
Games Workshop Codex: Black Legion
Illustration © Games Workshop
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This was my first Codex Supplement done for GW, under the art direction of Darius Hinks! The brief was to create a companion cover to the formidable Raymond Swanland's Chaos codex. Although the initial brief seemed pretty straightforward, I wanted to offer to the fans of said codex faction(s) at least some kind of visual narrative that represents the faction; and the idea of him standing in the rain, not just holding, but slowly crushing the helmet of a fallen Ultramarine seemed to be a decent idea to go with, one that also answered the other creative parameters of the brief. In an attempt to give some context to the background, an earlier version sported purple lightning coming down from the warp storm behind the Legion CSM as a nod to their 'roots', but it proved to be too distracting.
Other bits for my inner fanboyy:
-Folding grip on living bolter, trigger also demonically fused with trigger finger... because CHAOS THATS WHY!

-Reverse melee blade bolted to pistol grip.
-I was working off reference sent to me, and those featured pretty heavily corrupted Legionnaires. But after doing some more reading, I felt it might be also interesting to only partially corrupt him to show er, more facets of this marine's personality, (after all they embody chaos undivided doctrine) in this case mainly his upper body and firing arm, leaving the other parts relatively clean for contrast. I chose to give him base armour trim that to me felt kind of proud enough to be from the sons of Horus, and not overly gruesome, not too frilly and nutty since the corrupted bits literally had trim folding into itself, like on the living right pauldron. Then again maybe all this is lost on you chaos fans out there that might think its still 200 demonic tendrils short of being worthy of chaos...


"-Some people just want to see the... galaxy...burn."


Whoever wants to draw the most epic and fear spreading CSM in the world, has to beat this picture IMO. You`ve set a new standard.

I have spoken...


Hi. You're amazing! If you could take a quick second to answer this, you would honestly change my life: What do I physically need to do during practice, each day, to eventually be able to create something like this?
Can you please break down exactly what one extremely motivated beginner student would need to do, each & every day when he or she sits down to practice, in order to create these incredible photorealistic 2d digital drawing/paintings from my imagination?
I've been trying some stuff, but I still suck!!
Can you please make me, like, a list?!!!! So I can then go out and explore those topics? Or at least tell me what I need to physically be doing with my practice time?
If there's any books/DVDs/tutorials, please share!
Thank you for trying to help!
