"Forgiven, Not Forgotten" - Unforgiving Chaplain - Artel W - Part 2

The spiritual leaders of their Chapters, 

Chaplains are awe-inspiring warrior priests 

who administer rites, preserve rituals 

and perform ancient ceremonies of initiation, 

vindications and redemption that are 

as important to a Space Marine Chapter 

as its roll of honour or skill at arms. 

- Games Workshop

Hello one and all! Welcome to The Art of Caesura!

I hope you are all well! My 1.5 year old, Freya, has not been sleeping very well of late (by which I mean the past 1.5 years). But when the exhaustion creeps in we have to remind ourselves that this time is so fleeting in the big scheme of things and there will be a last time for everything. I found Sam Harris' meditation on this topic to be quite life-changing, I've included an excerpt below, but you can find the complete audio clip and (a bit of a dodgy) transcript here. 

If you're a parent, when is the last time you will pick up your child or tuck her into bed or read her a story. Our youngest daughter still says "aminals" instead of animals and though I'm a stickler for words, I am not correcting her. Each one of those is priceless now thinking in this way, it gives a poignancy to everything, even to things that you don't like. Again, let's say you're a new parent and you're getting woken up several times a night by your baby, that's brutal. But there will be a last time, and knowing that can change your experience in the moment. There's something sweet even about this experience. It's possible that you will miss this. 

We do everything a finite number of times and yet we tend to take even beautiful moments for granted, and the rest of the time we're just trying to get through stuff, you're just trying to get to the end of whatever experience you're having.

- Sam Harris

Now, on to the miniature at hand! The last time we saw this intimidating fellow (3 weeks ago, before all of my Warhammer Fest coverage), he was on my paint table. Today he takes to the shadowy wooden block upon which photos are forged!

For my insights into my painting process, check out the work-in-progress post. Today, I just want to focus on how cool this model is; and for that we will let the pictures do the talking. 

I think the decal text and maltese cross above it (both from the Black Templars transfer sheet) look awesome! I had to change my normal colour scheme for purity seals: I would usually paint the ribbon bone-coloured (Ushabti Bone, to be exact) and the wax seal red. I tried this initially, but even shifting the tones slightly the ribbons still got lost against the parchment so I made them red, but then what colour to do the wax seals? I settled on gold, which I think works pretty well. 

A distinctly Gothic take on the Chaplain's archetypal crozius arcanum.

Here you can see some of the details of his other bony pauldron and also my new basing style for my Black Templars. 

Regarding the basing, unlike my previous desert bases, which I felt were too tonally similar to the many tabbards on my Templars, I think the orangey-red Martian earth tones of my new bases have enough separation even against large red areas of my models, like the cloak below. 

That was one of my favourite Black Templars that I have painted! I hope you liked it too!

See you next week, right here on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: The Log from the Sea of Cortez - John Steinbeck

Next Week:

The uninitiated...