Fabius Bile
Painted to Display Standard by Hexys
The Spider, The Primogenitor, Chief Apothecary of the Emperor’s Children, Chem-master, Manflayer, Fabulous Bill. Fabius’s titles and aliases are as numerous as the twisted genetic monstrosities he leaves in his wake. This magnificent model from Games Workshop was painted by Benjamin as part of their Year in Miniatures project.
Fabius is 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, 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. The Surgeon Acoloyte accompanying 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…
