God Light
My latest iteration of the Space Marine had me take a new direction towards painting, both in a creative head space as well as visually in this lighting scheme. First and foremost, I’ve always placed the value of self-expression and enjoyment of the painting process above all else. I believe its where my best work stems from, and my enjoyment for whatever reason gets transferred best into the painting as well in pieces I get to see from my friends. And to keep that energy and passion flowing there comes times when the best course of action is to take a sharp left turn or explore a new path that takes a chance at new results. Even more to change results from a sculpt or subject we are all too familiar with. That would be the Space Marine. I’ve painted more power armour now than I have ever had before, and we’ve seen them done countless of times in various poses, conversions, and paint schemes. For this piece and the last few models I’ve painted in particular for Warhammer Community (being a privileged painter/content creator who gets previous miniatures from GW), I’ve actually been more focused on painting pieces without gaming in mind. Don’t get me wrong, I love to play miniature games when I can! But painting and being creative resort to me with little time to dedicate to gaming and more creating. Possibly in the winter, my moods will change and I’ll be happy to relax on a cold winter evening and get some dice time in.
When removing the thought and the purpose of these miniatures away from the game, I find it really opens up a new approach to the models and even why we paint these kits in the first place. For as long as I could remember painting miniatures, it was all at the start of my army collecting and I only fancied models meant for the game. Even models I saw that were exciting but didn’t fall into the army I wanted to build or currently collecting it was put off or even worse…purchased with an entire army to build in mind. I say worse is that I’ve started armies only because of a single miniature that didn’t warrant me spending money on many more models that I was not thrilled about. They would be left without paint and eventually sold for a fraction of the cost, wasting money. Rather I wish I approached things now, than just to pick up a miniature that you enjoy and paint it with no restrictions, no gaming purpose, and allow any angle of creativity to take shape,
This God Light example of the Space Marine Jump Captain was born with that idea. No games, just a cool idea that I had in my mind and I wanted to make it real! A mindset of open creativity and to paint a sculpture for the sake of viewing and painting pleasure. Letting the shackles of gaming tokens, base sizes, and the pressure of time to take before it can hit the field is very liberating and free. Even as a commission painter, the vast majority of my work is a hybrid between a display piece and a gaming piece which I’m very proud to produce and provide. But with that little extra push into a display and recognizing that as a thing I truly value is important. So much so that with painting going forward, I’ll be fitting more of these kinds of paintings into my body of work. Something for the tabletop, another for display, and another that straddles both.
If you haven’t already, you can check out the entire tutorial of the Dark Angels Space Marine Jump Captain on YouTube! Again, it was a pleasure to paint and I hope to have inspired others to bring subjects such as space marines and other gaming miniatures into a brand new light.
