Introducing Primaris Chaplain - Reclusiarch Cytiis of the Blood Ravens. One of many kitbashes for my Blood Ravens 5th Company Space Marines army.
This post will run through the processes that I went through to produce him!
NEW BEGINNINGS:
Let me hack the shit out of loads of pieces to stick them all together again because... WHY NOT?!
I started by selecting the most 'Chaplain' looking model I had going spare - A Primaris Reiver from the Warhammer 40,000 Conquest magazine. Great base model to work off, he already had a dynamic enough pose for me to piece together the various bits of plastic I had lined up.
The skull mask was the selling point for me. He had to look terrifying enough to instill the Emperor's Will on his foes.
Now... This was the first time I have worked with green stuff... So keep your inevitably horrible criticisms about the cloak and hood until the end (but seriously, I already agree with you). Honestly, I hate the stuff... Had to watch a bunch of tutorials before (LITERALLY) sticking my fingers in.
And my god does green stuff have a serious tendency to be sticky. You've got to keep your hands and tools wet whenever working with it or else it will stick like shit to a blanket. Believe me when I say: this is easier said than done. Sometimes you just forget to wet your knife or moulding tools and then wonder why the part you're trying to get to stick to the model just keeps coming away with you... Infuriating but somehow wonderful stuff.
Green stuff gives you the creative capabilities of a God. It's a bit like porn... If something exists, you can guarantee there's a porno of it. The analogy being somehow, green stuff is like porn? A weirdly sticky... You know what? Let's just continue.
So the pictures above display the final stages of me moulding a 'swooshing' shoulder cape, ominous looking hood and a cascading scroll that I'm going to label as the "Litanies of Hate" of which this dude will chant to the Marines on the battlefield.
You don't need a magnifying glass to see that the moulds aren't smooth, in fact they're more wrinkly than a ballsa... You know what? Let's just continue.
The actual design of how the cape would be flowing fell into place perfectly. I wanted it to be single shoulder and flowing around as if he's just pulled his pistol and turned towards some Heretic or Xenos, I think I got the motion quite nicely!
Once the green stuff had settled, I moved onto adding extra trinkets and scrolls to make him look a bit more important and stand out from the rest of the Company.
The Crozius Arcanum was birthed from the handle of a Thunder Hammer, the pommel was a standard topper mounting, and the tip also 2 different banner mounts stuck together.
His powerpack was topped with the Iron Halo from a Venerable Dreadnought kit and the Cherub came from the Space Marine Librarian kit. I hated the Cherub in that kit for the Librarian... Just didn't look like it fit in with the aesthetic of the model. But on a bible-bashing, hate-filled, walking, talking, clad-in-black, space crusader... I think it fit quite nicely.
Base colours on.
I wanted the pistol to stand out a bit from the rest of the model, so I cased it in Mephiston Red and edge highlighted with Evil Sunz Scarlet, then washed with Nuln Oil - one stage darker than my Blood Ravens' armour recipe.The cloak and hood were both painted with Wraitbone, because this is where it got interesting.
Those who know me, know that I absolutely LOATHE painting any form of cloth-like material. I've never been able to get it right and therefore just resorted to drybrushing.
So the colour on the cloak is Skeleton Horde contrast paint (hence the Wraithbone base). I also washed it with Agrax Earthshade to get a slightly darker tone. This immediately showed all the imperfections in the moulding as obviously as a baboon showing it's rear end.
I started to get genuinely pissed off with painting, something that very rarely happens to me, but at this point nothing was going right. After I shaded all the other relevant areas and did my black armour highlights (Eshin Grey), I decided to put the model down and come back to it after a nice cup of tea. Fresh set of eyes could possibly save it.
Aaaaaaand BINGO! A little time away to rest the eyes and regain emotional control allowed me to see the flaws and go hard at it again.
I tried to fix the cloak and hood as best I could with layering Zandri Dust over the prominent areas and then treating Agrax Earthshade as a glaze and slowly build up shadows so they blended into the highlights. This was repeated with a higher edge highlight of Screaming Skull, then drybrushed with Zandri Dust and then Screaming Skull again, just to get the blending there. It somewhat worked, still not massively happy with it, but it's certainly better than what it started out as.
Other features like skin tones and purity seals can be found on specific blog posts relating to them!
All that was left to do with this fella was to get his base finished!
Reclusiarch Cytiis serves the Emperor.
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