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"You Have My Sword" - Sword Brethren - Part 4 (Painting a Power Sword)

It will cut. It will KEAl (Keep Everyone Alive).

- Doug Marcaida


Welcome one and all to the first post of 2025 on The Art of Caesura!

I hope you have had peaceful and happy Christmases and New Yearses!

Today, we're picking up from where we were a couple of weeks ago: painting my Sword Brethren. We've already looked at sculpting their hair, painting their armour, cloaks and faces. Today we're going to look at painting the Castellan's Power Sword!


Above you can see where we'll end up, but let's look at starting off. I had never painted a sword like this before. With my previous power weapons, I would paint them silver and then maybe paint a bit of blue lightening around the power node. I wanted to make this guy's weapon stand out a bit more, he is a SWORD brother after all!

I loosely followed the technique from Warhammer Plus' video on painting power weapons. I adapted it to the colours that I already had. 


I started with a couple thin coats of Stagadon Scale Green, before highlighting the edges and central ridge with a mix of Stegadon Scale Green and Sotek Green. I went slow, and used the edge of my brush to help with brush control. 



Next up, I highlighted the same areas but only starting from two thirds of the way down the blade with lighter colours: a mix of Sotek Green and Lothern Blue.




Once I had built up to pure Lothern Blue on the tip of the sword, the sword itself was complete. Then it was time to start on the lightening (putting the "power" in Power Sword).


I started by using my initial paint mix to paint on tiny horizontal squiggles onto the blade.



Rather than adding Lothern Blue this time, I just added a bit of white, and focused this lighter colour around the central ridge and sword tip. 





The effect is quite striking and I'm really happy with it. I have only ever painted weapons "silver" before, so this was a huge departure! I think it is fitting for this guy and will be helpful in-game in identifying the leader of a unit of quite busy and ornate models. 

Welcome to 2025 on The Art of Caesura, I'll see you next week for more!


Watching: The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Reading: An Immense World - Ed Yong


Next Week:

The brotherhood complete...

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