Marshal Grymm - Part 4 - Details

There is no magic in magic,

it's all in the details 

- Walt Disney

 

Welcome back friends of the Caesura to another Friday on The Art of Caesura!

We are deeply embroiled in looking at my Black Templars Marshall. Last week we looked at painting his face, and gave a brief nod to his base. Today, we're going to go back to look at some of the details on this model. 

This guy has a bunch of details on him, from his power sword, decals, plasma glow and power pack. For this post, I'm going to focus on the latter two effects because I have previously detailed my decal process, and...I forgot to take photos of painting his power sword effect...oops. 

Let's start with the plasma pistol. I began by painting the housing a dark red (Mephiston Red shaded with Nuln Oil) to give a good contrast for the bright plasma effect.

From the black undercoat of the rest of the model, I painted the plasma coils white, allowing it to bleed over into the recess between the coils and the housing of the gun. I then painted the top surface of each coil thinned black. This gives the impression that the power is coming from deep inside the gun. I followed this process for the heat vents towards the gun muzzle. 

Next I added some colour! I would have used a fluorescent blue if I had one, so I tried to improvise. I mixed Contrast Aethermatic Blue with a Vallejo Fluorescent airbrush medium that I have. I didn't thin this mix at all because between the contrast paint and the medium, it was already very thin. 

I used two coats of this all over the coils...

...and then worked pure white back into some of the recesses closer to the gun housing.

Overall, I am decently satisfied with how this effect turned out. I know that I could have added more of an OSL glow around the housing, but I find that this can look a bit messy sometimes - especially for one (like me) who is not yet skilled in this technique. 

The next effect is one that I am pretty excited about. I had never really considered doing anything special with a Space Marine's power pack until I came across an awesome idea on reddit, where Old Man Jerad had painted a Space Marine's power pack to look like it is "active" and venting heat. I thought it was awesome, so tried to emulate it. 

To be honest, the process is basically the same as the plasma gun above, but with different colours. I painted the vents white, then re-defined the raised areas with dark brown. 

I then painted the whole thing with a mix of Doombull Brown and Contrast Fleshtearers Red before re-establishing the white in the recesses. I then gave it a coat of Contrast Nazdreg Yellow (though I would have used the brighter Iyanden Yellow if I'd had it). For the cherry on top, I poked a few little dabs of white in the "hottest" areas. 

I think this is an awesome effect from a lore and aesthetic perspective. I hope to do it on all my Black Templars (I think it works especially well against their black armour). 

Righty-oh that's it for today. See you next week on The Art of Caesura!

Watching: Another Round (2020) - Thomas Vinterberg 

Reading: Doing Good Better - Will McAskill

Next Week:

Happy birthday to the blog!