Once a hive ganger, Pious Vorne
now fights alongside Taddeus the Purifier,
having discovered the joys of faith
(not to mention burning heretics).
Hello one and all, and welcome to your weekly instalment of The Art of Caesura!
A few weeks ago we looked at Taddeus the Purifier, today we're going to look at his psychotic acolyte: Pious Vorne.
Pious is one of the adventurers that I am using in the campaign that my wife and I have on the go (along with the inimitable Janus Draik). A Black Templar at heart, I was attracted by her fanaticism, hatred of heretics and big-ass flamer/chainsword.
She's great in the game, able to set spaces of the board on fire to create traps and choke points. I use the flame tokens from my Hellboy board game for this, and they're perfect. She actually does a good bit of damage, but can't take much in return. Mechanically, she would actually be well-paired with Taddeus, because he could heal her, which is nice because they would have a thematic connection too.
In Darius Hinks' Blackstone Fortress novel, although she is one of the three characters to make it onto the cover, she is a bit two-dimensional, just a support character who twitches and talks to herself in scenes with Taddeus.
Onwards to the painting!
While I was largely influenced by the official colour scheme, I diverged in a few places. Firstly, I kept her armour and rebreather mask a black metal to contrast the bright flames and pale skin. This was simply Contrast Black Templars over Leadbelcher with chips of Vallejo Silver painted over at the end.
Likewise, I tried to paint her "skirt" (robes?) a similar cracked red leather to the box art, but wasn't quite as successful (I didn't add those microtextures needed to "sell" an effect like this, and I struggled to highlight up to a colour that I was happy with). I started from a base of equal parts Mephiston Red + Druchii Violet and Abaddon Black for a nice deep, rich red. From here, I added in more and more Yriel Yellow and S75's Pale Flesh for successive highlights.
The part of the model that I am most happy with is her skin. It's funny to think that I probably spent almost an hour just painting those few millimetres of the model, but, like I said, I'm happy with how those millimetres turned out.
Rather than the pink skin on the official paint job, I tried to go for a darker more sickly pallor. I wanted her to look like she is suffering from radiation sickness (hence the baldness), perhaps from huffing too much promethium. I accomplished this by starting from a mid-tone of S75 Golden Skin and glaze-shading with Arabic Shadow and highlighting with Light Skin. I accentuated her eyebrow ridge to give her more of a gaunt, skeletal appearance.
I also tried to dot her pupils like she's looking around wildly, pumping out great gouts of flame.
Speaking of flames...I painted the fire Yriel Yellow from the base of each flame where they emerge from the brazier and flamer, I then wet-blended in Troll Slayer Orange to the upper portion of each flame and further blended Evil Sunz Scarlet. I topped each flame with a thin glaze of Abaddon Black where they wisp into smoke.
The final detail was the hazard stripes on her flamer. On the box art she has impressive Gothic text, but I opted against this for two reasons: firstly (and foremostly) I couldn't be arsed, and secondly, I think the hazard stripes are reminiscent of Necromunda, recalling the fact that Pious was originally a hive ganger.
And there we have her, Pious Vorne. We're really getting down to the final few heroes. See you next week on The Art of Caesura!
Watching: Green Knight
Reading: Northern Spy - Flynn Berry
Next Week:
Approaching the hill...
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