Daemon Prince - How I Painted Mine

Daemon Prince

When Games-Workshop released this new model, I knew I had to get my hands on one of them. The model is really what I had imagined how a Daemon Prince would be. Muscles out of proportions, a menacing face, sharp teeth, pointy horns, wings and of course, a big sword. Out from the box, you could either arm the Daemon Prince for Warhammer Fantasy Battles or Warhammer 40k. From the picture above, you can see that I've armed the Daemon Prince for Warhammer Fantasy Battles (it's the base that determines that :P ). Please note that the paints I used are mostly the old paints from Games-Workshop.

What is used

First off, preparations for the whole task. Get a good table for painting with good lighting. Next, have a set of brushes. I have with me, fine detail brush, a normal size 1 brush, small flat brush for dry brushing and another one which is bigger. I have a cup with water readied and these are the paints that I will use:

• Chaos Black
• Blood Red
• Blazing Orange
• Sunburst Yellow
• Chainmail (the colour)
• Beastial Brown
• Bleached Bone
• Skull White
• Goblin Green
• Regal Blue 
• Dwarf Flesh
• Shining Gold
• Flesh Wash (will be used a lot)

Starting from the base

As with my entire army, I would start off with the lava base first. In addition to this base, I used one of the trophy racks and glued it in front of the Daemon Prince. The Chaos icon, I glued it facing to the back. With just that, I've completed the base for my Daemon Prince.

Gluing Parts Together

While the base is left to dry, I started of by picking the parts which I would use for my Daemon Prince. First I would choose the head, I like the one with long straight horns and with many sharp teeth! Next, for the right arm, of course I picked the big sword over the axe. I don't have any options for the left arm, torso and legs. I would not be gluing the wings to the body yet so I'll just leave them aside. After selecting the parts that I wanted to use for the Daemon Prince, next I'll be cleaning these selected parts. By cleaning, I would mean filing off the mould lines. We wouldn't want these lines to be visible when the model is finished. About half-hour passed, mould lines cleared away, I'm ready to glue the selected parts together. 

Undercoat

I would make sure that the glue is completely dry before I start to undercoat my models. A lot of people would use Citadel Chaos Black or Games-Workshop's black spay to undercoat their models. I didn't have Games-Workshop's spray paints and I didn't want to use much of my Chaos Black as undercoat. I did, however have those aerosol sprays which I could easily get from hardware stores. I used the Flat Black. Holding the spray about one foot away from my Daemon Prince, I started spraying to an open area on the right and then across to the left through my model in a gentle stroke. Ensuring the same thickness throughout the sprayed area. Keep repeating the same process from different angles till the whole model is fully covered in black paint. At the same time, I would also undercoat the wings which were not glued on the Daemon Prince yet.

Daemon Prince - Left View

Base Paint

RED. Definitely red for the skin. Most probably because the Daemon Prince looked more affirmed to Khorne than the other chaos gods. Also it would look really awesome when fielded along with my bloodletters in the field. I wanted my Daemon Prince to have a darkish grim look. So, straight out from the pot, Blood Red, dry brush the whole model. Yes. I did it with the most simplest of method but with this model, it has many large and small areas. So on different locations, different sizes of brush would be used. I would avoid having too much paint on the areas in between muscles or joints to maintain the dark look and not too thick. For the wings, I dry brushed the the wing's forearms and the "fingers" with Blood Red. For the horns, plates on the back, claws on the wings, claws on feet and teeth are painted with Bleached Bone.

Hightlight

For highlighting, I chose Blazing Orange to just dry brush on the highest areas of the muscles, the face joints. These would bring out the Blood Red base colours and make the skin look less bland. For the parts that was painted with Bleached Bone, I had Skull White mixed with Bleached Bone and add in water to dilute the mixture. Then lightly paint them on the edges of the areas with Bleach Bone to bring out more of the colour. As it was diluted, the first layer should almost be unseen as more layers you do, it would be more obvious. After that's done, I proceed on to the wings.

Daemon Prince - Back View

Wings

As for the wings I chose not to do a conventional style of painting but to opt for a more darkish shiny style. The wing's forearms and "fingers" are already painted so what's left are only the membrane area. What I did was to use Dwarf Flesh as the base colour for the membrane. Dry brush the whole area with it. Then I used Flesh Wash, first diluted with water, paint it over the parts painted with Dwarf Flesh. The next layer I used the Flesh Wash right out from the pot directly on to it. Slowly when this area dries, it gives a dark brownish yet shiny as seen in the picture above.

Claws, Plates and Horns

Next up are the horns, claws and plates on the back of the Daemon Prince. These are already painted with Bleached Bone and highlighted. The next thing I wish to add are layers of of brownish colour that connects between these claws and the skin and in between the plates. I use diluted Flesh Wash to have this effect. I made sure that it's pretty this as the Flesh Wash is pretty dark especially on lighter colours. So I had more layers of this on to the areas nearest to the skin and less towards the middle of the claws. With that done, I pretty much have my Daemon Prince almost completed.

Daemon Prince - Sword and Horns

The Sword

What would be a sword that is held by a Daemon Prince. In my mind it would not be a normal metal sword but a sword that was forged in the realm of chaos. The sword already comes with runes carved into it. So I decided to have the sword to be in black but the runes clearly visible. So to spark the contract of colours, I chose to have green and yellow to be in the deep of those carved runes. I used Goblin Green that was added with Skull White and Sunburst Yellow. The embossed area of the runes I used Regal Blue as I still want to maintain a contrasting colour to the runes. And finally a few layers of thick Chaos Black on to the whole blade. For the hilt, I painted over it a slightly thinned Chainmail (it name of the colour) and then again slightly thinned Flesh Wash. This would leave it to have some sort of rusted / golden colour to it. Then handle painted with Beastial Brown and washed with Flesh Wash out of the pot. At the end of the sword is a skull which is painted with Bleach Bone and washed lightly with Flesh Wash.

Other Details

Now comes all the small details or added effects on the entire model. There are quite a number of shapes and arrows or diamond shapes around the skin of the model which I have decided to paint gold on them. Make it look more Khornish and also brings out the model. So I painted these carefully leaving a tiny gap from the undercoat black with Shining Gold.By doing this, as you can see from the picture above, the gold looks apart from the skin and horn making it stand out more. Then I painted Blazing Orange for the eyes to have that scary daemonic eyes that stare at people. Lastly the bracers, I chose to leave it black but to have the chaos symbol to be painted in Sunburst Yellow and Shining Gold at the middle part of the symbol. With that, the Daemon Prince is complete but wait, there's still more painting to do. At the base, I've added in the half-symbol and the trophy rack. These two are painted with Chainmail (the colour, again) and then washed with Flesh Wash (using this a little too much). Also on the trophy rack, some of the parts I added with a little bit of Shining Gold, and painted the skull with Bleached Bone. The thigh of the Daemon Prince look a bit too plain but luckily from the box they added the plates that would cover up the whole thigh area. I dry brushed them with Chainmail and then washed a few times with very diluted Flesh Wash. Finally the cloth on the groin area. I painted the cloth with Blood Red and then highlighted it with Blazing Orange. The metal parts of this piece is painted with Chainmail and washed with Flesh Wash. The teeth or claws that was attached to it was painted with Bleached Bone. Nothing too fancy but enough to add a little more flavour at the lower part of the whole model. So with that, sit back and enjoy the completed Daemon Prince of Chaos.

Daemon Prince - lower section

Herald of Khorne Conversion

I have always liked to personalize my own army to make it unique and easily recognized to be of my own. For Daemons of Chaos, there are limitless possibilities that you can do with Daemons. Daemons afterall, don't really have to follow the usual humanoid shapes. You can many armed monstrocities, extremely large heads or limbs, oversized weapons, multiple heads and the list could go on and on. As for your characters of course you would like to make them very outstanding and easily distinguished when you place them among your troops.

As for my first conversion for my Herald of Khorne, I opted not to go overboard but to use mostly from the Bloodletter box and minimally only used three separate bits from Empire bits. So here is the list of items that I have used for this conversion

1. PVA glue + water mixture
2. Tissue paper
3. Khorne icon from bloodletter standard bearer
4. Banner from bloodletter standard bearer
5. Bloodletter body and leg
6. Bloodletter army (left and right)
7. Bloodletter champion head
8. Empire shields x 2
9. Empire flagellant head
10. Small pin
11. Super glue
12. Plastic glue
13. Hair dryer with paper nozzle
14. Pen knife

To start off, I make the base of the herald with the PVA glue + water mixture + tissue. As this is the theme of my entire army, they would all have the lava based base. Mould the base up to look like a rock. Before setting it up to dry, take the Khorne icon from the bloodletter standard bearer set and cut it out from it's stand. Stick the icon to the base where it would be the front of your herald. Make sure that most of the tissue and glue has contact over the icon so that it would stick when it's dried. After this is completed, you can set it out to dry.

Once the base is completely dry, glue the herald's body (of course!) to the base. I used superglue excessively for this to crystalize some of the base with the herald's foot. As the tissue hardens, you may not have a full contact on the foot of the herald. The crystalization of the superglue would support how well the herald stick to the base. At this point, you do not have to worry if the herald would be facing too high up or too low, the next part will handle this. Wait till the superglue is dried, you may wish to reposition the herald body. Use the hair dryer with a custom made paper nozzle to bend the legs of the herald that it would be facing in your intended position.

Icon, body and tissue + PVA glue + water mix all glued

Next glue both army to the body with plastic glue. Wait for it to dry and then by using the same method and the legs, use the hair dryer with custom made paper nozzle to bend the arms. I even bend some of the fingers of the left arm to the shape I wanted. It's going to hold a severed head by the end of the conversion. The arm holding the hellblade, I bent it face forward and raised the sword slightly higher. I can't bend it too much as I have to leave some space for the shoulder pads and also the big head.

Arms bent and glued to body

Next up are both shoulder pads. Get two Empire shields, file off the details and then use the hair dryer with the custom paper nozzle to bend it slightly. It's pretty simple and fast to do but be careful as they are small and easily get over bent.

Shoulder pads made from Empire shields

Just as I'm finished with the shoulder pads, why not I continue wit the cloak for the herald. Cut off the banner from the standard bearer stand. Same method as the shoulder pads, I slowly bend the cloak. I had made sure that I could place two more bloodletters behind my herald with this cloak bent in this way.

Cloak for the Herald

For the severed head, I simply make cuts at the neck area till it looked like it was a severed neck. Then I glued two very small pins to the cut area. This would make the neck to look like it was torn out with two remaining veins tagging along.

Severed head

Now that all the parts are completed, what's left are just painting and glueing them together. As I already have a theme of painting my whole army, they would stay the same for the base, herald's skin colours, hellblade, horns, fingernails, teeth and so on. I have not yet glue the shoulder pads, the head and the cloak. I prefer to have them painted first and then only glue them together. For the Khorne icon, I have it base coloured with Chainmail and then washed with Flesh Wash. The inner layer of blood covering the icon would be in Red Gore while the top most blood layer would be Blood Red. The skulls on the icon would be as how I would paint most of the skulls which is Bleached Bone and washed with watered down Flesh Wash. For the severed head, I had a mixture of Bleached Bone added with Dark Angels Green. Then washed thinly with Flesh Wash. The neck area are dry brushed with Red Gore. For the shoulder pads, I base painted Red Gore on it and added Khrone markings on both of them with Chainmail. Added with some Flesh Wash, it would have some golden rusty look on the Chainmail. Finally for the cloak, I had it fully based with Red Gore then outlined with Blood Red. The designs on the cloack was first painted with Blood Red and then painted again with Blazing Orange.

Now everything has been painted up, it's time to glue them together. Start off with something simple. I'll go with the shoulder pads. Pretty straight forward, I just glue them on both shoulders. Then while waiting for the glue to dry, I glued the severed head to the left arm. It gets a bit tricky with my clumsy fingers so it took me some time before I manage to glue it on the right position that I had wanted. Finally it's the cloak. I took a simple path and just glue the top ends of the cloak directly on the shoulder pads. The contact point is pretty small, so be sure to reinforce it with a little bit more glue. I used a little bit extra super glue to do this job. With that glued up, that completes my herald of Khorne.

Frontal look

From the sides

From the top