Mar 1 (edited) • General discussion
Painting Castellan Crowe
Every now and then you need to take a break from army painting, or painting a large box set. That was me with this particular piece.
As you are well aware I am working my way through the Warhammer Quest Darkwater set, as I write this I am 26 miniatures down out of the 49 in the set (just over half way) and in fairness it is becoming slightly more difficult now as have already done the really cool/fun pieces and am left with the ‘minions’.
On a trip to purchase some more wet palette sheets I decided to also pick up a ‘palette cleansing miniature’.
I also haven’t painted any 40k pieces in a while so I really wanted to get back in the swing.
Castellan Crowe was the choice, another character piece with a great back story and one the I really wanted to tackle.
The box art depicted this glimmering white armour mixed with silver and reds.
His possessed sword flaming with an evil purple flame, and one with which I would have some fun!
Sub assembly was the way here, I went with the non helmet head (as I really liked his facial expression)
His sword arm and cloak, power pack and banner were all sub assembled too.
The Warhammer character pieces always have really cool mini diorama bases as standard so I didn’t even need to create a base for him.
The first stage was to prime the whole think in black primer apart from the cloak as I would be panting that red and white (very difficult to go from black to off white)
As Crowe is one of the Grey Knights, I started with a base of Magnesium (Pro Acryl) and then built up highlights using Steel (also pro Acryl)
As I stated earlier, the box art is shiny and clean, but I’m a big fan of the grim dark look, so I needed to make Crowe look like he’s been in many battles!
The ‘grim dark’ look is very easy to achieve, especially if you have some ‘cheat’ products, in my case, my go to weathering effect is by Vallejo, ‘Rust texture’ (pictured below) is great for this, I add a bit of water 2:1 (paint:water) then as it is still wet, remove the majority of the colour with a wet q-tip. This adds grime and dirt to the crevices, and leaves the flatter areas clean.
The final effect for the metal is adding bright silver/chrome texture and scratches (Vallejo Silver)
The texts you see attached to Crowe’s armour were all taken from various transfer sheets, carefully cut and placed using ‘micro set’ (he is literally covered with scriptures, as Champion of the Order of Purifiers he would be…)
For the cape I wanted it to look line very fine short fur on the inside, so I painted it with a base coat of Burnt Sienna, then steadily added Burnt Red, up to Bright Orange red (all Pro Acryl) the small texture was added using the point of my brush to mimic hair/fur. I was pretty pleased with the finished look!
The face was important on this one, even though you can only see a portion of it, he has quite a menacing expression, and a cross on his forehead which looks like the mark was branded on. The flesh tone was achieved using a Rosy flesh (Ionic colours) then adding some pale yellow to highlight. Then I mixed a small amount of volupus pink/leviathan purple contrast paint with lahmiam medium (1:1:2 ratio) to wash the flesh with. Once dry go back in with the highlight colour to the most raised areas. Then his eyes were steadily painted in before attaching the head to the rest of the mini.
The two main features with Crowe are his banner and his incredible blade, (The Blade of Antwyr is a Warp-spawned Daemon Sword) only Crowe can wield its power.
It burns with a daemon flame…so it need to look the part!
I started with the black base, then airbrushed white ink to the flame. I added Magenta (pro Acryl) and thinned it down to a wash consistency. Once the white ink had dried I applied the magenta wash. I added some bright yellow for the runes and a bit into the flames too, then finished the tips of the flame with matt black.
I used the Magenta again to add some OSL (via the airbrush) to Crowes leg and the floor, to give the whole piece atmosphere.
It’s important not to go too mad with OSL, less is definitely more.
I was really pleased with the finished effect.
Thanks for stopping by, until next time…keep painting!
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Painting Castellan Crowe
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