Alpharius Shoulders

The upper shoulder pads are done! The approach here was to have a little experiment with how I am going to attempt the main body and legs of the model. The undercoat is black to provide dark recesses, followed by a base colour of alpha legion blue that I mixed up a little while ago. 

I then applied some subtle layers and inks of blues and greens to give the shoulders and scales a little bit of a gradient. This is tough to pull off since blue and green are a pair of colours that don't exactly complement each other well. However, I think the blend that I have done here is fine. The scales have been picked out with scorpion green on the top.

The silver around the edges is done with iron breaker followed by an inking of Nuln Oil. The highlights are done with rune fang silver followed by extreme highlighting with white. 

However, once I have glued the shoulders in place on the main model, I will return to the extreme highlighting to ensure that the glints are in the correct places. That is hard to do right now with the pieces off the model. 

Pale Spear Painting

For Alpharius' pale spear, I wanted to at least to try to communicate some of the alien origin of this ghastly weapon. As with most hobbyists, my interpretation of the Pale Spear is that it is Necron in origin. Goodness knows how Alpharius got hold of such a relic, but I guess that's a part of his charm.

Starting with a black undercoat, I sprayed some silver on the the spear to use as a reference point for the azimuthal light. However. Unlike for Alpharius' body, I was not very happy with this approach and thought about using something else. Initially, I wanted to paint the blades of the spear in the same manner as a power weapon. Perhaps blues and lightning dancing across the surface. I abandoned this idea early on as I had labelled it as too Imperial looking. 

Instead, I wanted to try my hand at something a bit different. I elected to give non-metallic metals a whirl. Now, I will be the first to confess that I'm not usually very good with this approach. I am much more comfy with flaming swords or electricity dancing across their surfaces. Hence it represented a bit of a challenge for me. All good!

The image below shows the result.

For the non-metallic metal approach, I have wet blended black to white (through grey) on both sides of tips of the spear. However: the blending is inversed for each side and a delimited of white applied between them. The overall approach is sound, although I think I might re-do this on a different day (with a lower temperature) to get a slightly better result. 

The shaft of the spear meanwhile has been picked out in a mahogany and maroon colour around the grip, with a weathered silver approach for the central parts. The hands of Alpharius follow the colour scheme established on his main body.

Its getting closer to the time to glue all the parts together...!

Master Crafted Plasma Blaster for Alpharius

When I started to look at the accessories that Alpharius carries around with him, his main side arm was a master crafted plasma blaster. This was one of those cases that I did not know initially how I wanted to go about tackling. I thought about several permutations such as having a silvered weapon with some red or blue plasma coils. Or how about even brass plasma coils from them being inactivated? 

However, for me, the Master Crafted aspect of the weapon was what swung the colour scheme eventually. Not only is the sculpt of the plasma blaster notable for an upgraded gun handle, but it also comes with some exquisite detail across all of the weapon. I opted for a golden colour scheme for the main part of the weapon itself. This was to reinforce the master crafted aspect of the gun (and potentially remind me on the table top of this). For the plasma coils, I wanted them heated and ready to go. The choices were between red, green, and blue for me. However, since I am opting to have a heavy weapon plasma cannon squad use green plasma, I wanted to coordinate. Hence green was the go-to colour for me here. The end result is below. 

In some ways, it is sad that this side arm is so small! When glued on to Alpharius' thigh, it will be partially hidden. All that glorious highlighting that I've spent so long doing will be hidden. However, that's life. And I wouldn't forgive myself for not doing it on a model as expensive as a Primarch. 

Alpharius Cape

One of the bigger components that I've left as a distinct painting section for Alpharius is his cape. Forge World have painted this in a simple manner for their website and display purposes. However, I wanted to do something a little bit orthogonal to this. I have therefore decided to follow the camouflage paint scheme that my scouts have on their cloaks.

The effect is achieved using an airbrush over a stencil from Anarchy. Another example of this approach can be found on my Warhound titan. Here, I have placed the stencil in a number of locations and used a lighter shade of cream, as well as black for making the hexagons. I have applied a further edging to the hexagons in a number of places to suggest the mutability of the cloak's properties. There is still some touching up left to do on the cloak, but otherwise, this is approaching how the cape will look when finally glued in to place.

Alpharius Base

The weather has not been conducive to painting recently (far too warm where I conduct my work basically). However, I have made significant progress with Alpharius' base. The image below shows how it is working out so far.

The base has been painted in a brown base coat and then inked with a darker brown/black mixture, followed by highlighting in almost a creamier version of the brown colour to give it the appropriate texture. 

Meanwhile, the space marine legionary on the base has had their basecoat applied in the same Alpha Legion colours as his master, with silver accents. 

Both the base and the marine still need plenty of work, but it is starting to come together nicely and actually looking like everything slots together well visually. 

Alpharius Base Coat

The base coat is now down on Alpharius. 

The painting follows my mixing up of a new batch of Alpha Legion colours to use specifically with the model (and with a Leviathan), and broadly matches my previous methods with this Legion. Some key differences to line troopers here are that I bothered to use a quantum of azimuthal silver to ensure that the top-down viewpoint might plausibly be a little bit more shiny and sparkly than a bottom-up one. 

To get the paint laying evenly on the surface of the model, I used an airbrush and made even strokes across the model with the gunmetal blue colour. I finished up by adding a hint of green in to my airbrush mixture and targeting the lower parts of the scaled panels of the model.

I followed this up by outlining where I wanted the silver on the model for the panel edging. This was done with a mixture of leadbelcher along with runefang silver in moderation. 

This is the undercoat completed for Alpharius. Clearly there is still a whole lot of work left to do. However, I am already pleased with the aesthetic that is coming across with this model. The scales can be seen clearly reflecting the lights in my house due to the silvered-blue nature of the model. 

The only other thing to mention is that I have glued the head in to position as well. I did this using the model temporarily tacked on to the base to get the tilt where I wanted it. Not entirely looking downwards at the unfortunate marine below him, nor ignoring him. Just the right amount of martial contempt, I think. And multi-tasking. I imagine Alpharius speaking orders in to his comm unit whilst dispatching the marine below him, almost absent-mindedly.