanted to make him dark and foreboding, in keeping with his role as the Final Boss. I also wanted to emphasize his chitinous, insectoid elements, but we'll get to those later...

Let's start with his cloak. After being quite happy with how the blending went on Mistweaver's robe last week, I tried it again, this time fading from Abaddon Black at his waist to The Fang at the base. I washed the whole lot with Drakenhof Nightshade to smooth out the transition before edge highlighting the more prominent folds.

For the skin on his hands and face I started with Ushabti bone. On the hands and "horns" I just washed this with Seraphim Sepia and then re-highlighted up to white. On his face I tried just washing the Ushabti bone with pure Drakenhof Nightshade, but this didn't really give a great effect, so I went back and worked my way up to Sotek Green. All of the various eyes all over the model (On his head, shoulder skulls, chest, and tome) started as Gaussblaster and worked their way up to Scar White with a lick of gloss varnish.

His creepy insectoid arms and armour-plating turned out even better than expected. I was going to just paint them black and gloss varnish them, but instead decided to try Soulstone Blue over Abaddon Black and really like how it gave the plates a shiny blue tinge.

For his changestaff, I wetblended Screamer Pink to Altdorf Blue and then washed the whole thing with a few coats of Druchii Violet (getting heavier out towards the edges). The "eye" in the centre of the change staff was Stormhost Silver with Soulstone Blue over top.

I spent a little while pondering his feathers. My experience with painting feathers comes mostly from painting some of my younger brother's Lizardmen (Seraphon) back in the day. Those, like the feathers on the studio version of this model were really vibrantly coloured affairs; which would clearly be out of place on this guy. I really wanted to paint these feathers as raven feathers to play into their common mythos as "The Trickster" character. My final source of inspiration was having painted the relatively dark feathers on The Gatekeeper bust for The World of Smog. 

So, I started with Runefang Steel (a nice mid-tone silver) and applied about 4 or 5 thinned coats of Drakenhof Nightshade and one of Nuln Oil. Then I went back in with Stormhost Silver to texture the edges and give them that iridescence, without being too distracting from the overall dark colour scheme.  

And here is his, Ol' Gaunty with his little buddies! And that's it! All 51 miniatures for Warhammer Quest Silver Tower painted!!

As I said at the biginning, having everything painted has acted has a huge stimulus to get back into the game, so I'll post some more group shots of all the minis from this great game in a few weeks time!

Thanks for cruising by, I'll see you next week right here on The Art of Caesura!

Listening: Your Ghost - The Decemberists

Gaming: Vermintide 2

Watching: Altered Carbon

Reading: The Ethical Slut - Hardon and Easton

Next Week:

Showing some skin...