The First Prince has been tearing up the Mortal Realms since his starring role in Broken Realms: Be’lakor. We’ve seen some incredible work on the Dark Master’s massive model, but the moment we came upon Max Soule’s stunning army, painted with the object source lighting technique* and featuring Be’lakor on a lava base, we knew we had to share it. Here’s Max to describe his army.
Max: When I saw the new Be’lakor model’s arrogant pose and vivid base, I immediately knew I wanted to apply an underlighting lava scheme I had been trying out with my Slaves to Darkness army.**
I wanted to expand on the lava theme of the sculpted base, so I made lava splashes with resin poured over cotton wool, and painted everything with Object Source Lighting (OSL) coming from the fire.
I wanted the light source to appear very strong to suggest extreme heat and create a dramatic scene, so I pushed the colours really far up the body and wings. Also, I made his face a bit brighter than it should be, to try and draw the eye.
This technique involves drybrushing in a slightly different way for some even better results. It’s not really “dry” brushing – I used a moistening pad and rounded brushes to build up multiple layers for a smooth OSL effect, starting from dark blue all the way through the colour wheel to yellow and pure white at the hottest light source points.
Be’lakor is almost entirely drybrushed this way, except for the parts you need a fine brush to reach, like the lava veins, eyes, and edge highlights, and some light glazing on metallic parts.
I chose contrasting blue-green colours for his sword, chest and eyes. I would like to have had a small OSL effect coming from the sword, but I’m delighted with how he came out.
Thanks, Max! Kick off your own Chaos army by picking up Be’lakor the Dark Master, and don’t forget to share pictures of your armies on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook using #WarhammerCommunity.
* An advanced painting technique that highlights a model according to where the main source of light would fall on it – such as the glow from a fire.
** Meeting the Dark Master for the first time? Learn more about Be’lakor’s lore.