Khorne to the bone

Hi all!
Here follows a very quick tutorial about my latest creation: a Chaos Space Marine in so called art scale (or true scale). For those of you out there not really familiar with the term, art (or true) scale actually means that all body proportions are strictly ruled by scale (i.e. if something is half a meter long in real life, with a 1:10 scale it will be something like 5 centimeters when sculpted). Why I’m telling you this? Because my sculpt is far bigger than a “standard” Space Marine by GW, which is always NOT rendered in art scale - I believe they call it heroic scale, meaning that some features (such as heads, hands, and so on) are actually bigger than they should be.
Okay, art class is over, let’s go with the real stuff!
A little Inspiration goes a long way
Well, then. Let’s say you have all you need to start your sculpt: putties, tools, your wife out of the way for the weekly canasta tournament with her girlfriends…
What to do?
Well, first of all, you have to decide what you want to sculpt. Easy, isn’t it?
No.
It is not.
I’m an over-addicted net-surfer, each time I browse on the Internet I find ten thousand subjects I’d like to sculpt.
Anyway, this time I really wanted to sculpt an ass-kicking Space Marine. A Chaos Space Marine, to be honest. Never really liked those loyalist worshippers of the Corpse Emperor…
So I started looking for inspiration on one of my favorite websites (besides CMON, of course!): www.deviantart.com
Tons of incredibly good stuff.
I came up with two excellent findings:

The first one is a great piece of art you can find here: http://diegogisbertllorens.deviantart.com/gallery/ (all rights reserved)
The second one is actually a picture of one of my favorite artists, Mikhail Savier: http://mikhailsavier.deviantart.com/gallery/ (all rights reserved)
He’s one of the best when it comes to 40k artwork (go check his gallery, you won’t regret it…).
Anyway, I’ve based the anatomy study of my SM on this second drawing, especially in terms of overall body proportions.
So pose, pose, pose only for my photos…
Besides sculpting skills, what really makes a miniature good to look at?
Well, its pose!!
I then started checking out the first drawing to understand how the overall wireframe should look in the end.
I really liked the idea of this hulking figure clad in armor striding through the battlefield. The challenge was actually to convey this sense of movement into my sculpt. After a few twist and turns, I was finally able to settle my armature pose as I wanted it to be.

The extra length of wire planted into the base was meant to support the arms while sculpting. No need to have a “neck” of sort, I had already planned to sculpt the head as a separate part.
For your information, the base is actually made of cork: I buy this stuff in sheets at my local DIY store, I believe they’re used for insulation.

Power to the masses!
With the armature done, I started adding up the masses. After placing a very thin layer of green stuff on the steel wire (sorry, no pictures of this part: camera was low on battery…), I placed blobs of Super Sculpey firm on torso and legs. No need to go for super-detailed human anatomy here, since all these parts are actually clad in armor. I then started the slow process of shaping up the blobs to get the final look. Arms were done afterwards, since I wanted these to be bare (as per reference drawing) and needed extra care. You can see here below the result of 4 hours (approx.) of work, split in two sessions. At that stage, all surfaces still needed to be flattened and properly smoothed.

I added the plastic head of a GW Blood Angel for comparison: as you may notice, it fits perfectly on the body, even if the size of my model is almost twice that of a standard GW miniature.

The details are not the details. They make the design.
Once I was satisfied with my work, I smoothed whatever needed smoothing (using principally clay shapers and brushes with a bit of mineral oil), I cooked my mini and started the slow process of adding details with GS. A note here: some sculptors, definitely more skilled than me, would have added all details using Super Sculpey instead of green stuff. This is not my case: I tend to push too much on my tools while sculpting, and therefore I would have damaged all surfaces underneath. The only detail I actually managed to sculpt in SS is the Khorne symbol: I prepared a small flat square of putty on some oven-paper, carved the details, and then applied it to chest armor.
Everything else has been done with GS: I slightly beefed up both biceps (they looked too small), I added trimmings to the armor, flexible joints at knee-height, and knee-pads (these are only the base on which I will sculpt the real things).

Another note: for studs/rivets, I used small nail beads made of glass. Credit for this idea goes to Sergey Savenkov here on CMON (http://www.coolminiornot.com/forums/...0-dwarf-digger)
Ciao Sergey!!

Well, I think that’s all for part one.
Part 2 will follow shortly.
Cheers everybody.