Moon Idol

You can't have night goblins without a moon idol, right?

This was another "omg-I-need-that-right-now" buy off Etsy. The seller does two versions, the one I bought and one that looked much rougher. I went with the smoother one just because I thought it looked better.

Here's the shrine in its bare resin glory, sitting on its original base. The two pieces went together really well but I just didn't like the base, and as I'd already started making some basic cavern scatter terrain using cork I decided to chuck the resin base in a box and do my own. 

The moon was taken to the garage and sprayed with grey primer, which led to all kinds of fun and games when trying to make it stand upright. In the end I gave up, laid it flat on a piece of cardboard and sprayed one side at a time.

I kicked off the actual painting with three thin coats of Averland Sunset, a Citadel basecoat that has allowed me to use yellow again as it's such a good basecoat. I left the eyes and teeth alone for the time being and just concentrated on getting a decent base of yellow onto the model.

With the basecoat on and lookin' fine I started on the highlights, using Lemon Yellow for the first stage. I used a makeup brush to swirl the paint on all over, making sure to use a bit more pressure on the ridges and any other harder edges to make them stand out.

The second stage highlights were done with small amounts of Dorn Yellow, again using a makeup brush, which are by far the best kind of brush to use on larger pieces and terrain. I've always thought Dorn Yellow to be a pretty crap colour but it really does work when highlighting yellows.

Once I was happy with the overall look, I loaded a regular brush with thinned Dorn Yellow and used it to edge highlight the mouth, nose, around the eyes and the edges of the bigger cracks.

You might have noticed that I didn't use any washes to shade it. I didn't think they'd work too well as Casandora Yellow always looks a bit orange to me. Instead I cracked out the pot of Filthy Brown, thinned it, and painted it where needed; the inside of the cracks, the eye sockets and the mouth.

All the yellow is done, so now it's time for the details. I first painted the teeth Mechanicus Standard Grey and then highlighted them with Neutral and Ghost greys, with a small amount of white for the uppermost points.

The eyes were given a basecoat of Mutation Green and then several layers of Scorpy Green and Moot Green. I added some white to the Moot Green for the edges. I'm really happy with the way the eyes turned out.

After a coat of matte varnish, the idol was done and put to one side while I did the base. I'll describe the process of making the cork rock in a later post when I put all of the scenery on display. Once I'd built and painted the cork, I dug out a ton of mushrooms I ordered from different sellers on Etsy (including two in Poland, which I didn't notice until I wondered where they were and tracked the packages). All were tacked to coffee stirrer sticks with some PVA and then sprayed with white primer before being painted with different, bright colours including Moot Green, Yriel Yellow, Pink, Electric Blue, Violet/Purple, Troll Slayer Orange and Mephiston Red. I stuck them randomly over the base and then glued the orange ones into the cracks on the idol's chin and forehead.

With that all done, it was just a case of fitting the back of the idol to the 3D-printed stalagmites and gluing it in place. I'm well happy with it and it makes a great terrain piece.

Next up: A break from gobbos for something more veggie!

Work, work, work

Well it's getting better; we've had two new staff members start this week, so I've actually got three days off! Not in a row, unfortunately, but after the shitshow that was March and most of this month, I'll take them. Only time will tell if the noobs last more than a fortnight but for now I'm enjoying the strange feeling of not having to lug boxes around today.