Long shrouded in rumour and mystery, Sumeros Summerking has finally been revealed and has made his move in Dawnbringers IV – The Mad King Rises. Ushoran is the corrosive wellspring of the all-consuming chivalric mania of the Flesh-eater Courts. And with his fantastic miniature available to pre-order this weekend, we spoke to Connor from the ’Eavy Metal team, the man responsible for painting this masterpiece.
Warhammer Community: How do you approach such a crucial character like Ushoran?
Connor: It’s a big responsibility. We’d already worked on the Royal Beastflayers to define some of the furthest boundaries of how to paint the Flesh-eater Courts, and Ushoran had to sit alongside the rest of the range while also being an exemplar – his blood literally trickles down to the rest of the Flesh-eater Courts. We decided to introduce more dramatic fades and transitions on the hands and feet, going from a deep and cold green on the body all the way to off-white for his fingers. This helps differentiate him from the other ghouls while keeping it balanced, working in the sickly green tones established by the main range.
WarCom: On larger models like this, there are a lot of competing elements – furs, fabrics, metallic armour, and weaponry, alongside jewellery and the various parts of the body itself. How do you make them all work in concert?
Connor: The metallic elements are an example of how you can balance colours across a model. With Ushoran, there’s a mix of standard metals and some gold, and weathering was a nice way to tie them together. Instead of using browns here, I mixed black into the base metals and used those mixes to establish control over the darkest values, helping keep them consistent across the miniature.
I stayed in a warm spectrum by using Balthasar Gold and Runelord Brass to contrast against skin which has its roots in the colder Sons of Horus Green. Washes like Athonian Camoshade on the gold, as well as verdigris on the brass helped unify the metals while reflecting a little of his skin tone.
We knew the sceptre would be a major focal point. It's sculpted to look like bone, but we wanted it to riff off the metallic work I’d already done. The top sections are really pale and as close as you can get in metallic to an organic bone look, while for the handle, I used Targor Rageshade, which I had used on the rotting heads in the lining of the cloak. This helps reinforce that organic metal look, and gives it a sort of dried marrow effect, which you can see across other Flesh-eater Courts miniatures.
WarCom: On a model of this size, how do you make sure the different areas don’t become busy or overwhelming?
Connor: The skin is a good example of this – there is a lot of texture in the sculpt, so I didn't need to do much work to get detail. There is still a lot of glazing of shades and working up to bright highlights, but because the model does a lot of work, most of the effort was focused on the places that really needed to stand out, such as the face, hands, and arms.
To get his head to read well, in amongst all the detail, we went brighter in value than on the rest of his skin. I pushed the highlights further, getting closer to pure white. The bone and the hair helped act as a frame against his bulk. I blended out from darker areas, such as the roots of the bone and the hair, to the lighter tips of both aspects, which helped further frame the face against the body and draw the eye naturally.
The bone spikes that jut out from his elbows and form the crown for his head provide an opportunity for some horrible sore red skin, which reinforces the horror element of this mournful monarch. When painting areas like this, we tend to use even brighter highlights than we would on other areas of skin, so when we glaze them with paint such as Khorne Red and Wazdakka Red, we don’t eliminate the initial highlight completely. The brighter highlights are less about losing the highlights after the glaze and more to maintain its saturation, which you need when trying to create these wet-looking sores. After the glazing, the highlights are built up a little more, focusing on adding little winks of bright white to sell the glistening, gory look.
WarCom: How do you balance Ushoran with the sculptural elements on his base?
Connor: The base is sculpted to look like the ruins of an old castle, and it would have been easy to go with a standard grey stone recipe, but we wanted some contrast. Because his skin is quite cold we decided to go a bit warmer for the base, and then started looking at reference pictures of ruins, old castles, and ancient stonework, and started to notice that there’s actually a lot of variation depending on the stone itself, and how the elements have affected it.
I started off with a neutral warm tone in Karak Stone, and then I played around with lots of different glazes, such as Gorthor Brown, Rhinox Hide, Khorne Red and so on. All of this was to try and get that rain-washed effect. With the glazes laid down I could then unify those tones by using more highlights. I lightly drybrushed the whole thing and went in with an edge highlight to pick out harder edges and add scratches which helped bring it all together.
WarCom: Of all the parts that make up Ushoran, which was your favourite to paint?
Connor: Adding all the weathering and grime across the model was the most enjoyable aspect of the painting, as it's when you can really see the model start to come to life. I could just imagine Ushoran lumbering around New Summercourt, dragging his cloak behind him, picking up so much dust, debris, and blood that it becomes sodden, heavy, and wet. To reflect that, I took colours similar to the ones I'd used in the base – Rhinox Hide, Steel Legion Drab – and blended out the bottom from the red with those paints. I then highlighted that area by mixing in Karak Stone and Ushabti Bone, which ties both parts together with the bone tone – this blends Ushoran into the base slightly, giving him a sense of place and allowing the model to sit in its environment.
For the fur component, we started out with reference pictures of deer hides and what they looked like after they’ve been left out in the elements. Much like the train of the cloak, I imagine the fur here is horrible and matted, and probably absolutely stinks. The base colour for most of it is Stormvermin Fur, but there are a lot of other colours stippled in there, such as Death Corps Drab, which provided a hint of a green mouldy tone. For the dried-out flesh, I stippled Stormvermin Fur to create areas that looked like mouldy, damp patches.
WarCom: Painting a big model like Ushoran can be tough if you glue it all together. Do you use subassemblies when painting like this?
Connor: As a rule of thumb, I'll try and assemble any miniature as much as I can before painting, because no matter how thin your layers, you always get some unwanted friction when putting it back together, and might damage some areas.
The way Christian has designed Ushoran is very clever, and it’s straightforward to split into different pieces. The construction guide recommends that you sub-assemble the model, and I followed that with a few extra bits left off as personal preference. The base is a separate piece, which the main body of Ushoran sits on, then the cape is one large flowing section which secures them both together, and on top of that goes the large mass of fur and faces. There’s a very satisfying click when pieces lock together, so it’s really easy to work with. I also left off one shoulder pad and the head, but all in all, it was just six pieces.
WarCom: What’s your advice for newer painters?
Connor: There are a lot of different approaches to painting miniatures, and sometimes people get hung up on painting a big model because they think it all needs to be really detailed, but as I said that can be counterintuitive. For Ushoran, the key will be working with the sculpt. It’s so expressive and detailed, with such a tremendous amount of texture work, that you need not be afraid of letting that texture do the work for you. For the skin, you could quickly start with either Sons of Horus Green, or a slightly brighter 50:50 mix of Sons of Horus Green and Ushabti Bone, then shade it down, letting that pick out the recesses. From there, you can focus on just the most important highlights.
The other way I see it, you could have a lot of fun using contrast and shade paints, applying washes and glazes to pick out various parts of the miniature, with green tones for the skin and red tones in other places. Ultimately with a centrepiece like this, use a bright and clear basecoat and shade down before picking out some highlights – that is all you need to do to get him looking great.
Thanks Connor! You can pre-order your very own Ushoran, Mortarch of Delusion on Saturday, to loom above a whole stack of his cannibal courtiers.