Hey,

Valkia the bloody, consort of khorne appeared in the latest incarnation of games workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy Battle Chaos Warriors army book. I was flicking through this book around the time of its release, and I spotted Valkia’s entry and the rather lovely art work that goes with it. It immediately piqued my interest, and I went away and started to sketch. I knew that I was interested in doing something large, after all she is the consort of the Chaos God himself, she has to stand out from the crowd right? So with that in mind I had a chat with the then manager of games workshop Cheltenham, and he very kindly allowed me to have the two inquisitor death cult assassin models that he happened to have lying around. They were about the right size for a 28 mm version of valkia, and I was very happy to base my model on them. Sadly, as often happens with my projects, I didn’t end up using a single component from either of those kits, however I hope you will agree that the thing I have come up with is rather more unique as a result. This is a poignant time to me, given that this project, completed almost a year ago today, marks the beginning of my interest in sculpting proper. There is a story here if you will bear with me.

Over the Christmas period, I had gone home to spend time with my family and had just returned to my caravan in Gloucester.  I was beginning to get settled in again, the fire was on, it was approximately 11:45 PM, and I was just winding down and getting ready to go to bed (I’m a night owl).  I put down my ill-fated conversion, in order to go and dig out my sculpting tools, and I heard a strange wooshing sound. I stopped for a minute and the world and, and listen hard. It’s not a sound I have heard in my caravan before. There are a cacophony of noises which encroach on my privacy in my little van, but nothing that sounded even remotely like this. Then it hits me. In sheer panic I ran through the kitchen and my worst fears were confirmed. I found myself in a rapidly rising pool of water. To cut a long story short, my pipes had frozen over the Christmas break (even my hot water tank had frozen solid), and they had warmed up when I had come home and turned the heating back on, which had caused them to expand and shear off. Now there was mains pressure water spurting from underneath my sink onto the floor of the caravan. Oh no! I had no idea what to do, I was just in blind panic. I tried to block the flow of water with towels, which was about as effective as trying to sculpt with boxing gloves. This could be a long story, and I will keep it short, the gist was, I ran out into the snow and got hold of an elderly neighbour (bless him) who came over and helped me to rig up a makeshift solution using my bath shower head adapters and a piece of hosepipe leading to the bath. My landlord wasn’t available until the following morning, and neither was a plumber, so I was left with the situation where I had to sit and watch water running from the broken pipe into the bath for at least the next 10 hours until my landlord or a plumber was able to join me and fix the situation. All the heating was off, and a thick layer of snow coated the ground outside, so you will understand that it was rather cold. Also, I had no electricity, I’m not much of a DIY expert, but I’m pretty sure that electricity and water don’t mix very well. A lot of my worldly possessions were rather damp at this point, as was I, so the only thing left to do was to wrap myself in a few dry blankets and shiver my way through the night. I had to keep myself awake though, and sculpting was at the least something that was waterproof, so I grabbed some wire and built my first armature. It then just snowballed from there, I was really learning as I went. As I said before, this is my first full sculpt, and I’m not exactly confident, and I wanted this to be an entry from Golden Demon, rather than just a test piece. You can see the final results here. She took an absolute age to finish, and there were many parts of her that I re-sculpt it and repainted a good few times. There is no doubt that she was the most ambitious project I had ever taken on at that point, and rather than give a convoluted account all of each of those things, I would point you to a forthcoming White dwarf article. Suffice to say, that this was my first full sculpt, my first attempt at using magic sculpt, my first time building and armature, my first time working with fimo, my first time working with scenic water, my first time working with pigment powders, my first time painting sheer cloth, my first time using an airbrush, one of my earliest attempts at using nonmetallic metals, the first time I had ever tried to scratch build a weapon, and the first time I had used the acetate printing method of making plaques. Whew! Okay, I know she isn’t perfect, and I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t win anything at Golden Demon, however because of all those things she remains one of the projects and about which I am most proud. I haven’t ever submitted her to cool mini or not in her painted state, partly because the sculpted version scored so poorly, and partly because it takes me an age to use photo shop to edit the image file upload. Anyway, I hope you like her, I would love to know what you think.

All the best,

James