Warhammer 40,000 - Inquisitor Ostromandeus
Continuing the tour of my backlog of commemorative miniatures we come to Inquisitor Ostromandeus and his gribbly friends. Not the first Inquisitor that I have painted either as it happens. Like the Marshal and his Squire they are the Year 4 (2024/2025) reward for subscribing to Warhammer+ for a year.
In any case I broke them out of their box and got them assembled, drilling gun barrels where I needed to. As with most models that have a cloak, I left the Inquisitor separate from his base but the other two I glued down.
Inquisitor Ostromandeus
Backdrop by Jon Hodgson Backdrops
I started with the big man himself, because why not. I primed him with Colour Forge Raven Black.Getting started on the basecoats, rather than the deep red armour shown in the official paint scheme I decided to paint the armour with Scale75 Black Metal and the cloak with Two Thin Coats Royal Cloak. I had done a similar colour scheme for Inquisitor Erasmus Cartavolnus and was rather pleased with the results. Inquisitors don’t have a uniform of course but I wanted to give them a similar theme. Speaking of theme, I had decided while painting my Adepta Sororita Combat Patrol that black is the colour of penance. What, pray tell, would an Inquisitor have to repent? Perhaps their very service damns them? Fun questions with which to craft characters and themes.
I could wax lyrical about my own characters and themes for a good while, but we are here for the painting. To that effect I painted the gold details with Scale75 Dwarven Gold and the leather details with Two Thin Coats Cuirass Leather. The silver details such as the sword blade and bionics, of which our friend here has a fair few, I painted with Scale75 Thrash Metal. The pages of the book and the dismembered hand meanwhile I painted with Two Thin Coats Griffon Claw. The book cover meanwhile and the gun housing I painted with Vallejo Scarlet Red. Lastly for the basecoats I painted the fur mantle with Mournfang Brown.
For the washes I gave the fur a coat of Army Painter Strong Tone, the gold a wash of Reikland Fleshshade and everything else got a coat of Army Painter Dark Tone. Not strictly a wash or highlight, but at this point I carefully painted the interior of the Inquisition symbol with Flesh Tearers Red. Moving onto the highlights proper, I highlighted the edges of the cape with Two Thin Coats Sword Hilt Burgundy and any leather details with Two Thin Coats Dry Rust Brown. For the armour I highlighted the edges with Scale75 Thrash Metal and for the gold details I highlighted the edges with Scale75 Elven Gold.
Backdrop by Jon Hodgson Backdrops
At this point I switched to the face, starting with my usual process. A basecoat of Two Thin Coats Dwarven Skin followed by a wash of Reikland Fleshshade, and then layering back up with Dwarven Skin again. From there I built up my highlights by mixing progressively more and more Scale75 Pink Skin and Pale Skin into the Dwarven Skin. I finished off the skin by adding a small wash of Army Painter Red Tone around the bionics and where the skin meets the mask, to make the skin look a bit sore and irritated.
For the base, I first used texture paste to blend his little tactical rock with the base. Once it was dry I primed the base with Colour Forge Hyrax Brown. I then overbrushed the tactical rock with Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone. Unlike a drybrush that will only catch the edges overbrushing is a bit more intense and will effectively paint the rock but still leave the recesses brown. From there I gave it a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone to tie everything together. And then I painted the smoke with Two Thin Coats Death Reaper.
From there I attempted some kind of glowing effect by painting in the recesses and lazily slathering the smoke with very heavily thinned Army Painter Matt White. I then painted over the white with Warp Lightning and Army Painter Speedpaint Malignant Green, letting the two paints mix together. The result was utterly terrible.
So I started again, painting over the rock with Two Thin Coats Cuirass Leather. Then overbrushing with Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone and washing it with Army Painter Strong Tone. This time I didn’t bother with the glowing effects, I painted the smoke with Dungeon Stone before giving it a coat of Army Painter Speedpaint Gravelord Grey. I then drybrushed the smoke with Two Thin Coats Carcharodon Grey. It was… alright. Better than my first attempt at any rate.
Stentor-I-52
Backdrop by Jon Hodgson Backdrops
There seems to be some debate as to whether this guy is a servitor or not. Literally all Games Workshop has said about him is that he is “a bizarre character who can unleash deafening tirades of bombastic oration”. Which clears up nothing.
Whatever this xenomorph looking guy is, I needed a plan. He’s mainly bodysuit and bionics, the latter is pretty simple but I didn’t want to just do black for the undersuit. I started the painting process by priming him with Army Painter Angel Green. Before I could get started on the undersuit I first wanted to get the small amount of skin done. To do so I basecoated the jaw and hand with Two Thin Coats Dwarven Skin. I then washed these areas with a coat of Reikland Fleshshade before layering back up with some Dwarven Skin. I then built up layers by mixing Scale75 Pink Skin into Dwarven Skin and then added highlights by adding Scale75 Pale Skin into the previous mix. I finished things off by adding Army Painter Red Tone around the plugs on the hand.
Returning to the undersuit, I started building up the layers by mixing progressively more and more Vallejo Pale Sand into Caliban Green. Despite the slight yellow tint to Pale Sand the layers just got more and more desaturated. For the second time in this project I ended up with something I just wasn’t happy with. I did try glazing some green over the undersuit to try and bring it back to life but it didn’t really work, I can’t even remember what green it was.
Backdrop by Jon Hodgson Backdrops
Once again it was time to start over. I base coated over the undersuit with Caliban Green, taking it back to that original prime colour. It took a little while to decide what my next course of action would be, but a few days later I had an idea. I had previously played around with the Vallejo Malefic Flesh set and I wasn’t too impressed with the green/brown forest tones. However the forest skin tone is built around green shadows and brown highlights, and I already had the green shadows on my undersuit. So with that in mind I set about building up layers by mixing more and more Vallejo Forest Skin into Caliban Green. I deepened the shadows a little with Incubi Darkness and the overall result wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t perfect by any means but it was a lot better than my first attempt.
Being happy with the undersuit at last I moved onto the rest of the model. Whilst I was deciding what to do with said undersuit I had basecoated all the bionic areas with Two Thin Coats Death Reaper. I then picked out selected panels with Scale75 Old Copper and all the pipes with Scale75 Thrash Metal. I didn’t want to paint everything with bright metallics and end up drowning out the darker undersuit. I finished off the basecoats by painting the belt with Two Thin Coats Cuirass Leather. To tie everything together I gave the whole model, except the skin, a wash with Army Painter Dark Tone. To finish things off I edge highlighted all the black armour panels with Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone.
Vox Skull
Backdrop by Jon Hodgson Backdrops
After struggling a little bit with the other two models I was almost relieved to get to the relatively simple Vox Skull. I started by priming the model with Colour Forge Hyrax Brown which sets the shadows on both the bone and the base.
To get things started I painted the skull with Army Painter Skeleton Bone, and as mentioned above I intentionally left the deepest recesses like the eye sockets brown. From there I painted the metallic details with Scale75 Thrash Metal. Similar to how I did for the Inquisitor I overbrushed the bit of rock with Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone. I then washed the whole model with Army Painter Strong Tone and then gave the metallics a secondary wash of Army Painter Dark Tone to make them look grimy. Then all I needed to do was to pick out the Inquisition symbol with Scale75 Dwarven Gold and add some highlights to the bone with Army Painter Pale Sand.
Bases
Before I could call these complete, I needed to finish off the bases. I may have filled out the rest of the base of the Inquisitor with texture paste before I primed it but the other two needed some texture as well. With that in mind I filled out their bases with Vallejo Dark Earth texture paste. Once that was dry I gave it a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone. From there I dabbed on some PVA glue on all three bases before dunking them in a tub of Geek Gaming Scenics Base Ready Patchy Plains, which I then sealed with some Geek Gaming Scenics Matt Sealant. I then made up some snow texture paste with Army Painter Battlefield Snow and some Matt Medium. I then added this in patches to the bases. Lastly, I painted the rims with Steel Legion Drab.