Exodus moving into position
A new miniature to find its way onto my desk is the new Alpha Legion Exodus from Forge World. This one is done with his new XXth legion and I get the joy of painting it. Where the first Alpha Legion Praetor I painted for my friend Josh (@omegonsedge), which was very rich in colour. I wanted to try something different and create a much more faded appearance and to also change the mood this character gives. This one a notorious sniper, a uniform that says excellence, precision, experience; and also it has to not be so far forward. With that in mind as a general principle theme, I can make more creative choices with that in mind to help refine the details. But as an evolving piece Im never fully closed off to other ideas if I feel the need to do a course correction. As there is going to be more Alpha Legion lined up after him. The final outcome of Exodus will be a baseline for the rest of the project, or it could also be a one off and have him be even more unique?
Notes on the Painting process
The primary workflow of Exodus starting with his blue/purple armour is as follows.
Start with a base colour for the entire model. In this case, it’s a very dark and desaturated blue. This serves to add just a bit of colour into the shadows so the whole composition is going to be cold.
Thin layers are applied in a layering application that much thinner 2:1 water to paint. Starting with a no.2 Brush I make broader strokes with the side of my brush to help make shapes with as few strokes as possible. Always keep in mind my stroke direction so I’m “pushing the puddle” of paint to where I want it to settle.
Be mindful of where I’m aiming the highlights. Instead of thinking of a very large broad light that catches every single positive angled volume facing up towards a “Zenithal” highlight pattern. I followed Horus's painting and exercise a more spotlighted approach. Using many smaller lights to illuminate the subject fully as to also aim at specific areas to capture more volume and interesting contrast. Allow the light to fall naturally and be mindful of various surface reflective/texture properties.
For the colour transition, we want to make a little trip around the colour wheel. Blue is made up of several colours each being effective by a different temperature of light. A slightly warm light by only a small fraction by using Tenere Yellow, Blue & white to mix on the max highlights. It honestly does very little right now, but I’m going to leave it for now and only adjust it after I have the spot-warm colour I’ll be including to be a big focal point. As well as Purple in the secondary light. This just brings more interest and you get a new kind of colour conversation in the piece. I’ve always loved how opposite light sources behave and give a new perspective on a subject.
The metal trim comes after the armour. Here I just followed my highlights made on the armour and made sure they appear to share the same lights. Keep the highlights small and make it shine! Mindful again about the lower half. Keep the lights lower and even smaller to carry the light falling.
Scales I’ve kept simple now with a few highlighting details to input. Mainly to give some edge highlights on the ones that are just off-centre and facing inward towards the highlight. This I think will give a bit more depth to them and make a few adjustments as needed. The main idea is to scatter them while grouping a few to show the highlight in the blue. Then it’s picking out flanking scales to give it that natural reptilian scale pattern.