Arkhan the Black: A completed conversion project

A few weeks ago I started a conversion project for a friend from my local gaming club.  

The project is to construct and paint Arkhan the black, together with a staff of Negash and liber Mortis.

To construct this, I have used parts from;

• Tomb King with great weapon
• Helblaster volley gun (part of staff)
• Vampire counts skeleton (skull)
• Bretonnia peasant archers (shield on staff)
• Tomb king skeleton archer horseman (left arm)
• Vampire counts Necromancer (base)
• Book from forgotten figure! 

 Thank god most of this came from my bits box otherwise it may of cost me a small fortune.

When last we saw the figure, I had painted on some very basic colours. I do this to set a colour tone. I find that if I complete a whole part of a figure in isolation, from a black undercoat, I end up with an overly dark piece, which I then need to lighten considerably when I complete more of the figure. Conversely if I work up from white undercoat, I get a very washed out look. By painting the whole figure in simple colours I can establish a tone for the figure and hopefully find those colour combinations that are just not going to work on the finished figure.

In the end I opted for a very simple red & blue combination of colours to give him a very classic GW look.

I tried to keep the reds on the cloak and book quite subdued to accentuate the brighter red of the gems.

I tried hard to draw the detail up to the face area so that the viewers eyes would be drawn here. I think a character of this kind should have a prominent face and hopefully I have achieved this.

 Does not look quite so good when you blow it quite so large!

Most of the conversion work went into getting the staff of Negash to look similar to the inside cover art on the Tomb King book. Hopefully I have achieved this, you can be the judge. In hindsight I made it a little large, but not sure how I could have got it much smaller...

The worst part is the Liber Mortis. I kept the writing in the book nice and vague, but maybe more work was required.

Hope you enjoy...

Arkhan the Black: A conversion project

I have made a relatively simple rule for myself. If someone from my club asks, then I will paint a model for them, but that is that. One figure per person per life. It is a relatively simple rule, but it has worked quite well for me in the past. I tend to only get asked to paint for others now and then, but when I am it is usually something quite interesting. Arkhan the black is a case in point.

The chap had an old metal model of a tomb king with great weapon which he wanted converting up into the Liche King. I then discussed with him exactly what he wanted in the figure. His basic needs were as follows;

• Start with the metal figure
• He wanted a Staff of Nagash modelled, he wanted this modelled based on the inside cover artwork of the new tomb kings book.
• He wanted "the Liber Mortis" modelled. This tomb is one of the fabled nine books of Nagash.
• He did not appear to bothered whether or not I included the Tomb blade of Arkhan.

The base model 

The chap supplied me with his base figure. This was superglued to its slotter base and had a significant amount of super glue on a failed attempt to fix both arms onto the figure. The left arm was missing...

 

So the first step was to chisel off the superglue. It was quite old so has well and truly set. In hindsight it might have been better to dissolve it off, but I lacked the knowledge of an appropriate solvent nor the interest in looking one up.

The next step was to have a quick study of the army book for inspiration and to raid my spares box for anything that might help. I just collected interesting things with the idea that I would decide what to do once I had gathered it all together.

Staff of Nagash:

As already described my friend wanted the staff modelled as the inside cover art in the army book, so step 1 was to get a picture...

I elected to start with the tomb kings great weapon, which had a curved blade a little like the side of the staff.

I marked and cut some plastic card. to match the blade.

I stuck this to the side of the great weapon, together with two bits of plastic that were taken from the firing handles of the Hellblaster volley gun (thank god for the bits box).

I then added green stuff to repeat the pattern. It looks a little rough, but it is the best I can do with the material. Maybe I need to practice more at my sculpting!

I then needed two small shields. I took these from the defensive stakes that come with the Brettonia peasant archers. These had to be cut off and then filed flat, before being added to the staff.

The Liber Mortis

This is described as "accursed tome is one of the fabled nine books of Nagash, the most potent source of necromantic magic in the world". Now, I am fairly convinced that this should be either a stone tablet or papyrus scroll, but I wanted something that was obviously a "book of magic". Therefore I went with a straight forward book.

I have no idea what model the book comes from, but I do know that it was metal and needed the human hand that was attached to it cutting off. This was no mean feet, because I wanted to maintain as much of the book detail as possible.

I used a bow hand from a tomb king skeleton archer because not only was it the right pose, but it was clearly a skeleton hand.

The assembled figure

I then assembled all the components. I decided to pin every joint because the last thing I want is for the whole model to fall apart the first time he plays with it.

At this stage I trimmed down the greenstuff on the staff and added a smoothing layer around the front of the magic book and a tattered sleave for its left arm.

The base came from  the new vampire counts necromancer, just because I had a spare.

A first lick of paint

I then undercoated the figure black and put down a first layer of colours to try out a basic colour scheme. I like to try models this may becuase I can then leave them for a day or two to establish if I am happy with the colours I have chosen.

Next post I will paint him up. Till then, have fun and happy brush licking....

Tomb Kings scenery

You know what it is like. You attend a show and any money you have on you, starts burning a whole in your pockets. Next thing you know you are walking around with a bag of goodies.

In my case the goodies in question was a selection of resin scenery from a company called The Square. Although they have a website, they only sell if you send them a cheque or meet them at a show. Whilst I was at Legionary on Saturday, I took advantage of their attendance. Although they have quite a broad range of nice looking pieces, I choose to go for a number of desert style resin casts to complement the Tomb king armies that are no doubt going to appear at the club in the coming weeks.

The figures are excellent value with a nice selection brought for a little over £15 (the advantage of club discount and a nice smile).

The resin is nice and dense and should stand up to a good amount of rough handling. I opted to add real sand to the base before painting. There are a number of air holes that could do with filling, but I elected to paint without making good and I don't think they are too excessive to distract from the quality of the pieces.

Size wise they are great for warhammer figures, but I plan to use the Sphinx figures either side of the steps of a building.

The sand was painted using the guide given on page 56 of WD377. To paint the sandstone terrain I started with vermin brown, worked up layers of drybrushing through 1:1 vermin brown & Tausept Ochre -> Tausept Ochre -> 1:1 Tausept Ochre & Dheneb Stone -> Dheneb stone. I followed this with a liberal wash of Ogryn flesh.

Broken needle base 

 Cleopatra's needle

 

that's a nice pair of sphinx you have there sir!

I have added a random skeleton figure to give a sense of scale.