Assembling and Painting Arkhan the Black - Part 1

After the Start Collecting! Undead Horde finally arrived, I didn't hesitate and immediately started working on Arkhan the Black, Mortarch of Sacrament. Since it's going to be a centerpiece of the army, I decided to go for sub-assemblies to get better result and more details.

I will post the process in several parts, starting with the main body of Razarak, the dread abyssal mount of Arkhan the Black.

I started by cutting out the first pieces of the body, cleaning them with a hobby knife, then priming them with Imperial Primer. The reason I didn't use spray primer is because in winter the paint in the spray can tends to thicken.

After the primer dried, I based the skulls with two thin layers of Celestra Grey.

Then I applied Nihilakh Oxide all over the skulls, thinning it with just a bit of water to run into all of the crevasses.

After that I used a mix of Coelia Greenshade and Lahmian Medium to a ratio of 1:3 and applied it all over the skulls, making it sure it ran into all of the recessed parts.

After the shade dried, I highlighted the skulls using Ulthuan Grey.

In the second part of the sub-assembly, I based the bone structure with two thin layers of Rakarth Flesh. I painted some of the ribs and the pelvis with Zandri Dust for more diversity.

I applied a mix of Agrax Earthshade and Lahmian Medium to a ratio of 1:2, and applied 3 thin layers on the ribs painted with Rakarth Flesh and 5 thin layers on those painted with Zandri Dust. The reason why I did this way is because I didn't want the shade to pool up and to run into the area with the skulls. On the tail part I applied just Agrax Earthshade, without mixing it.

After the shade dried up, I highlighted the bones with a thin layer of Rakarth Flesh and on the raised areas, very carefully with Pallid Wych Flesh.

Note that I avoided to paint the parts were I would glue them together, as plastic glue melts the paint and won't be so efficient as on unpainted areas.

That's it, Part 1 of painting and assembling Arkhan the Black. Stay tuned for Part 2 in early January 2017!

The rise of the undead

I started building airplane models at the age of seven, from paper, cardboard and wood. At the age of 11 I started to paint using different techniques, and even won national competitions! Now, at 26, I combined those two to build and paint plastic figures.

I fell in love with Warhammer 40.000 when I first played the Dawn of War video game. I just loved to play with undead, mechanical, hyper advanced space zombie robots. Soon I found out about the tabletop game, but it seemed to overwhelming at the time.

In November 2014 I finally decided to take up this hobby. I ordered my tools, paints and a couple of kits to build some Necrons. After some research I found out about a LFGS, so I went there to check it out. Turns out, other people in the city where playing 40k! I began to collect Necrons, but I had to get a job, since at the time I was just another poor student. Got the job, got the minis, but eventually the unbalanced and unnecessarily complicated game system made me quit the game.

I the meantime I bought and tried other games, but never found the thing I craved for: building and painting miniatures!

After two disappointing years I finally conviced myself to pack away my 40k minis and have a fresh start. I ordered a Start Collecting! Skeleton Horde and some new paints. At first I just wanted to paint the minis for display, but I decided to give Age of Sigmar a try, since there's a point system now. I wanted to share this old and new experience with others, so I began to write this blog.

Now let's get some bones crafted!