I finished this guy the other day in between other projects. He's part of the Flesh Tearer squad I've been working on over the past couple weeks. I've talked about him before when I went over building the psychic hood for the model.
Even though he's a tabletop job, I added a few extra details in there to make him pop a bit more. I had some trouble painting the blue on this guy because it's not done the same way as the GW formula for Flesh Tearer red is done. My highlights are not toned back down on this guy like they are for the rest of the squad.
I needed to make sure that my final highlight on this guy matched the overall darkness of the rest of the squad.
Painting the Librarian heraldry
As soon as I finished putting the how-to pic together... I remembered covering this before on another model recently. The only difference was that it was on a light background instead of a black one like it is here.
I realize though that all I mentioned in the previous tutorial was that you just "block out the skull shape." That doesn't help the folks who don't know how to do that.
So let's look at how I just "block it out." I start by breaking it down into a few simple shapes and overlapping them to get the final complex shape. The first thing is a circle. That is the majority of the skull. From there, it's two tear drop shapes, one at each side along the base of the previous circle.
Then it's a straight line down to where you want the bottom of the jaw to be. From there you fill out each side below the tear drop shapes. Doing this will get you a fairly "normal" sized skull each time and you won't have to worry about running out of space.
The horns start out as a line across the top of the horn and I fill out the lower portion until it's the shape I want it to be.
With the blocked out shape in place, it's easy to go back into it and add a nose, two eyes and a couple lines to show where the teeth should be. That and I add some lines across the horns for added texture.
All that done, it's a pass or two with GW Gryphonne Sepia to tone it down some and then go back in with the original color as a highlight to give it some added dimension.
The glowing eyes effect
I added the glowing eyes effect to the eyes on this model just like I did for a previous one. I like the look myself and think it really makes the Librarian stand out from the other models. I'm not sure how it would look on a whole squad of guys as I think it may lose some of its uniqueness.
My Project Link: Flesh Tearer Squad
This model has since been revamped to give him a new look.
You can see the new model here.
Make sure to check out these posts as they might help:
Using shapes to "draw" your freehand design
Did I model/paint my HQ wrong?
Object Source Lighting, an in-depth look
