Showcase: Eldar Avatar of Craftworld Iybraesil (Forge World)

A year and a half ago, I painted this Forge World Avatar for my Craftworld Iybraesil collection, but I never completed it, as I wasn’t sure what to do with his tabbard. He had a comfy place in my display cabinet, waiting to be finished some day, then the unfortunate happened: While I wanted to remove some other model, my sleeve caught the Avatar and I dropped it to the floor, smashing his sword arm. Now I finally found the time to repair the damage and put the last finishing touches to the tabbard. Check out the pictures after the jump.

This is the photographic evidence from the crime scene. For a drop of about 1m to a hard floor, the damage could have been much worse. Thank fully I had only to repair the sword and arm.

Painting the Avatar was a lot of fun and I really pushed myself with details like the turquoise to blue gradient on the hair, the partially freehanded runes on the tabbard, and especially the magenta glow.

As you see, I decided to do something different than the usual glowing lava effect, and went for an eldritch pink/magenta. I started with basecoating the whole model with VGC Squid Pink, and I remember, looking at a completely pink model, I was really worried if the effect would really work out as imagined. But now, I’m really happy, even though the whole scheme might be a bit Tzeentch-ian.

After the model was basecoated with Squid Pink, I mixed P3 Carnal Pink with Lahmian Medium and washed it in the recesses of the chest and mouth. Then I layered a mix of Squid Pink and Emperor’s Children, pure Emperor’s Children, Pink Horror, Wazdakka Red, a mix of Wazdakka Red and Khorne Red, pure Khorne Red, a mix of Khorne Red and VMC Black, and finally pure VMC Black. The more I veered away from the chest, the darker I got. A gentle drybrush of Mechanicus Standard Grey completed the effect. The flames on the tabbard were painted the same way, though I didn’t drybrush them with grey, but added small dots of Carnal Pink to represent glowing pieces of ash.

The runes on the tabbard are based on transfers. I draw the Avatar rune in a vector graphic design software and printed it on transfer paper. The Iybraesil rune is from the Eldar transfer sheet, with those parts cut away that would be concealed by the flames. Once the transfers were applied and sealed with Microsol, I painted over the Avatar rune with white (as regular printers don’t have white ink), and blended in the Iybraesil rune with white and P3 Carnal Pink. Using the transfers as a guide for freehanding it was possible to acchieve a very precise result.

So, what do you think about my take on Forge World’s brilliant Avatar? Does the magenta work for you? Tell me in the comments below.