An Altar (and BLOOD!) for the Blood God

And here it is - the Temple of Skulls. Done and dusted (highlighted, varnished and tarnished!).

I was pretty much thinking this the whole time I was painting this bad boy. Come on, we all were right?! KALIMA...The main idea was that the "Temple" is in fact a misnomer and that this is more of an arena and that prayer, is in fact a bloody ritual combat or ripping someone's skull straight off of their spinal column... eeewww. Too far? Yep. 

The idea with the skulls was to pain them in a style that would use the sponge technique that I recently tried on the Magewrath Throne. But when I replicated the same colour as I'd used previously the model became a bit too monochrome in appearance. So I needed to change the skulls to a different colour. I toyed with the idea of having them a tarnished metal colour, which would have been fine. But the dark obsidian colour has really grown on me and I would say that it's definitely original, which is always a plus. The other benefit of obsidian is that fact that it's such and "otherworldly" stone, despite being a naturally occurring rock. This really suits me because not only is it daemonic, magical but also subtle and "realistic". Winning... at painting!

It was surprising quick to do as well, despite a couple of false starts on the skulls and dark brown on the base sections. A few pics below for close-ups. Love to hear what you think about it. Can't wait to use this sucker.

A close up shot of the bloody corner:

Stairway to... death?

As the crow flies:

Palette time!

Prime:

Black Spray

Undercoat: 

Skavenblight Dinge (entire model)

Bedrock:

Highlight successive layers of

Stormvermin Fur

Baneblade Brown

Karak Stone

Stone slabs:

Mechanicus Grey (the dark one)

Dawnstone

Administratum Grey

Skulls: 

Basecoat: Chaos Black (how could I not?)

Sponge: Midnight Blue (it's a really old colour and not sure if it exists anymore, it's so blue black and has even got a hint of purple in it, which it great)

Sponge: Eshin Grey

With the sponge I tried to use the leopard print technique again on different sections to make sure that the Midnight Blue and Eshin Grey did have some cross over sections but were on different parts, with Eshin Grey on the more raised areas.

An Altar for the Blood God

Blood for the Blood God! Raaaaagghhh! .... etc

Got this one because I saw on the GW website that it is ominously "No Longer Available." It's such an imposing set I thought I better get one before they are no longer in stock. Plus I want to have all of the "special terrain" in the rulebook.

After this shot I noticed some fairly heavy gaps in the skulls, which I'll need to Green Stuff before beginning.

I'm wondering what colours I should use... I'm thinking I'll need at least two different grey tones and I'd like to try the sponge technique I used on the Magewrath Throne on the skulls for the granite effect.

What colours do you think?

Now where's my spray can and air brush....?