Magnus Did Nothing Wrong
The Crimson King. The Soreceror-King. Daemon Primarch of the Traitor Legion the Thousand Sons. Magnus the Red is my latest commission and one of the biggest Warhammer models I’ve ever tackled (the biggest so far being the Tyranid Norn Emissary, but her tallest bit is only up to Magnus’ glorious hair).
Magnus the Grey, the Plastic King
While playing D&D with friends one of the other players, Lane, learned that I had been not only playing Warhammer but painting minis on a commission basis and asked how much I would charge to paint some of his stuff. I told him my rate and asked what he was looking to get done and he told me he would really like to get his Primarch done, asking how long I thought it might take. As you can see to the right here, Magnus is a big boy, but I wasn’t thinking he was this big. So I gave my “comparative” estimate of length of time based on my biggest model to be around four hours and 20 minutes, but also made sure he knew it would probably be longer than that because I wanted to make sure he got the best quality of work for what will essentially be a center-piece for his Army, and will definitely be the most targeted model any time he’s deployed.
And honestly, can you blame them? Primarchs can be terrifying on tabletop. I myself have never gone up against one, but regular daemons are kind of brutal and these bad boys are much worse. Unless you concentrate all your fire, but then everything else is trying to kill you at the same time and honestly it gets to be a hassle, and who wants to deal with that?
But I digress…
Magnus’ box art is done in what’s known as the “Heavy Metal” style - which is done by Games Workshop’s in house painters. They’re often Golden Demon judges
A few weeks after that conversation Lane brought Magnus to game and we talked a bit about what he wanted. Initially he told himself he wanted custom colors for his Thousand Sons army when he got to them, and so that would reflect in Magnus, but then he was thinking how that might just be a hassle for painting the army itself and so asked for as close to the box art as I could make him. He gave me a few outs for me to latch onto. “It doesn’t need to be Golden Demon worthy.” and “It doesn’t have to be exact to the box art.” Which is nice of him. I’m obviously not going to be the guy that says “oh well if it doesn’t need to be perfect, you’re going to get a garbage product from me” because 1) my work ethic and perfectionism combined won’t let me do that, and B) I would also like to keep doing commissions and if I do garbage work, I’m not going to get more work. Makes sense right? That said, I am taking some more artistic liberties in this case. I didn’t realize how golden the armor was in the box art, and that’s a tad on the flashy side in my head. There’s also an insane amount of teeny tiny edge highlighting on the wings themselves and honestly that can be muted down a bit and done with dry brushing. While I will work towards a Golden Demon standard, I am not steady enough for that.
I also know when to pull back on the perfectionism, because I don’t want to work on this for 40 hours and have Lane unable to pay.
I started the day after our conversation… I mean… First I took some pictures, and primed and took more pictures, and then started. This paint job is exciting for me, because I get to work on one of - what I think is - the coolest models in the range. All of the Daemon Primarchs that I’ve seen are amazing, but Magnus has a certain style to him that I find pretty fascinating. Dark angelic wings. unbearably large daemon horns growing out of his head. Highly detailed armor and flowing robes. I’m not gonna lie, I’m kind of thinking of picking one of these up for myself and doing this whole project over again, and I don’t even play this army.
I won’t because I do not have the space, but man if I did…
Anyway, I am (maybe) about halfway through this project right now, and I’m sitting at just less than 4 hours in. There’s been some things that have irked me, namely trying to paint and drybrush around armor, but since you really do all your drybrushing first, it’s a lot easier to clear up when you’re continuing your paint job. There’s some things, I’m not looking forward to right now, but I think they’re within my capabilities, I’m just psyching myself out a little bit by jumping ahead. We’re going to be fine.
Anyway, just below are some progress pics, hope you like them, or something, I guess, whatever, okay, have fun, bye!
