A Year in Miniatures 3: Fabius Bile
I’ve never been an Emperor’s Children player, but Fabius Bile is one of those models that I’ve always wanted to get my hands on. Even in his previous incarnation, something about him sparked my imagination. The image of a superhuman warrior cladding himself in a custom human-leather coat and fancy cane, plus the deeply menacing spider arms of his Chirurgeon, is all but unique, and from pretty much the beginning of my hobbying life I’ve been trying to find an excuse to get my hands on him.
It turns out the updated sculpt GW recently put out was exactly the excuse I needed. I doubt it will come as any surprise that I absolutely love this model. The longer, thinner chirurgeon arms lend him a more spidery appearance than ever, and the sculptor has simultaneously posed his legs to indicate a slightly unstable gait supported by his cane, suggesting something of the physical infirmity that plagues the character.
Like last week’s knight, Fabius is another one of those models that represents something of a shift in my painting. He’s the first model that I painted specifically as a way to improve my technique, rather than simply because I wanted a painted model. This is something I’ve been doing much more recently, especially since getting used to stripping paint off miniatures - it’s much easier to experiment when you know you can take the whole thing back to bare plastic and start again if you don’t like it! That said, I’m not sure how well those spider arms would survive vigorous scrubbing with a toothbrush…
In Fabius’s case, I was specifically emulating the style of Golden Demon winner Richard Grey. I’ve followed his work on twitter for the last few years, always with an uncharitable bitter jealous resentment of his skill! He’s able to create striking, dynamic effects that look more like high quality digital concept art than miniatures. Finally, last year, I resolved that the best way to cope with my envy was to actually learn how to do what he does. Luckily Richard seems to agree with me since he documents and tutorialises his process in great detail on his website.
I definitely feel like I’ve learned a lot by following along with his videos, and I’m really pleased with the final effect on Fabius. A lot of the same approach and technique went into Sister Amalia back in week 1 (yes I’m finishing these out of order). The Surgeon Acoloyte acompanying him is a bit rougher - I was using him to quickly try out colours and combinations for Fabius, so his paintjob is rather less precise than that of his boss, but he’s certainly good enough for the tabletop.
I also had a lot of fun kitbashing a deceased Space Marine for the base. The acolyte includes one for him to pull the geneseed out of, but Fabius himself has no special basing material. I wanted to emphasise his cruel cavalier attitude towards human (or post-human) life, so the image of him walking over a fallen foe without sparing them a second glance was perfect. I’d originally planned to have the marine clad in chaos colours, specifically the Alpha Legion so as to roughly mirror the colours of the Ultramarine on the Acolyte’s base, as I wanted to suggest the image of Bile and his subordinate as carrion feeders picking over the detritus of a battle in which they were not combatants. However, having painted it up I found that in trying not to get too close to the fallen Ultra, I’d made it rather too saturated and it was drawing the eye away from Fabius himself. So back to the bits box for another astartes I went.
The much more uneven surface created by the dead marine gave me another opportunity for a bit of visual storytelling. I mentioned up top that I find the idea of Fabius’s physical infirmity to be a very interesting aspect of his character, and by positioning him so that the tip of his cane is lower than his feet I was able to have him leaning somewhat to his right, implying that he is even more unsteady on his feet, supporting more of his weight on his cane rather than his legs. I leave it up to the viewer to decide whether or not he’s playing up his weakness in order to lure his enemies into underestimating him…
Next week: something not from Games Workshop!
22/01/22
Weeks Elapsed: 3
Miniatures Finished: 5
Number of times I’ve finished and photographed a mini only to realise I’d missed painting a very obvious part: 1
