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It is at this point that I realize his sword is not true. It is bent towards the top of his wrist by about 15 degrees. With such a long blade this was very noticeable at the end of the blade. I e-mailed Forge World and had a solution in a day from Ewen Little. If placed in very hot water for 10-15 minutes the resin will become soft and can then be manipulated back to it’s normal position. After I heated it and straightened it I ran it under cold water to fix the shape. It took three tries before I was satisfied and even then it has a little bit of a bend.

So once the statue and assorted pieces were dry I primed them black with GW primer. This took quite a while as there are many different surfaces and angles to hit. Once I was finished priming I brush painted all the cracks and crevices I couldn’t reach with the spray in black. This was especially necessary around the cables of his head and the skulls on the base. Once I had all the pieces black I coated them with a thin layer of matte varnish. This was because I would need to hold the model way more than normal and with the weight of the staue I foresaw wearing paint down with contact.

You will have noticed that I refer to pieces of the statue. Well, I saw the need to paint him in pieces from the get go. This is pretty standard when I am painting a multi pieced model but for Abaddon it was especially important. This is because of the need to get at all the pieces and the odd angles I would have had to paint at had I assembled him. Also by keeping him in pieces I was only handling the piece I was painting, thus limiting the contact with the rest of the model.

I will now begin the true painting discussion. In this discussion I will type the colour I used once [all the colours were GW paints] and behind that I will include an abbreviation. The abbreviation will commonly be the first letter of the two words that the paint is named. So for example, Blached Bone will be [BB], Blood Red will be [BR], and so on. Where two paints have the same initials I will add the second letter from the first word between the initials. So, since Bleached Bone is [BB] then Bubonic Brown will be [BuB]. This will save me a tremendous amount of time especially when I get into the complex colour mixing I did.

So once I had him primed and coated with sealant I applied a covering layer of Chaos Black [CB]. Once all the slight gloss effect from the spray was covered I knew I was finished covering the model and sprayed it again with a dusting of matte varnish. After this I decided to tackle the base first.

The skulls of the base are absolutely amazing in their anatomical detail and sheer number. Due to the extreme reality of the skulls I decided to paint them in a truly real manner. To do this justice I went to the public library and checked out books on forensic science, anthropology, modern warfare, etc. Human bones have quite the range of colours depending on time of death and climate of decay. I decided that the skulls of the base would be relatively new and possibly exhumed so they would have no bleaching evident.

So I started by painting the skulls Scorched Brown [SB]. I wasn’t too concerned if a bit of black ghosted through since I had a long way to go to build up the true end colour. I then painted them in Bestial Brown [BeB] covering all the surfaces but trying to stay away from the deep recesses of the eye sockets and the inside of the cranium. This was done so latter I could have a more realistic contrast of light and dark. Now the next few steps lay the basis for the surface colour of the skulls. I then wet brushed with a 50/50 mix of Vermin Brown [VB] and BeB. When I wet brush I handle the brush the same as for dry brushing except I have more paint on the brush. This reduces the chalky look dry brushing can give. It is almost impossible to see the effect of this stage since the colour is so similar to the base coat and the technique used doesn’t lay down much paint. It is however very important to build up to a final colour gradually.

After the first wet brush I did a series of wetbrushes with 70/30 VB/BeB, 90/10 VB/BeB and 100% VB. This really started to bring out the detail and the textures that were evident on the base. I decided after looking at my resource books that the base was a bit too dark so I decided on another work-up using Snakebite Leather [SL]. The great thing about SL is that it is sort of an opaque colour and allows for great effect work with a minimal amount of time. So I did a straight SL wet-dry brush [not quite a dry brush since I had a bit more paint in the brush during this step] to all parts of the skulls. I repeated this three times to get the smooth effect of a good base. Once this step was finished I was happy with the base work-up and decided to add some of the more realistic tones.

I still had a long way to go for the final look but it was at this step I added some non-standard colours to the skulls. I had observed in the books that even unbleached, exhumed skulls have a tint of grey in them so it is here I added that. I knew that the next work-up would all but cover the grey but you would be surprise how keen the human eye is at picking up these buried colours. So I diluted Codex Grey [CG] until it was very thin [almost like 2% milk] and then applied it willy-nilly to the skulls. I didn’t need to be careful since it is going to be a tonal effect rather than an observed colour. I did this a few times [accelerating drying with a blow dryer] until I was just able to discern the colour in the recesses of the model.

Another tonal effect I added at this stage was blue. I observed, in almost all pictures of exhumed skeletons, a slight tint of blue on top of the darkest brown. Now, I still don’t know if this is an artifact of the photography or not but I decided to add it anyway. So with a very dilute Enchanted Blue (old hex bottle) [EB] I applied this colour into the eye sockets, cranial cavities, and mouths. I was careful not to get it anywhere else since it would have seemed out of place on the exposed parts of the skulls. I did this twice until I thought I could see the colour. It was important not to add too much incase it was an artifact.

Now that the mid level tones were finished and the base work-up was complete I moved on to the final stages of the skull painting. I dry brushed the skulls with Leprous Brown [LB] which is another of the opaque paints made by GW. This is now the ‘clincher’ colour in all my skull work-ups after I did Abaddon. It is amazing how the yellowish brown of the colour adds depth and realism to the skulls. I did two to three dry brush applications depending on the area I was hitting. For the large areas, like the cranium and sharp areas like the cheek bone I did three applications. Once I was done with the straight LB dry brush I started a series of dry brushes with Bleached Bubonic Brown [BBB] (20% Bleached Bone/80% Bubonic Brown]. So in order I did: 70/30 LB/BBB, 50/50 LB/BBB and 30/70 LB/BBB. It was at this point I added some Fortress Grey [FG] to the mix, maybe 5%, to increase the grey tone on the bone ridges and cranium.

The above series was done over the entire area of the skull with little emphasis on any particular area. I now decided that the base colour was getting pretty close to true and so I started to emphasize the ridges, cracks, and major textures. I did this by continuing to dry brush the entire skull but always lingered on the above areas. During the final colour work-up I reduced the amount of paint going to the large areas and focused much more on the ridges. I did the final work-up with BBB and Bleached Bone [BB]. So in order of application I did 80/20 BBB/BB, 60/40 BBB/BB and 30/70 BBB/BB. It is here that I was seeing almost exactly what was in the books I was using as reference.

At this point I had a very real look but lacked the sharp definition on the ridges and cracks. I diluted 100% BB to about the consistency of 2% milk and proceeded to paint around the cracks and ridges. I must have done this 3-4 times before I had a recognized lightness to those areas. I then repeated the highlighting focusing on crack ends and extreme bone ridges with very dilute Skull White [SW]. Because it was so dilute I was able to jump so far in the progression of the colour. I then used a much less dilute SW for the teeth and I was finished the skulls.

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