Helbrecht is the living embodiment
of his Chapter's warrior spirit.
Wielding the Sword of the High Marshals,
he storms into the fray,
bellowing oaths of vengeance
as he leads the unstoppable charge.
Welcome all to a very special post on The Art of Caesura!
This one has been a long time coming! High Marshal Helbrecht - the big boss of the Black Templars! I actually painted him in August and September of last year! A full 6 months ago!! And now he's finally making his grand appearance on the blog!
I waited until now because, like with my Land Raider, I wanted to be able to dedicate a few consecutive weeks to really delving into this guy - after all, he took about 6 weeks to paint (painting for 45min a few evenings per week)!
In setting out to paint Helbrecht, the centrepiece of my Black Templars army, I decided to do something that I have almost never done before. I opened Marco Frisoni's youtube video on painting this model and just tried to follow it exactly.
I started working on the base, blending the sculpted elements into the rest of the base.
Once I was satisfied that the base had enough textural interest going on, I sprayed the whole thing black...
...then used my old airbrush to apply a white ink over much of the model.
I would literally watch his video, pause it try it myself, rewind and do it again. I took great care to add the volumes where he did - which was not purely zenithal - you can see the light reflections on his sword, the attention to the lantern, and to his chest for example. Below is a screenshot of Marco's work at the same stage for comparison (obviously under different light sources and colour corrected by his camera and my phone).
And below is mine again for comparison.
Good enough.
Now, time to start adding colours. And again I just tried to follow exactly what Marco did.
Whenever I didn't have an exact colour, I went out to my FLGS to buy it, and if they couldn't get it, I would use the closest approximation that I had.
So with all the contrast paints in, I was reasonably happy with where I had gotten to.
When I attended Marco's painting class he showed us how he loves to create his own coloured metallics, which, for The Sword of the High Marshals, I did using the paints below.
I'm really happy with how the sword turned out. The armour...not so much. The big problem was that, for the gold, Marco used a mix of Contrast Iyanden Yellow, Vallejo metal color Duraluminum, gloss varnish, Contrast Gryph-Hound orange and water. (10:40 in the video linked above). I had the right yellow, the metal colour that I had (I don't have it to hand) was one tone darker than duraluminum, but the big problem was that I didn't have Contrast Gryph-hound orange, I ordered it from my FLGS but it took a few weeks to arrive, so I tried to make a colour match with Iyanden Yellow and Baal Red.
Now, compare, if you will, my gold armour above to Marco's below.
I was crushed. Where Marco's turned out vibrant, shiny and gold, mine was a dull brassy mess. I was so annoyed. I toyed with trying to glaze some more luminosity into it, but this wouldn't really be possible with contrast-style paints. So, I said "to hell with this", I went off-piste and just re-painted all of the gold armour with one coat of Retributor Armour and, to my disgust, it already looked much better.
I continued to just do my own thing and dropped some Reikland Fleshshade, Agrax Earthshade and then Nuln Oil into deeper and deeper areas.
And once the gold armour was done (again) I was thrilled with it. Time to resume Marco's tutelage as I moved onto the cloak.
In lieu of the Teal from Golden that Marco used, I used Lothern Blue to, as he puts it "boost the cold content". (15:10 of video)
I sprayed the blue on to the edges of the cloak - front and back. As a novice airbrusher, I had a lot of overspray on the front of the model (on to the chain hanging around his groin area) but this was easily cleaned up and I liked the effect it gave on the cloak.
I began to highlight the inside of the cloak with S75 Golden Skin, and then highlighted the prominant muscles of the Ork with Vallejo's Fluorescent Green. I deepened the Ork's shadows with Contrast Creed Camo.
I then felt like the Golden Skin had shifted the inside of the cloak a little too far away from the red spectrum so I re-sprayed those areas with Kimera's Magenta.
I added a detail that I was really excited about: the blood on the Sword of the High Marshals. This is such an important detail, because one of my favourite elements of the whole model will be the servitor cleaning the blade while it's still stuck in an Ork!
I then completed the last few details on the Ork - his teeth, eyes, highlights, leather straps etc. After having painted an Orc and Goblin army for Fantasy in my youth, this was the first greenskin that I had painted in years - and it felt great!
With the Ork complete, I returned my attention to the cloak, I sprayed Kimera's Red Oxide (also the colour I use as a base for my Black Templars bases) around the bottom of the cloak and also upwards from the bottom to hit the downward-facing surfaces to give a bit of environmental bounce reflection.
I then stippled scuffs and scratches onto the cloak before turning my attention to the ribbons (crusader seals).
From the Contrast Flesh Tearer's undercoat that I had blocked in with the rest of the reds initially, I layered on Kimera's Magenta and then mixed in The Red, and then Warm Yellow.
After finishing the red ribbons, there were only a few details to touch up: scattered highlights, the skulls - to differentiate them from the white pauldrons, areas of unwanted overspray.
With his head complete (though not glued in, so that I can change it for his unhelmeted head in the future, should I so wish), this epic model was pretty much done.
Next time we will focus in on the other elements of the base, so I'll see you next week for that, right here on The Art of Caesura!
Watching: True Detective (Season 4), Slow Horses (Season 2)
Reading: The Obstacle is the Way - Ryan Holiday
Next Week:
Back to bases...
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