While I was off work, I made a start on one of my Golden Daemon entries for this year. I found a Valten, the Choosen of Sigmar on foot in one of my “not really sure what I am going to us this miniature for” boxes and decided he was going to be my single miniature entry for Warhammer Fantasy. This miniature has been a favorite of mine for some time and this is as good an excuse to paint him as any other. I find that when you are trying to produce high quality painting work, creating an emotional attachment to the miniature helps. It could be that it’s just a great figure (as in this case) or it’s going to the central piece to your army, what ever it is it’ll provide better motivation that “I am painting this figure because I have too”. I struggle with these sorts of thoughts when I am doing commission pieces. To over come this I’ll drop to immerse myself in the fluff of the piece, which really helps me get projects finished. Sometimes its hard to give them back….

Valten is mounted on a 25mm square base, this was the base he came with in the blister so I assume its ok to use. I didn’t really like the orginal pose, so I converted him a bit to be in more of a commanding pose rather than an action pose. To do this I cut the haft and head off the hammer and repositioned it resting on the ground. I needed to cut away a lot of his cloak to get the hammer head to sit right, so a bit of green stuff work was needed. I also made him point to something, perhaps he is picking out an enemy champion to challenge, instead of the naff “sign of the twin tailed comet” (read giving someone the forks) that was originally sculpted. Again, a bit of green stuff work was required.

I decided that I need to try and do something a bit more interesting with the base, as opposed to my normal modeling sand and static grass. Therefore, I built up the base using Kneadite. Kneadite is an 2 part epoxy builders putty that sets in about 5 mins. It’s cheap, comes in a decent amount, is easy to use and sets really quick. It gives off a bit of heat when it sets, so don’t think you’ve started a fire. I use it when I need to fill in a big space or build up a base. It’s not really suited to fine sculpting work, mainly because its less pliable than modeling putties and sets so fast. To create a bit of interest on the base I’ve added some rocks, a battle damaged shield and a victims head. Because the miniature’s pose was going to be hard to change because of its massive cape, I’ve had to make the base suit the miniature, rather than the other way around. Currently, I’m not entirely happy with how his leg looks on the Marauder head, but, I think with a bit of clump foliage and static grass it’ll fill out the base and make the pose seem more natural…..hopefully.

You’ll notice I’ve painted the base already. I’ve added a few extra steps to my normal basing techniques, mainly in the form of some washes. After undercoating, I base coated the whole base using Scorched Brown. I then drybrushed the “dirt areas” with Tausept Ochre. Once this was dry I gave the base a Devlan Mud wash. The dirt then got another lighter drybrush of Tausept. Wiping as much Tausept Ochre off as possible, but without cleaning my brush with water, I then started to drybrush the dirt with Derivan Minis “Desert Stone”. In between drybrushes I’d wipe my brush on paper towel gradually building up more Desert Stone with less of the Tausept Ochre. This is a quick of blending drybrushed layers together as sometimes the transition between layers can be pretty stark. Finally once it was all dry, I washed with dirt with watered down Devlan Mud.

For the stone, I started from the Scorched Brown base and did a heavy drybrush of Codex Grey. Then using the same technique as above I moved though Fortress grey up to pure white. Once the stone was dry I washed the interface between the stone and the dirt with a 2:1 wash of Thraka Green Wash and Devlan Mud. This blends the stone into the dirt, gives it a bit of weathering and hopefully makes it look like the stone is part of the landscape as opposed to having just been placed there.

The next stage will be the other “ornamentation” on the base.

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