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The face is likely the best single part of this awesome statue. From the knotted neck muscles and tendons to the skull studs breaking through the skin to the tongue stud this face is the definition of ‘character’. The sculpt of the face itself is just stunning, everything fits together and the feeling of evil is evident. So how to tackle this part of the project? Well, as I mentioned in part III, the head was going to have colouring that I associate with the Nurgle chaos power. So I wanted it to be either a very light green, light grey, or a light green-brown. You will notice that all the colours I decided to choose from are light and this was very much on purpose.

The reason Abaddon’s head has to be light is it needs to be one of the main focal points that your eye moves to. Since most of the model was to be dark I wanted a head that looked to be leering in a disembodied way. So, the head had to be light and I suspected at the formative steps I would even highlight in white to make it stand out that much more.

I have talked about avoiding ‘pivot points’ on a model until late in the painting process. The head is a good time to talk of another of my painting principles, start from the deepest part of a model and work outwards. This helps to keep things organized and will reduce the touch-ups you have to do later. Now, I will sort of contradict myself by saying that I do the eyes last. The eye is the deepest part of most faces and I refrain from painting it until the face is completely finished. There is really no hard and fast reason for this, it is just one of those things I have done since I started painting.

So by looking at the head section I first decided to do the power cables running into his neck deep at the back of the head. I wanted a colour that tied into one of the colours already in use down the centerline and thought the rich blue of the loincloth would be perfect. So I did the exact colour work-up I had done on the loincloth [see part III]. Since I was doing the blues again I decided to try to do all of them at once now. It is quite time consuming to do all those blends multiple times for each piece. So, I also did the blue of the topknot strap in the same way as the loincloth. Why so much blue around the face? Well, it is a dark colour that will help to constrain and frame the lightness of the face. At the same time it is also a rich colour that helps to emphasize the ‘character’ of the model. Lastly, it is what I call a ‘focal point mover’ [FPM]. No matter if you start at the base or the head, when observing the model, the blue found in the loincloth will carry you up to the blue of the topknot and cables and vice versa.

After the blue was finished I did the area around the head. This area is where the helmet of the armour would seal to the suit and so I couldn’t see it being black like the armour. The most inside ring was done in 70/30 Shadow Grey [SG] and Black [CB] and then highlighted in layers with 50/50 Codex Grey [CG]/Fortress Grey [FG], 10/90 CG/FG, 80/20 FG/ White. These highlights were kept tight and focused around the outside arc of the neck piece.

Once this was finished I did the metallic silver in the locking area above and below the head. This silver would be tied into the trim of the armour and would act as another FPM. I based the areas in 40/60 CB/ Boltgun Metal [BM] then proceeded to highlight the inner and outer rims and the inside recessed areas with: 20/80 CB/BM, 100% BM and 80/20 BM/ Chain mail [CM]. This really brought out the silver and I knew I had found the base work-up for the trim on the armour. After the first highlights I shifted the highlights to the interior detail and the outside rim with a sharp highlight of 100% CM. I also added thin stripes diagonally from the inside to the outside if this metallic ring with the CM. This technique is used to imply the non-highlight shine found on metal.

With those areas finished I decided to move onto the face. There were still cables to do but I was undecided as to the colour and felt that the finished face would provide some direction.

Well, of the colours I listed above, for the face, I liked the light green-brown the best and so I started the face with a base of Snakebite Leather [SL]. As I think I have mentioned in an earlier part this is one of the transparent paints in the Citadel range. This means that it doesn’t cover black all that well when thinned sown. Sometimes I will base in a barker brown so the SL has a better starting point but for Abaddon I decided to build up the colour from a black base. After eight layers of SL I had a solid base down on the face. There was still a fair bit of black ghosting thorough but I could really feel the model come to life. I added another five layers of SL and the face was a solid colour with no ghosting of the black. The paint I used was thin enough that 13 layers of paint didn’t obscure any of the awesome detail on the model.

One thing I should mention at this point is that most paints are not their true colour over black. While this is not a bad thing it is something to consider and use to your advantage. I did just that on Abaddon’s face. Even though the face was a solid colour I was still able to highlight it with subsequent layers of SL to all the areas I wanted to bring up. I added another seven layers to areas like the eyebrow, around the mouth, ears, cable insertion points, etc. Even at this point I have my doubts that the colour I was seeing was true SL but the highlights were now present and I could start the build-up in earnest.

All the colours of the face from this point on were done with the very thin paint and technique described for blending. I spent 11 hours on the head and face alone taking all the time I needed to bring this statue to life. I didn’t record the number of layers for each colour I used but I can assure you that there are hundreds of layers on his face. The colour build-up I did for the highlights is as follows: 80/20 SL/ Cammo Green [CG], 50/50 SL/CG, 20/80 SL/CG, 100% CG. These highlights were done broadly over the raised detail of the entire face. I didn’t start localizing the highlights yet because I wanted him to be much lighter in the end.

At this point I thought about doing directional shading on his face to indicate a light source. I decided after some thought, that I would not do this in favour of the more ‘classic GW’ painting style. That being, the highlighting of all raised areas to emphasize the detail. In essence the light source is always in front of each crack and cranny and while this is not very realistic it is very striking.

At this point I decided to switch to the mouth [deepest to closest principal] before I had to try to paint it with the finished lips as a frame. With the blending I do a little mistake can translate into hours of re-touching and since we all make mistakes I decided to be safe. The teeth are filed down to points and I knew I wanted them to be pure [vampiric] white. The tongue had to be wild, not over the top, but definitely not natural. So I based the tongue in Hideous Blue [HB] highlighted it with 80/10/10 HB/BB/ Skull White [SW] and then painted the rim and line textures across the tongue with 60/20/20 HB/BB/SW. I only did one highlight to the textures with very thin pure SW.

So with the first stage of the highlighting finished I started to really go to work on the texture of his face. The following colours are localized gradually to the extreme highs of each raised area. So the colours I used for the layers are: 90/5/5 CG/ Rotting Flesh [RF] /Bleached Bone [BB], 80/15/5 CG/RF/BB, 70/24/5/1 CG/RF/BB/ Light Jade Green [LJG] [50/50 Jade Green/ Skull White [SW]], 50/39/10/1 CG/RF/BB/LJG, 30/59/10/1, 10/64/15/1 of the above blend. I then did a highlight of 80/19/1 RF/BB/LJG. These highlights constituted the midrange of the highlights of the face and while they were eventually concentrated the highs they were by no means as far as I wanted to go on the face.

There are a few reasons for desiring to go lighter, the first being I wanted the face to literally jump out at the observer. I felt that if I could accomplish this, then the fierce savage terror that is a lord of chaos would be obvious. The second reason is that Abaddon is 10,000+ ‘years’ old and as such would have a sharp contrast between the shadows and the highlights. The third reason was the desire to translate the Nurgle look into the face. I decided early on to try to carry through some of the whiteness of the Death Guard chapter’s power armour. Another subtle tie into to the ‘story line’ and one only I would notice.

Now I was onto the final set of highlights of the face. I was going to take these up all the way to pure white at the extreme most highs and so I sort of planned backwards for this series. I started with 60/30/10 RF/BB/SW and proceeded from there with focus solely on the extreme highs and area around the mouth where the ‘lips’ are. The build-up was: 40/20/40 RF/BB/SW, 30/15/55, 20/10/70, 10/5/85, 100% SW. These really brought to life the face and I could see that I had captured the look I desired even without the eyes or mouth being done.

Now that the highlights were finished I went back and did the metallics of his face. He has 6 studs in his left ear [coincidence that there are 6?…I think not.], 2 century stud in his head, an eyebrow stud and a tongue stud. These I all did in BM and then highlighted in CM and Mithril Silver [MS]. I also took this time when the metallic paints were out to do the deeply recessed locking grooves inside his neck armour. In all honesty I hadn’t noticed them as true detail until the face was finished.

There were quite a few cables still to do and I decided to do some in purple like the power cables on the chest [see Part III] and some of the thin cables in yellow. I chose yellow to act with the blue to counteract the light green of the face. It is another attempt to translate the ‘story line’ since I see blue and yellow as Tzeench-like colours and the face as Nurgle-like. Anyone who has read the Realms of Chaos books knows that Tzeench and Nurgle don’t get along and since Abaddon is chaos undivided I wanted to put the two together as a sign of his undivided nature. The yellow cables were based in Bubonic Brown [BuB] and then painted with Sunburst Yellow [SY] until there was no ghosting of the BuB. I then highlighted the ends of the cables with 50/50 SY/SW and 10/90 SY/SW.

The final part of the face was the eyes. Over the course of the face painting process I agonized over the type of eye I wanted. Was it to be normal with iris striations and a pupil sparkle, or like Marilyn Manson with a discoloured eye, or demonic orbs…? Well, I went with the scariest one that would complement the face. I decided to do solid red eyes, with a radiance emphasized by gemming.

So I painted the eyes BuB and then covered this with Blood Red [BR]. From here I proceeded to roughly do what I do with gems and started to highlight the lower portion. I highlighted the entire lower surface using: 50/50 BR/ Blazing Orange [BO], 100% BO and 80/20 BO/SY. Then I focused on the lower inside of the eye and continued to highlight with 50/50 BO/SY, 20/80 BO/SW. With the highlights complete I went to the upper portion of the eye and did some minor shading with a very thin Red Gore.

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PART I PART II PART III PART IV PART V