"From the Halcyon Dawn" - Yar Umbra II

Darkness is also an environment Yar knows well, 
and with his custom maw-pattern long las, 
even a flicker of movement is enough
for the void-born sniper to bring down his prey.

~ Lexicanum


Hello, and welcome back to The Art of Caesura!

If you didn't get a chance to check out last week's post I would urge you to do so; in it I discussed the choice of head-swap for this awesome void-born sniper.

Today, I'd like to talk about the painting process. 

I started by planning out the colours. As I mentioned last week, although I was using a Delaque head-swap, I really didn't want him to look just like a Delaque ganger. I tried to distance him from Delaque, by inverting his skin tone - giving him dark skin (to pull away from Delaque's eerily pale skin). I painted his mask white to contrast the skin and draw the eye to his face. Black and red are a combo I love (as seen in my guitar, Vlad) and so, wanting to move away from the browns of the box-art, I decided to incorporate black and red. 

With the black and red palette decided, I thought about where I would place the colours. I made the tunic and leg-wrappings red (1:1 mix Mephiston Red : Doombull Brown -> Agrax Earthshade -> highlighted with the original mix with Ushabti Bone added) and separated the two patches of red with the black pants. I usually go for cold blacks (highlighted with Incubi Darkness), but wanted to keep this model in the brown tones of the dusty grimy Underhive. So, the black was Abaddon Black -> Nuln Oil -> highlighted with Abaddon Black + Steel Legion Drab.

His satchel and one strap across his chest used a base of Doombull Brown while the other was Steel Legion Drab. 

The cream clothing under his red tunic and gathering at his neck was painted with Ushabti Bone -> Agrax Earthshade -> Ushabti with more and more white added. 

To give a little contrasting spot colour, I painted his gun and hip flask green - this also helps draw one's eye across the model from the back. On the box art his gun in red, but I though it more likely that he managed to "acquire" his long las from the military, so I painted it in olive drab. 

Just for fun - and to reference my first 40k army, I painted his shoulder pad in the Black Templars style. All the metal was especially fun to paint. The steel is meant to look dark and oiled. Leadbelcher -> Nuln Oil -> up to Stormhost Silver and the copper (like his backpack, which totally brought me back to my Kharadron Overlords) was Screaming Bell -> Agrax -> Hashut Copper with more and more Stormhost Silver added. I even added some Nihilek Oxide coming from the vents of his backpack. 

Inspired by the fun atmospheric photos that I took of The Unkindness last week, enjoy the shots of Yar Umbra below!

Knock, Knock!

What a fun miniature with the right amount of cloth rags and hard metal edges. I'm really happy with my head-swap. What do you think?

See you next week on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris

Listening: Rusalka, Rusalka - The Decemberists

Next Week:

Welcome Autumn...