Warhammer 40,000 - Daemonhost
I’ve been playing a lot of Darktide of late whilst I’m currently reading through the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies. Suffice to say that I am neck deep in Daemonhosts right now. And I was a tad disappointed to find that Games Workshop no longer produces a Daemonhost model. Whilst I was tempted to seek out one of the old metal Daemonhost I instead decided to see what third party offerings were available. I eventually settled on a model designed by Tales Keeper and printed by Renown Gaming.
It was delivered in no time and despite being in the middle of a couple of other projects I immediately set to assembly. It took a while to carefully remove him from all the support struts, I didn’t want to accidentally clip through or snap one of the chains. But without too much fuss I got him free of the supports, assembled and cleaned up. With that done I primed him with Colour Forge Matt Black.
I had chosen a black primer for a specific reason. I had recently watched Sorastro’s excellent video Let's Paint the Dragon King from Kingdom Death: Monster! in which he produces a really nice glowing effect on the skin. Sorastro is a masterful painter that made the effect look easy. Naturally I assumed that I, an idiot, would be able to achieve a similar effect on a much smaller model. I did however realise that to maximise the effect I would need a darker canvas for the glow to emanate from. In other words, to make the glow stand out the rest of the model needed to be as dark as possible. Hence the black primer.
Additionally, Sorastro has put an orange glow effect over the largely blue skin of his Dragon King. Blue and orange are opposite sides of the colour wheel, which further helps them stand out. I knew I wanted to do a green glow so the best colour for my skin would be a pink or purple. A dark pink or purple in fact.
So with all that in mind I painted the skin with Two Thin Coats Royal Robes, a dark and rich purple. I then gave said skin some quick highlights with Two Thin Coats Sword Hilt Burgundy. For the tattered remains of clothing I decided on Vallejo Scarlet Red as the base colour as something blue or white would clash too and draw too much attention away from the skin. Like the skin I gave the cloth some quick highlights with Mephiston Red. For all the metallic details like the chains and collar, I gave them a coat of Army Painter Speedpaint Broadsword Silver. For a bit of variety I painted the locks, bolts on the arm casing and the struts on the stone block with Vallejo Hammered Copper. The silver areas were then given quick edge highlights with Scale75 Thrash Metal. For the final details I painted the stone block with Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone before giving a wash with Army Painter Dark Tone, and the horns and teeth were painted with Vallejo Khaki.
Moving onto the main event, I started by picking out the eyes with Army Painter Matt White and running a thin line of it in the recesses of the abdominal muscles. I then, very carefully, used my airbrush to spray some Liquitex Titanium White acrylic ink on these areas, this left a gradient of white between the skin and the glowing areas. I then sprayed Greenstuff World Fluor Lime over these areas to produce the glowing effect. This worked well on the torso but I over sprayed on the face and wasn’t happy with the result. So I quickly repainted over the face with Two Thin Coats Royal Robes and redoing the quick highlights with Sword Hilt Burgundy. I re-dotted the eyes with white and this time simply painted on the Fluor Lime with a brush around the eyes, which I was much happier with. The final step was to repaint a very thin line of Matt White on the torso to make the inner parts look like they’re glowing brighter than their surroundings.
The base presented me with a conundrum. My basing schemes are faction specific but Daemonhost have been used by both the forces of Chaos and the more Radical Inquisitors of the Imperium. In the end I decided on neither. I gave the base a couple thin coats of Army Painter Matt White before then dabbing on liberal amounts of Greenstuff World Fluor Lime and Yellow. I put the Yellow near the stone block and the Lime nearer the edges of the base, wet blending them as I went. Once that was dry I then put on a thick layer of Mordant Earth technical paint. It’s always a gamble using this stuff as you can never be sure how well the crackle effect will be. Fortunately for me, they turned out quite well in this case. Some of the fragments however did look a little precarious, so to make sure they stayed on the base I gave it a few spurts of Geek Gaming Scenics Matt Sealant sprays.
I’m pretty happy with how this turned out, considering I got them painted in around a day or so. I was tempted to do some glowing runic symbols on the skin but in the end I figured the model was just a bit too small for that.