"Sobek's Curse" - The Canopic Beast

"Thou livest upon that which Ra lives."

- Sir Edward Budge

Welcome back to The Art of Caesura!

We're picking up from last week, and looking at more creepy characters (or creatures) from The World of Smog: Rise of Moloch. This week we have The Canopic Beast!

This image belongs to CMoN

A mummified zombie crocodile!! How cool is that!?

This was a great model to paint, something of a study in washes. 

I started by painting the whole model in Steel Legion Drab, a nice neutral brown. This provided the perfect base for both the skin and the wrappings. From here I washed the skin with a mix of Agrax Earthshade and Biel-Tan Green (about 1:2) with a bit of Lahmian Medium, to help it really pull out the details. 

After a few thin coats of this wash, I started on the wrappings. I painted them Ushabti Bone and then washed them heavily with Agrax. 

Now came the fun part of picking out the details! Something I've really noticed since I started this blog and started painting a miniature per week (as opposed to a few a year) is that my brush confidence has really improved. For me this is manifested in that I am able to continue to use larger brushes for much more of my painting process than I would have previously. I only really scoot down to my fine detail brush for the really small details and use a standard brush for most everything else. I've found that this alone has dramatically increased my painting speed. 

So, I went on to paint the individual scales, which was a little tricky at first because I needed to mix a layer paint to match the (now shaded) skin tone. I accomplished this by mixing Warboss Green, Steel Legion Drab and a touch of Abaddon Black for a nice dark pastel green. To layer up the scales on the back I used less and less black and for the belly I added Ushabti Bone to this mix to lighten it further. I added a bit of Yriel Yellow to this mix to give a bit of brightness to some random scales.

The wrappings were accomplished very simply by lightening up the Steel Legion Drab with Ushabti Bone (then an Agrax wash) and up to White Scar. As you can see from the second image I've posted above, I stippled on the White Scar to give something of a linen texture to the wrappings - especially on the areas where the wrappings are bulging over his spines. 

And for his tongue I washed Pink Horror with Druchii Violet and applied a gloss varnish. I know that the maw of a mummified crocodile probably wouldn't have moist saliva, but I took a bit of artistic license to really make the pink pop. 

Like the gloss in the mouth, I was really tempted to have Nurgle's Rot coming out of the exposed rib-cage, but again I felt this would break the verisimilitude of a dry mummified crocodile. Hmmm...I'm still on the fence about that one. Leave a comment below if you think it would look better with some green ooze seeping through the ribs.

Another fun, characterful miniature from The World of Smog. Tune in for more next week on The Art of Caesura!

Listening: The Hazards of Love - The Decemberists

Watching: Stranger Things Season 2

Next Week:

Buuurrrppp!!