An Amalgam is a huge, shambling mass
of dozens of bodies of fallen enemy warriors,
insects, mammals and any other living creatures
that had the misfortune of succumbing to the
agonising blessings of the Black Grail.
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Art of Caesura!
I hope you enjoyed reading about our first game of Trench Crusade last week - it was a lot of fun to play and I think it will get even better as we polish up on the rules and get more terrain together and painted.
Today we're looking at the largest model in my Black Grail warband: The Amalgam!
I had really high hopes for my Amalgam in the game: he's shooty AND he's choppy but he didn't do any shooty or choppy in the game we played! Anyway, we'll talk about his rules next week, for today, let's look at painting this big boy!
Before we start the painting, there was a bit of a repair job to do. At some stage his big thick sword had snapped off and I had managed to keep it, but somehow lost it just as I was getting going on this guy. So I raided my bits box to find something appropriate, and I think I found one even better that I thieved from an Age of Sigmar Orc.
I started his skin using my Black Grail Skin recipe (start with Athonian Camoshade mixed with Lahmian Medium, then blotch on crimson and violet oil paints). The only thing that varies with this recipe is how much I dilute the Athonian Camoshade; with the Herald I really thinned it to get a gross pallid skin tone, with the Hounds I barely thinned it for a nice gross darker skin tone. With the Amalgam I was aiming for a mid-tone skin-tone, (like my Thralls), but ended up more in the lighter Herald range. It's all good. The main thing was that I wanted his skin to be light enough to nicely contrast the dark rusted metal elements.
The metal bits took me a while to settle on. The few metal elements on my warband so far (especially the Corpse Guard) are oxidized brass / bronze, but I just didn't think it would make sense to have sword blades and machine-gun-style guns made out of brass.
I was a bit hesitant about making the metals rusted steel (which would make more narrative sense from a materials perspective) because that's how I plan do do my Heretic Legion when I get around to them. But there was nothing for it. Rusted steel it was!
I painted all of the non-skin elements with Banshee Brown from the John Blanche set. It's a nice warm brown which would feed into the rust elements that I would be adding later and also contrast the colder greenish skin.
With the brown in, I dry-brushed black onto then ends of the gun barrels to represent scorch marks. In the lore, these guys are an amalgamation of debris from the battlefield, I wanted everything to look like it was well used and had been lying in the mud for ages.
Next, it was time to start differentiating the different browns. I coated the gasmasks with a layer of Contrast Ratling Grime and then started to rust up the metals.
I once again tried my Dirty Down Rust Effects and it just isn't working the way it used to. I watched Vincey V's video again, I shook and stirred the bejesus out of it I warmed both surfaces, anyway, maybe it just doesn't have the potent effect that I seemed to recall it did when I first got it.
Tackling the Dirty Down paint was a pain so once I abandoned it for more conventional weathering - watered down Skrag Brown - I regained serenity. I just blotched it into the crevices of the guns and randomly on the blades and armour plates.
Things were really moving on a pace now. I matt varnished the whole thing in anticipation of the metallics and gloss effects.
For the metal I went back to ol' trusty Leadbelcher. I don't really use Citadel metals much anymore, but I wanted a thicker-bodied, dark-to-mid-tone steel and Leadbelcher was the perfect fit. I poked it ever-so-carefully onto the edges of metal areas to show where the rust had chipped off. I really didn't want to go overboard with this (unfortunately I did so on the handgun but c'est la vie).
Then it was time for the gloss! I gave two heavy coats of gloss varnish to the whole abdominal area and some of the organic tubes. Then I did my (now patented) method of mixing Gloss Varnish + Nuln Oil + Nurgle's Rot or Blood For the Blood God and shoving it into all the nooks and crannies. It gives the skin a lot of nice contrast by deepening the crevices and also providing textural contrast against the matt skin.
<I have just learned, after 10 years of writing a blog about painting, that matt can be spelled "matt" or "matte" no wonder I keep mixing them up>
The final step was to plunk him on his base...buuuut it wasn't quite so simple as that! The base that I had printed and painted for him, despite being labelled 60mm in the STL file, was actually a bit too small! I measured it and it was more like 54mm diameter! Bugger. I could still possibly have used the base but there would have been a bit of overhang of his feet and that just would not do. So back to the slicing program, I resized the base, re-printed and re-painted it! It was a lot of work, but not as much work as trying to get him to blend into the base.
Designed to stand flat on a flat ground, the soles of his feet are completely...flat, but the base is all bumpy and curvy. Still needing to get a dremel, I did my best to flatten out the area of the base where he would stand. I then attached him with loads and loads of Green Stuff and sculpted it to look like he is emerging from the blighted Beelzebub ground.
Don't worry, I didn't leave him like this, I used my original base recipe to blend the colours back to the base colours and it turned out...pretty fine. But you'll have to just take my word for it until next week when you get to see the final product!
Thanks for tuning in each Friday, it's lovely to have you here! See you next week on The Art of Caesura!
Reading: Nothing Has Happened to You - Rory Say
Watching: Silo (season 2)
Next Week:
Vile corpus...
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