ArcWorlde Unithorn from Warploque Miniatures

Last week saw me playing with my new airbrush and starting out practicing on the Unithorn from Warploque Miniatures. The practice didn't go quite to plan, so instead it became a session of playing with inks and sponge. I continued working on it this week and it's finished!

The Unithorn is a magical construct and part of the Wild Elves faction. It's quite a big beastie, posed rearing up to a large height on it's 50mm base.

The majority of the Unithorn was painted using the Scale Color Inktensity ink set - Black, Wood, Chestnut and Green in between the occasional sponging of Deck Tan onto the raised areas such as the spines.

I mixed up the different shades in different areas and in different amounts, so some areas might look a bit more green, while others might be a bit darker brown, others again a little warmer where the chestnut takes prominence. I went for this approach over a standard wooden creature thanks to the masical aspect to it's creation. It could just as easily be a creature grown from a thorn bush as it is to have been formed from various plantlife close to the mage doing the summoning, so I went for the latter. This is also why there isn't really any colour change across various areas you might expect there to be on a flesh and bone unicorn - the horn and hooves are all the same material and density a the ribs and mane so other than a little extra deck tan attention, I treated them the same as the rest of the piece.

With the magic in ArcWorlde being powered by the blue glowing rock that is Arcanite, I went for some glowing blue eyes which almost came off how I wanted them to, but they provide a nice cold contrast to the rest of the mini.

The base, as shown in last week's post, was created from Scale 75's sandy paste, gravel and some milliput beneath to bulk it up slightly. I've carried the sponging technique over from the model to the earthwork on the base, with 4 or 5 different browns in there, highlighted up to deck tan in places and washed back again. The grass clumps and rocks are a nod to my halflings I recently painted, to give my ArcWorlde warbands a united feel. 

While it might not be the most technically skillfully painted piece in my collection, it's one of the ones I'm happiest with as I had the idea to paint it up using inks and different tones, and it's come out as I thought it should in my head.

As a little note to end on, this will be my last Saturday post for a while. I've decided to take a break from the blog and forums to try and relocate the fun that comes with painting. I've been creating 1-2, sometimes more, articles a week for the past 19-20 months so I want to see what I can get up to without stopping for pictures every so often and spending more time in a week writing and editing than painting!

I've got one more A Closer Look left to write and a couple of Q&A's to edit up but after that I'll be letting the other guys to look after stuff for a while. I'll still be looking after the Noobs Facebook page with Shamikebab though, so I'm not vanishing entirely!

So, with that said, here's one more look at the Unithorn to finish (for now) on a high :)