"Pan's Pal" - Oathsworn Chapter 2 - Satyr

"Pan's Pal" - Oathsworn Chapter 2 - Satyr - Part 1

My men like satyrs grazing the lawns,

shall with their goat-feet dance an antic hay.

- Christopher Marlowe

Welcome back to The Art of Caesura!

Hello readers all, welcome back to The Art of Caesura!

Last week, we interrupted our regularly scheduled content with the very exciting news of the birth of my third daughter!

This week we are heading back to The Deepwood for a closer look at the model that had the very distinguished honour of being the blog's 8th birthday present.

True to form for the models that are chosen for the blog's birthday models, this monster is MONSTROUS! As you can see in the picture above, this guy is huge - about the same size as my hand! It is also the first model that I painted using my new airbrush (Ultra by Harder & Steenbeck).

Comparing the above two pictures gives a good idea of how much volume a zenithal highlight adds from the original grey plastic.

With a nice basecoat, bringing out all the details of the model, I started in with some translucent paints. For the skin, I began with a mix of Contrast Space Wolves Grey and Contrast Shyish Purple.

I then used S75's Golden Skin and Light Skin for the face and thighs. The yellow tones of these paints contrasted the bluey purple nicely, and the fact that these paints are more opaque, allowed me to easily apply them over the previous layer without running into muddiness of the colours blending.

To heighten the drama and contrast of the piece, I then used a deep violet (from Kimera) on the undersides of the legs, arms and chest.

I tried to make his hands more mystical by applying a light blue. In retrospect, the lightest blue that I had to hand (Lothern Blue) is a bit pastel; I would have preferred an electric blue to really accentuate the effect that I was going for.

At this stage I was really happy with how the skin was looking. As you can see on his thigh below, there is a nice, unnatural blend from the deep purples and violets up to golden yellows.

Next, I wanted to differentiate the fur on his mane and beard from the rest of his skin, so I applied a Payne's Grey oil wash to these areas.

With the skin well on its way, I moved on to the other elements. I painted the wood of his staff Contrast Wyldwood.

I painted the ropes Contrast Snakebite Leather, and all of the bone elements Contrast Skeleton Horde.

The skin of the poor unfortunate soul on his staff was one simple coat of Guilliman Flesh over the zenithal undercoat that I had already established.

I painted his horns with a couple very thinned layers of Steel Legion Drab - allowing them to blend into the purple overspray from his forehead.

Right around here is where I got a bit lazy with my photography. With very limited time, everything up to this point probably took me about 2.5 weeks, painting for about 45min a few nights per week. So, over the next few days I painted the base (using the exact same recipe that I used for my other Oathsworn bases - I actually opened that post, and just followed my own steps!)

I then refocused on the details.

Now, this is where the Pareto Principle comes into play. That's the idea that you can spend 20% of your time getting 80% of the work done, but that to get it up to that 100% you need to devote another 80% of time just to complete that last 20%. So this is where the philosophy of "good enough" becomes very important.

I could easily have spent anther 2.5 weeks lavishing over all of the details, something I really wanted to do was to pain the Satyr's eyes and the eyes and mouth of the victim exactly the same to show that the Satyr was possessing him and speaking through him as per the game. I partially accomplished this, but could have refined things much better had I spent more time. BUT, I have other things to paint and other hobby to hobby, so I got things up to a level that I was happy enough with, and happily moved on.

This all just means that you have to be quite strategic with where you spend your time. Marco Frisoni is a master of this. As a general rule, faces, bases, hands / weapons are eye catching areas that warrant a bit more attention.