Ahriman, Lord of Darkness is a menacing character. A great deal of his visual impact comes from the way his dark colors smolder and suddenly burst into vivid ones. Rather than being a complete walk-through of the figure, this tutorial focuses on how to achieve this effect.

Wen-M’s illustration I started with.

My essential tools for the job are quality sable brushes (Winsor & Newton Series 7 #2, #2 Miniatures, #0 Miniatures), a wet palette (Mastersen Sta-Wet Handy Palette), and matte medium.

My basic technique here is to build up color with thin, transparent layers. More on the mottled effect when I come to it.

For the sake of the tutorial, I broke the painting into three phases.

• Phase 1: Starting from pure black, build up cool, dark grays and browns to highlight the black. Then blend in red at the appropriate places. The red added to the gray and the brown are also cool.
• Phase 2: Begin to warm up the places that will eventually be red, orange, and yellow. Starting from a warm brown base, add in reds and a lighter warm brown.
• Phase 3: Really bring out the oranges and yellows.

Dark Darks

My first piece of advise is to start as dark as possible and then keep the darks dark. This might seem obvious when I say it, but in the midst of painting it’s actually quite easy to “over highlight”. Neither should you trust that your black primer is black enough! A quality black primer like Dupli-Color Sandable black will give you a great base to work from. But for an especially dark figure, I think it’s important to deepen your blacks with a coat of thinned black paint. My Vallejo Game Color black is definitely a step or two darker than the primer.

As you build color onto the black, restraint is a virtue. I constantly step back from the figure to make sure the effect isn’t so bright the figure loses its sense of darkness.

Notice how the dark portions of Ahriman aren’t uniform, but there are actually two hues at play, gray and brown. Each of these was built up in turn, starting with the gray hue and moving to the brown hue. The gray portions are built up from black by adding in small amounts of P3 Greatcoat Grey and adding matte medium to taste. The brown portions use the same technique but built using P3 Battlefield Brown.

Dark brown and gray in place. Ready to add red.

Here you see the figure after I’ve built up the dark browns and grays from the black. Subtle, right? This is right before I start adding red.

A look at the palette.

Here’s a look at my palette. Sorry, I should have planned better and had phase 1 on the left. But you can see how each phase basically has three colors. Phase 1 I’m building the dark colors, and still in Phase 1 I start to add in P3 Khador Red Base to each the gray and the brown. Now, when I add red to gray or brown I get a cool, muted result. This is the base that will transition to hot, fiery oranges and yellows.

Warming Up the Reds

In phase 2, I want to warm up the base. I abandon the grey and battlefield brown for a warmer dark color, Vallejo Leather Brown, and start adding Vallejo Beasty Brown in with my Khador Red Base to get a rich red. Look at the palette and notice how Khador Red Base is used first with the dark, cool, colors, and then again with the warmer colors.

Mottled Color

But I wanted a mottled, splotchy effect, as if the fiery colors are shifting around. The way to achieve this is by mixing up each brush-load of color with mostly matte medium and only a little color. Then instead of brushing it on, place it on the model. It will look like a little mound of whitish matte medium, but when dry it will be a blotch of subtle color with blurred edges. You can go around and add dozens of these little lumps of color at once. When dry, go around again and build up those same splotches again. Repeat . . .

The result after Phase 2

Fiery Highlights

Phase 3 is just an extension of what I’ve been doing. Now that the figure has some intense reds, I want to bring out the fire with oranges and yellows. Check my palette pic; again I’m using three colors. This time it’s GW Tausept Ochre, P3 Khador Red Highlight, and GW Golden Yellow. The Golden Yellow is the brightest color here, and I’m moving in that direction, from orange to yellow, moderated with the ochre. Only in key places like Ahriman’s fingertips do I use pure Golden Yellow.

The result after Phase 3

Bright Lights

But, you ask, what about the glowing eyes and noses of the skulls and the lights on the arms? Well, here I didn’t want the yellow cast, but a whiter cast to the lights. And these points, along with the eyes, were going to be the brightest points on the figure overall. I build up these recesses in Phase 2 just as with the other places I wanted really red, but in Phase 3 I didn’t go as far as Sunburst Yellow, but kept it at Khador Red Highlight. Once I had finished the rest of the reds and yellows, I starting adding Vallejo Pale Sand to Khador Red Highlight and dotting these points with my finest brush and a healthy amount of matte medium in the mix.

Here is the figure after the lights have been placed.

The highlighting is now done and the rest of the coloring is layed over this. Fin.

The finished figure