Inscribing the Words of Lorgar

For the Word Bearers Dark Apostle miniature that I am currently working on, the holy parchments attached all over his armour would undoubtedly be the main focus one's eye. So how well the parchments are painted/drawn will either make of break the painted miniature.

From the fires of betrayal unto the blood of revenge we bring the name of Lorgar ...

With that thought in mind, I took my time with the parchments and tried to figure out the best colour scheme, writing style and symbols that would best portray a bringer of the Words of Lorgar. While the actual paint/writing work was completed in a relative short time (two hours at most), it still took me nearly a week of researching as well as trial and error doodles to find out what might work best.

Doodles of Lorgar

Having prepared the best I could, I feel that the end result were reasonably satisfying on a personal level (my standards aren't that high) but it nonetheless left me thinking that I perhaps could have done better (one of which was to make the inscriptions less thick ... failure of which was due to me applying too much pressure to the paint brushes and pens that I used). Below are some steps showing how I tackled the challenge of painting/writing/drawing the Words of Lorgar.

Step 1

Early stages yet

First, I painted the parchments with a basecoat of Khemri Brown on top of a Chaos Black undercoat.

Step2

Bleached skin taken from the followers of the False Emperor

I then proceeded to paint about three very thin layers of Bleached Bone onto the parchments. It's important not to apply the paint too thick at this stage as it would result in an uneven surface which would make painting, writing or drawing on it very difficult.

Step 3

Majority of the symbols were painted/drawn on the front of the parchments

There were less details on the back as they would not be that obvious to the casual observer

With the help of the smallest brush that I had (a triple zero sized paint brush) and some fine-sized (005) ink pens, I inscribed the Words of Lorgar onto the parchments. As can be seen from the above two pictures, at this stage, everything still looked very harsh (for want of a better term).

Step 4

Words of Lorgar ... faithfully inscribed with hate

More words of anger and hate (mustn't forget the latter now being a Word Bearer and all)

Finally, I washed the parchments with Ogryn Flesh to add aged patina as well as to make it look as if real human skin was being used, which is what I presume what Word Bearers would use. This had an added effect of reducing the harshness of how everything looked earlier in Step 3.

Incidentally, I finished the third installment of Anthony Reynolds's Word Bearers trilogy i.e. Dark Creed at roughly the same time. I enjoyed the books tremendously and am looking forward to more from the author as the story alluded to an internecine warfare among the Word Bearers ranks.

Cover of Anthony Reynold's third book in the Word Bearers Trilogy

There are still a lot of my Word Bearers army still left undone and I feel that my progress is starting to slack a bit more. Oh ... and if you are wondering ... the pesky Skyrim arrow is still in my knee. =)