Finished Showcase: Kaastaruk, Skull-Bearer of the Tarvax

Well, this morning I submitted this bad boy to the WAMP Darklands 2013 contest, so I can finally share him with you here! This is Kaastaruk, the Skull-Bearer of the Tarvax, and the first model in a while that I've painted just for a contest, without intending to incorporate him into an army.



I decided to challenge myself with the color scheme, and went with an orange for the skintone. I'd never painted with orange before, and I'm mostly pleased with how it turned out.

The eye on the banner really, really exceeded my expectations. The Tarvax follow a demi-god named Baalor, who is famous in mythology for his "evil eye". It's a quick series of layers wet-blended into each other, with some blood red veins blendedin for veins. The blue starburst is a motif I hope to come back to with other Fomoriaic units; I hope to try the same concept in reds on a later model.


The back of the model. This was the first non-metallic metal I'd done in a while, and I was glad to see that skipping it for the Army of Darkness didn't dilute my ability to come back to it later.


The view from the right side. I went very dark with the NMM, much darker than I normally do, but I think the illusion still works.


I love how this angle turned out. The fur here seems very right, with good light-to-dark contrast.


This is the shot I ended up using as the focus of the WAMP entry. Even though the banner is a bit washed out by the lighting setup, I felt this one best depicted the model itself, which should be the focus of the entry. The freehand on the banner is a plus, but the ability to paint the model should be what people notice first.


So, to compensate, here's a shot that highlights the banner. The grass in this one does a good job hiding the fact that this model has a removable 40mm x 40mm base nested in there. We'll see more of that in later angles. The rock is a piece of large chunk pine bark, painted grey, washed with the Colonel's secret blend of eight different washes and shades, and then highlighted back up with grey. The washes slip under the grey and make it look rock-like.


Just for fun, I flipped the camera down and did a worm's eye showcase. The result was surprisingly interesting, because I didn't paint the model to be viewed from this angle, but the shading on it still worked.

What a proud bovine specimen this is... Unfortunately the angle here did two things - it made the corner of the base where the removable 40mm section comes out very obvious, and it showed the pinning of the hoof to the rock. I scaled this down a ton for the WAMP entry, and hopefully the judges don't read my blog or the Mierce forums.


Finally, an extra gratuitous shots of how awesome the sculpt is, and how that eye looks when it's not washed out by the light rig.