Marshal Grymm - Part 3 - Face and Base

I think your whole life shows in your face

and you should be proud of that.

~ Lauren Bacall

Happy New Year! Welcome back to The Art of Caesura!

With Christmas and New Year festivities, it has been a couple of weeks since we last saw my Black Templars Marshal, Marshal Grymm. Today, we're going to focus on painting his face and his base. To get us started, here is the end result:

Now that we can see what we're working towards, let's start back at the beginning. Although Vincy V has implored us not to paint skin tones from a black undercoat, I wanted to follow Louise's skin tutorial on Citadel Masterclass as closely as possible. She started from black, so I did too. 

From Abaddon Black, I painted the skin Cadian Fleshtone.

Then I was like...oh wait she did 70:30 Cadian Fleshtone : Wraithbone so I repainted it that way. I then glazed in some pure Cadian Fleshtone to the deeper areas. 

I then ruddied up the cheeks and nose with a glazed mix of Bugman's Glow and Cadian Fleshtone.

Next, I glazed in a bit of Doombull Brown into the eyes and around the nose and mouth and service studs on his forehead; and further darkened the eye sockets with a mix of Doombull Brown and Abaddon Black. 

I (very carefully) painted the sclera with Corax White and painted in the pupil with Abaddon Black. 

I mixed Cadian Fleshtone and The Fang to add a cool tone beneath the eye, highlighting this by adding in Corax White. 

I then highlighted many of the raised areas with the original mix of 70:30 Cadian Fleshtone : Wraithbone, working up to a highlight of pure Wraithbone. 

I used a 60:40 mix of Cadian Fleshtone: Mechanicus Standard Grey to paint a bit of stubble on his chin and around his hairline. 

And here we are! Below are a few photos of the finished face in different lighting conditions. Like the rest of this model, I am doing "try-hard mode" for this whole guy. So this is probably the longest I've spent on a face and I'm really happy with the result!

Here he is in natural light...

...And under my daylight bulb. 

K03rnl sagely suggests that after painting a face, your vision and attention are maximally focused, and that this is a good time to move to other details or freehand. At this point I painted the script on the purity seals (I will discuss painting the details in a future post), and I must admit that I did find it much easier! 

Before I go, I'll quickly mention how I hope to paint the bases for my Black Templar army. I am drawing inspiration from Maxime Corbeil's classic Black Templars. 

After gluing down beach sand and cork, I painted the sand a mix of Skrag Brown and Avalon Sunset and the cork (and tactical rock) Ushabti Bone. I shaded the whole thing with Seraphim Sepia and then drybrushed the works with Wraithbone. 

Hey! We're getting there! We've looked at the overall plan, his cloak and armour and now his face and base.

Thanks for sticking with me on this guy. It's fun to take a different tact and focus on the minutia of painting one model over several posts (and a couple years now!) See you next week on The Art of Caesura.

Watching: The Last Duel (2021) - Ridley Scott

Reading: The Cthulhu Casebooks Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows - James Lovegrove

Next Week:

The devil's in the...