Painting the face of Abbadon the Despoiler

Abbadon the Despoiler was one of the very first Games Workshop miniatures I got to complement my Chaos Space Marine Battleforce set. But I never had the confidence to attempt painting my Chaos army HQ ... until now, seeing that I needed to chalk up some practice time in painting faces anyway. In search of the best way to paint faces, I will be trying out many different approaches used by wonderfully talented painters such as Jennifer Haley, Marike Reimer and others. But for Abbadon, I decided to try out an advanced 'Eavy Metal technique. While the method was meant for normal human skin as opposed to warp tainted flesh, I used it anyway for a pre-Heresy Abbadon look.   

Front profile of Abbadon the Despoiler's face

Left profile of Abbadon's face

Right profile of Abbadon's face

For those who might be unfamiliar with the scale I was working with, I took a photo (see below) of the miniature's head together with a 31 mm paper clip and the smallest coin in the Malaysian currency. Surprisingly I did not have to use any form of optical magnification when painting the face, although going forward I may have to, in order to paint more realistic looking eyes with coloured irises and reflections of light. That, however, is a more advanced technique which I have yet to try.

Using the 'Heavy Metal Masterclass Guide to Painting Faces
If you are looking for the original Games Workshop guide to painting faces, a quick search via Google should lead you to the PDF file. In the steps below, I will be showing more of the things I did wrong (and right) when attempting to use the Masterclass guide to paint Abbadon's face.

Step 1: Painting a basecoat of Tallarn flesh on face was fairly straightforward step. In my case, I used the Light Grey Tamiya Fine Surface Primer for the undercoat.

Step 2: Another fairly easy step whereby a very thin wash of Dark Flesh was applied all over the face and the wash was allowed to pool in the recesses. I was still happy with myself at this point.  

Step 3: This step called for a second wash comprising a mix of Scorched Brown and Chaos Black. But I fumbled big time in this step as I applied the wash on too thickly. My bad.

Step 4: A first mid-tone layer comprising a 2:1:1 mix of Tallarn Flesh, Fortress Grey and Bleached Bone was applied to all areas except the recessed areas. After I completed this step, I could hardly notice much of the first wash of Dark Flesh. But that was entirely my fault for bungling Step 3.

Step 5: The second mid-tone layer was a 1:1 mix of Tallarn Flesh and Bleached Bone. I thought I did rather ok at this step. At the very least, it built a foundation for Step 6, so a pat on the back for me.

Step 6: A final mid-tone layer of pure Bleached Bone was applied only to raised areas of the face and at this stage, I could make out some depth to the face. More back slapping for me then.

Step 7: This step required a wash, mixed from equal parts Bleached Bone and Regal Blue, to be painted around the eyes. However, I modified the step slightly by using less Regal Blue. Similarly, for the suggested step of using a 1:1 wash of Scab Red and Bleached Bone on the bottom lip, I used less Scab Red to prevent it from looking too red.

Step 8: Finally, a final highlight of Skull White was painted on the most prominent areas of the face. In addition, I painted a thin glaze of Skull White on the lips to further reduce the redness. In this step, I also painted the eyes a very simple black pupil on white sclera. As I mentioned earlier, yet more advance techniques actually suggest painting the iris of the eye as well as light reflections, but I decided to leave that for another miniature and not try it on Abbadon. 

Conclusion: I was happy with the final result but there is definitely room for improvement  if I am to achieve more realistic skin tones and eyes. That means trying out new methods and practising existing ones. As for Abbadon, the rest of his body awaits painting.