Golden Demon winner Chris Clayton on his jaw-dropping giant diorama

Few prizes on the earth of aggressive artwork are fairly as sharp because the Slayer Sword — the distinctive prize awarded annually, as soon as within the United States and once more within the United Kingdom, by Games Workshop. Given yearly since 1987 by the miniature-maker at its Golden Demon portray occasions, the 5-foot-long weapon is the dream of many an aspiring miniature painter. Vanishingly few have held the blade. The newest is a veteran hobbyist named Chris Clayton.

Thirty-five years in the past, Clayton had a few early wins in portray competitions across the U.Ok., again when Games Workshop solely had eight shops to its identify. Clayton was simply 14 years previous when the inaugural Slayer Sword was awarded. This 12 months, it was Clayton’s sword to carry, for a monstrous duel he plucked out of time.

“For me personally, miniature painting was an escape from the everyday,” Clayton advised Polygon just lately in an e-mail. “Back then [in 1987], miniature painting was in its infancy and there was very little in the way of instruction or technique let alone materials or community. […] Even pictures of painted miniatures were rare.”

After 38 years of portray, at the moment Clayton works out of what he labels a “modest studio,” the place the home windows are wrapped in light-diffusing movie; the place pots of Citadel paint share area with acrylic lacquers, oil paints, airbrushes, and sable-hair brushes; and the place music can all the time be heard “to evoke or enhance memory,” Clayton wrote.

This was the place this 12 months’s Slayer Sword-winning entry was born, and that is the place the sword now rests.

Photo: Games Workshop

Photo: Games Workshop

Photo: Games Workshop

“I love monsters and the bigger the better,” Clayton wrote. “They lend a sense of scale and if anything, reinforce the fragility of being a human in these worlds. As I built the piece I started to create a story to fit the visual narrative of the sculpt.”

“I envisaged a sailor being strung up, cursed and set adrift by his crew for some superstitious nautical misdemeanour. Our Kraken Eater had happened across this sailor […] the sailor, now undead, had bargained with the giant to travel with him in order to seek revenge on his former crew.”

After the story got here “exhaustive” structural diagrams to create “a convincing notion of movement, tension and realism,” to pluck that second out of time. Part of that planning laid the groundwork for the intricate base of the duel. ”It was important to the success of the belief of the entire piece,” Clayton wrote. “I had seen some wonderful examples of ship modeling where submarines were breaking through the surface of seas and thought that it would be really cool to incorporate this type of effect into a fantasy piece.”

The predominant elements of the mannequin got here from the 8-inch-tall Kraken-eater Mega-Gargant ($210) and the Kharibdyss ($70), a mannequin initially designed for the Dark Elves faction in Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. A substantial amount of resculpting, rethinking, chopping, hacking, and gluing later, Clayton had the bones of the duel — giant, hydra, and all the small print of the shallow sea flooring beneath them.

Photo courtesy of Chris Clayton

Photo courtesy of Chris Clayton

Over the subsequent 360 hours — 8-hour days for 10 weeks because the English spring slid into summer time final 12 months — Clayton labored. “I always like to work with a limited palette especially on something so large and detailed,” Clayton wrote. “It would be easy for this piece to become fussy, so by keeping to a few key colours and then using tints and shades around those choices I could keep the colours consistent and homogeneous.”

With a nautical-themed palette, “the first part of the piece to be painted were the giant’s feet and the terrain of the seabed. This way, if the resin water effect wasn’t successful, I hadn’t wasted time and effort painting an entire giant,” Clayton wrote.

Assembly had been all about capturing this occasion between two lumbering creatures, however how might he seize shifting water with the identical acuity?

“I wanted something more dramatic and stormy where optical clarity was paramount as there was going to be a lot of details going on below the waves,” Clayton wrote. By sculpting the waves in clay, Clayton created a silicone mould of the roiling sea’s floor, and “once the base had been completely painted, detailed and finished … I then poured clear resin into the mould completely encapsulating the base.”

Photo courtesy of Chris Clayton

Silk strands and clear micro beads “drenched in clear varnish and carefully positioned” fashioned the mid-air foam and the dripping water, Clayton wrote. Once the bottom was settled, Clayton moved upward, toiling over the high-quality traces of white underbelly exhibiting between the hydra’s scales, washing purples and reds into the folds of the giant’s pores and skin.

After 15 full days of labor and one drive to Nottingham later, Clayton had the sword in his fingers.

When requested, Clayton stated he doesn’t consider himself as an artist, however nearer to a woodworker or ceramicist. “I deal with miniatures […] as three-dimensional illustrations and because of this these are the mediums by which I really feel I can categorical myself absolutely.

“I am in such a fortunate position to be able to have miniature painting form an important part of a wider holistic creative lifestyle. If you had told me in 1987 that I would still be painting miniatures 35 years later, I wouldn’t have believed you, but I would have secretly hoped for it,” Clayton wrote. “Now it is easy to forget how lucky we really are to live in a time where what used to be the preserve of a niche hobby is now part of mainstream popular culture.”