Building an Arcane Fulcrum

About a month ago, a combination of several factors made me start dusting off my old chaos dwarfs again. At that same time, I joined the Chaos Dwarf Online forum, where I`d been a lurker for quite a few years but never bothered to register before. You know, one more forum to check up upon every evening etc.

That day, I also discovered a tread for what is called the Artisan`s Competition, edition 11, in which the participants build something / write something or the likes, and this theme was building an Arcane Fulcrum from the Warhammer Storms of Magic supplement. I decided to enter!

And then realisation dawned... First of all, I`mm all thumbs in building, converting, sculpting etc department. Second of all, I had one week to build, paint and picture something, so the race was on.

The idea I had was a geyser of magma upon which floated an obsidian platform.




The base materials I could rummage out of my bits and junk boxes for this where a pedestal from the old Klingon AMT bird of prey kit (the vessel I trashed to create a Pulp scenery piece for about 1.5 years ago), an empty package of a roll of silk tape, a plate of resin tiled roof of about 2 inch square and a new package of standard yellow grey Miliput I bought once (unnecessary) for a piece of home improvement works...



Once all this was added together, the `sculpting` part started with greenstuff, the idea being to sculpt on flames to surround the ring, and to add an idol of Hashut in the magma to break up the monotonous look.





The whole contraption was then sprayed black, so that can of Chaos Black that stands here for more then 3 years got some use as well. You see, I usually undercoat with a brush and a variety of colors depending what overall color the models have to become.



The first base color was painted on, and the lines for the obsidian / black marble on the ring added




First highlights are then added to the whole shaboodle. At this point, I read the Dreadfleet issue of WD detailing the lava in one of the scenery pieces, and I thought to give that a try to contrast more with the still hot burning flames.





The whole Fulcrum was then painted, the flames taking the longest time of the model as it where 6 colours over each other.




Steam was added to the inner ring, and the base sanded for painting. The rune of Clan Vongalazthag, a stylised `V` that represents a bulls horns in a kind of way topped of the tile on the top for the wizard to stand on during the battles.




The base was then painted gray with a lava effect to go with the rest of my army, and the steam got some black and red inks dispersed through it to make it look a bit nicer. With that, the whole thing was complete and ready to be entered into the competition.



It ended up in the end an unexpected 4th out of 9 entries, netting 2 votes (and I never vote for myself mind you, in not one competition), which is more then I expected. There where some awesome entries in the thing, the winner was well deserved (Who that was? Just head over to CDO then and admire it on the front page, it`s worth it I assure you) and I was glad to do a small drop for all the Dawi Zharr out there!

Ciao Ciao