Painting a Gyrinx.
The decision to paint a Gyrinx alongside one of my Corsairs was one of the earliest I made for this project. The very first Corsair I started working on was the Way Seeker and I thought a Gyrinx familiar would be an interesting and appropriate companion for this psyker.
I started off by spraying a light coat of black primer and then gave my Gyrinx an overall base coat. The choice of colour for the base was important because I wanted my Gyrinx to stand out within the overall composition, but not too much. The obvious choice seemed to be a blue hue. This would fit within my overall colour palette. I’ve used Thousand Sons Blue from Games Workshop (GW) for gems and in some of the colour reflections. However, Thousand Sons Blue is a strong saturated hue and too dominant as a base colour for my Gyrinx. The solution was to use a slightly desaturated blue/green hue instead.
The colour I chose was Sons of Horus Green (GW). This was not originally part of my colour palette but I decided to include it when I was basing my Felarch. I’d always intended to feature a grey/green hue in the basing scheme and set about seeing what I could mix from my colour palette. The most satisfactory hues were very similar to Sons of Horus Green, a colour I’d been interested in experimenting with for some time, so I added it to my palette. This would help to tie my Gyrinx into the overall environment and enable me to use Thousand Sons Blue more subtly as an accent colour.
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| The palette of colours used to paint my Gyrinx was selected from the Corsair palette. |
I did a little research to find some reference material for my Gyrinx. Rather than looking at published artwork or painted models, I searched on-line for images of domestic, wild and big cats. I decided against stripes or tabby markings and looked more closely at spotted cats. I chose a serval cat as the inspiration for my Gyrinx based on its facial markings, spotted coat and stripes on its back. Using photographic reference is very useful as it makes me aware of the colour variations in the cat’s coat in addition to its spots and stripes.
To build some of that colour variation into my paint scheme, I applied a rough glaze of Thousand Sons Blue along the spine and across the top of the head and ears. I then concentrated on painting the head to a more finished state. I like to paint a miniature’s face (if it has one) at an early stage as this helps me to establish its character. This was my first experience of using the full as the face featured both dark and light markings. I used Tenere Yellow from Scale Colour (SC) to lighten the Sons of Horus Green before adding white into the mix. This results in a warmer/greener mid-tone than I would achieve by simply adding white. The use of pale yellow also helped to prevent the Gyrinx having an all blue monotone look. To further this, I glazed Sahara Yellow (SC) onto the inside of the ears and also in bands on the tail. This colour helps to tie the Gyrinx in with the overall scheme as it’s the dominant colour used in the gold armour.
The next step was to begin painting the body. A little bit of painted texture can go a long way towards creating visual interest and the Gyrinx’s coat was perfect for such treatment. Rather than highlighting and shading via smooth transitions I painted short strokes to create the illusion of a fur texture. This technique is in fact another form of stippling, using strokes rather than dots, so it was something I felt comfortable doing. The trick was to strike a balance between too much and too little texture. I used Sons of Horus Green and Tenere Yellow with some subtle glazes of a Sons of Horus Green and Thousand Sons Blue mix for the fur.
When I paint any sort of animal patterns or markings I like to start off by using a lighter and dilute version of the final colour. This helps me to avoid painting a hard sharp edge and keeps a soft organic feel to the markings. Once I’ve established the overall pattern I then build it up to the desired strength by stippling. This gives me a lot of control and also helps to maintain the softer broken edges of the pattern. For the Gyrinx I used blue/black for the patterns. I began with a mix of Thousand Sons Blue and Dark Sea Blue and gradually added black working up to the darkest stripes along the spine. Once the spots and stripes on the Gyrinx’s coat were painted I went back over the previous work to refine details and transitions.
The final step was to paint the various pieces of jewellery the Gyrinx was wearing. Gold would have been the obvious choice but I decided against this. I felt that gold would have drawn the eye away from the Way Seeker too much so I opted for a non-metallic metal dark steel. This colour will feature on other models in the unit and I will describe my thinking behind it in a later post.
The Gyrinx provided a break from painting armour and was an enjoyable project in its own right. I think it adds extra interest to my Way Seeker and will go a long way to furthering my ambition of bringing variety to the overall unit.
