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Sha’un – Ram Tribe Warrior – Bestmen Bust
Here's one of my latest pieces, Sha’un the Ram Tribe Warrior from Forged Monkey. I've always really liked Bestmen in general and knew I had to get one of these as soon as I saw it! I've been painting a couple busts lately, more than I have in the past and I'm really enjoying the level of detail it allows you to paint the model in. Before getting out my paints and stuff I started off by going through the Liber Chaotica books from Games Workshop and let all the awesome sketches and artwork (mostly by Adrian Smith I do believe) really set the mood before I started painting. I figure that a ram would probably bash into his opponents during a fight using his head as a weapon alongside whatever blunt axe or mace or whatever he could get his hands on. (or maybe even block attacks with his horns!?) Either way I added more scratches and minor wounds to his face for that reason, mostly to the left side of his face where there’s already a sculpted wound over his mouth. I also decided to make him blind in one eye, the left side of his face looks more slack than the right and I pictured him being wounded by some magical weapon or spell, maybe ambushing a lonely wanderer traveling along an old overgrown forest path only to realize (after the left side of his face was engulfed in blue flames) it was indeed a powerful wizard out foraging for mystical herbs or something… I don’t know!? Either way I worked in a bit of purple on the left side of his face, by adding several thin glazes of Druchii Violet mixed with a bit of Khorne Red. I did this both to be able to add an extra color to make it a bit more interesting but also to hint that the past altercation that left him blind was no normal wound. The other eye is still working fine though and by the snarl plastered over that side of his face he doesn’t like what he’s seeing (whatever that is) :P I converted part of the necklace, swapping out the original pendant for a crude jagged rock that I painted to look like a piece of wyrdstone (for all you Mordheim fans out there) or just a pretty jewell (if you're not in to Warhammer :P) The main reason behind this was that I, first of all, knew that I wanted to paint whatever was going to be hanging from the necklace in a saturated complementary color that would add that little something extra to the mini and break up what is otherwise a pretty monochrome color-scheme. I wanted something a little larger hanging from the necklace too so the spot-color really got a chance to do it's job properly ;) It was really fun to paint, going in to detail working on the different leather textures, I found a lot of great reference photos of rams too and made sure the eye, horns and skin/fur looked right. The armor plates were also a lot of fun, I played around with the new Scale 75 metal colors a little bit (mostly for the final highlights) but it's 95% Citadel metallics here, Leadbeclher, Mithril Silver and old Black and Brown Citadel Ink. I really tried to work on the metal, with these large surfaces it's important to get some more contrast in there to make sure it doesn't just look like big flat slabs of grey. Using nmm theory I shaded and highlighted every plate and then started weathering and adding rust with watered down Mournfang Brown and similar orangy-red browns. Super fun, and pretty quick to paint, I finished this just a couple days before Stresa and the World Model Expo. I think it turned out pretty ok, and since it was part of my display that won a Silver in Fantasy Master Painting I guess everyone else thinks so too! :P Fore more pics check it out over on me and my friends blog www.stockholmwarpaint.com or visit us on facebook! Thanks for taking the time to check this out, if you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to post them! :) Max
Posted: 17 Jul 2014
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