"An Arcane Practitioner" - Conan Warlock

Tis the night - the night of the grave's delight

and the warlocks are at their play;

ye think that without the wild winds shout,

but no, it is they - it is they. 

- Arthur Cleveland Coxe

Hello and welcome to The Art of Caesura!

We're in the middle of a few weeks of painting minis from the Conan board game, and today we have the Warlock.

Today's mini was another one that I kind of just leaped into. I hadn't looked at the "box art" (below) before starting and rather relied on my instincts: Egyptian-y, evil wizard - how about purples and golds. 

Looking at the art below, I think the muted snake-skin motif would work better if some of the sculpted details (in the render below, below) were more visible on the actual model. 

Looking again at the render below, I actually think I preferred the original pose they gave him: with his staff pointing down rather than up. I think it better emphasized his role as a wizard rather than a combatant, but I can see how this would have caused problems with the "pull angle" of the molding process. 

Anyway, still a pretty cool mini with some nice details and textures that were fun to paint. 

I started by painting all of the purple areas with Xereus Purple and all the gold areas with Retributor Armour. 

I then shaded the whole model with Druchii Violet and further shaded the gold with Seraphim Sepia. The purple was highlighted just by added a bit of white into the Xereus Purple. 

The ol' purple wash over gold is a great trick to make gold look a little more rich and maybe a little evil. I highlighted the edges with Stormhost Silver. 

For his skin, I used my dark skin recipe. And for the head of his 'halberd' / staff I sort of used my obsidian recipe (black with flecks of Gauss Blaster Green, tinted with Bieltan Green and given a coat of gloss varnish)

When it comes to metal, I usually either paint steel or copper and I rarely use the colour purple, so it was fun to branch out a little with the golds and purples on this guy. 

I'll see you next Friday right here on The Art of Caesura!

Watching: Donnie Brasco (1997) - Mike Newell

Next Week:

No bones about it!