"Unrestrained Power" - Rogue Psykers

Chaos psykers, often called sorcerers,

can perform various tasks

such as summoning Daemons

and unleashing devastating weaponised

psychic powers upon the enemy.

- Warhammer 40k Wiki

Howdy howdy! Welcome back to another Friday on The Art of Caesura!

It has come at last! Enter the warp as we cast our minds back to when we were last looking at Blackstone Fortress. Readers with good memories might recall that I said I was so close to having all of the minis of Blackstone Fortress finished before the blog's last birthday. And it was true! I only had three to go which I ended up finishing within a month of the blog's birthday (so not too shabby, if I do say so myself). Well I actually had these guys painted at the time (I actually painted them back in November) but I was in the midst of showing off Marshal Grymm at the time so I decided to hold these guys back until I got the rest of Blackstone Fortress painted.

Anyway, it is now time to reveal the Rogue Psykers!

God, I really love these models. They are weird and creepy (and have been surprisingly ineffective against us in the game). I remember, when I was assembling these guys, being so impressed with how different they made them look with basically just a simple head- and lower arm- swap. By having them facing in different directions, it changes our viewing angle, which leads to different elements of the models being emphasized, making the models look quite different. Very clever indeed.

And they are evil too. My wife often pricks her fingers on the one guy's staff!

Anyway, onto the painting. My main goal with these guys was to keep their clothes neutral enough so that their pale, bulbous heads almost glow in contrast.

So, for the skin I started from Grey Seer and then worked in some glazes of S75 Golden Skin. I used this tone, because I thought it would contrast nicely with the colder Grey Seer base coat and also because I wanted it to look quite different from the Cadian Fleshtone that I used for the "good guys".

I used Gurney's facial zones (yellow tones for the forehead, redder tones for the mid-face and bluer tones for the lower face) to bring some life into his mutated features.

The base tones that I used for the rest of the model were:

Copper: Screaming Bell

Brown: Doombull Brown + Contrast Wyldwood Brown

Grey: Militarum Grey

Red: Mephiston Red

Silver: Leadbelcher

I painted their armour the same way as I had done for the Traitor Guard to tie them together (i.e. Leadbelcher then Contrast Black Templars over top. I then added some chips and dings to the armour with Vallejo Silver around where the tentacle is bursting out of the guy with the staff (I know, I didn't notice it either!)

Now, let's just sit back and imagine these guys hovering towards you through the dark bowels of the Blackstone Fortress - preceded by the scraping sound of their shackles on the polished alien floor...actually let's not imagine that. Let's just look at some nice atmospheric shots of these guys.