Sunday 3 March 2013

Inscribing the Words of Lorgar

For the Word Bearers Dark Apostle miniature that I am currently working on, the holy parchments attached all over his armour would undoubtedly be the main focus one's eye. So how well the parchments are painted/drawn will either make of break the painted miniature.

From the fires of betrayal unto the blood of revenge we bring the name of Lorgar ...
With that thought in mind, I took my time with the parchments and tried to figure out the best colour scheme, writing style and symbols that would best portray a bringer of the Words of Lorgar. While the actual paint/writing work was completed in a relative short time (two hours at most), it still took me nearly a week of researching as well as trial and error doodles to find out what might work best.

Doodles of Lorgar

Having prepared the best I could, I feel that the end result were reasonably satisfying on a personal level (my standards aren't that high) but it nonetheless left me thinking that I perhaps could have done better (one of which was to make the inscriptions less thick ... failure of which was due to me applying too much pressure to the paint brushes and pens that I used). Below are some steps showing how I tackled the challenge of painting/writing/drawing the Words of Lorgar.

Step 1
Early stages yet
First, I painted the parchments with a basecoat of Khemri Brown on top of a Chaos Black undercoat.

Step2
Bleached skin taken from the followers of the False Emperor
I then proceeded to paint about three very thin layers of Bleached Bone onto the parchments. It's important not to apply the paint too thick at this stage as it would result in an uneven surface which would make painting, writing or drawing on it very difficult.

Step 3
Majority of the symbols were painted/drawn on the front of the parchments
There were less details on the back as they would not be that obvious to the casual observer
With the help of the smallest brush that I had (a triple zero sized paint brush) and some fine-sized (005) ink pens, I inscribed the Words of Lorgar onto the parchments. As can be seen from the above two pictures, at this stage, everything still looked very harsh (for want of a better term).

Step 4
Words of Lorgar ... faithfully inscribed with hate
More words of anger and hate (mustn't forget the latter now being a Word Bearer and all)
Finally, I washed the parchments with Ogryn Flesh to add aged patina as well as to make it look as if real human skin was being used, which is what I presume what Word Bearers would use. This had an added effect of reducing the harshness of how everything looked earlier in Step 3.

Incidentally, I finished the third installment of Anthony Reynolds's Word Bearers trilogy i.e. Dark Creed at roughly the same time. I enjoyed the books tremendously and am looking forward to more from the author as the story alluded to an internecine warfare among the Word Bearers ranks.


Cover of Anthony Reynold's third book in the Word Bearers Trilogy


There are still a lot of my Word Bearers army still left undone and I feel that my progress is starting to slack a bit more. Oh ... and if you are wondering ... the pesky Skyrim arrow is still in my knee. =)

8 comments:

  1. Very nice! I tried to do something very similar but on an open book. I found some .005 pens in brown, black, red, and gold at my local art supply dealer and they work wonders! I really like how you mixed in symbols and words making it look very occult-like. Thank you for sharing and keep up the good work!

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    1. Thanks for the comments. Much appreciated =)

      I saw the work you did on the book and parchments on your Terminator Librarian and I really liked the results you achieved i.e. fine letters that made the book stand out instead of overwhelming it.

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  2. Wow, your effort for making this a superbly-detailed model is very admirable dude!

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    1. Thanks bro. Unfortunately this means I am taking way too much time getting my army up and running.

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  3. Nice one, now this is what I call a word bearer...
    Actually, don't worry about spending too much time on getting your army up.. this is your first army, it deserve a special treatment =) If you want to game, I would suggest that you just built all the model first, prime them and play a game or two while you are painting them...

    Next thing that you will start worry will be "how do I transport all my minis?" LOL

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    1. For transport I was thinking cardboard box with lots of packing material ... unless we can get Alvin to sponsor us Citadel cases with Hobby Forge logo ... heh heh.

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  4. I really like the model, but it scares me to have to do all that parchments.. Great effort there bro.

    Looking forward to see it done :)

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    Replies
    1. I hear you bro ... if I wasn't so inspired by the Word Bearers trilogy, I would definitely have given this model a pass. The amount of scrolls this mini has is daunting to say the least. If the scrolls are too badly painted then the whole mini would look terrible.

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