Wings of Redemption Angel Diorama by Josh

Our special guest this post is Josh who built this incredible Wings of Redemption angel diorama. We've featured a few of Josh's paint jobs in the past, like the Apache Indian Chief, Space Marine Dreadnought and the infamous pirate Diamond Joe.

Josh started this diorama with an imagination and a 54mm model from Andrea Miniatures. The model was in six parts, the head, torso with 1 leg and arm, an arm, a leg and 2 wings.

He a assembled the main figure and used white modelling putty to fill in gaps between the joints.

The wings were left off to more easily paint the figure.

Priming the figure in white provided a brighter base for the colors.

Wings were painted with various shades of gray to keep them neutral and a dark wash was applied. Once the wings dried, a highlight of titanium white was dry-brushed onto the edges. The accents were painted with three shades of metallic golds.

The figure was temporarily affixed to a plastic base for ease of painting and the flesh colors were added.

Here the base flesh and darker wash have been applied.

After the flesh was finished, base colors for the armor, cloth and sword were painted. The hair has also been completed in this shot.

The swords accents were painted with antique gold.

The final flesh shading was then completed and the highlights and shading are being applied to the armor and cloth

Now onto nitty gritty! The gems hanging from the angels belt were detailed with highlights and that little extra glow added.

The shoulder pads had the Lion of Judah painstakingly painted.

Josh was using a 10/0 brush for his detail work.

Joshua hard at work adding additional details to the chest clasp.

An accent stripe was painted along the bottom of the angels robe and for a final touch, a swirled pattern was added to his garment.

Here's a well lit shot of the finished angel.

And one more for a nice close look.

Now onto the base of the diorama. The columns were taken from a wedding cake decoration kit and will be cut for the base.

There will be three columns of various height on the base. Their bottoms are cut at angles so they can lean in different directions.

The columns are hollow so they needed to be covered Josh stuck a round base into the top and added some drywall filler.

The base for the angel was affixed to the tallest column.

Josh wanted the columns to be marble so studied the patterns and did a beautiful job of mimicking the texture onto his columns. Here's one weathered before the marble texture and one after.

The base was a big step, Josh started with a round wooden plaque for the platform and a circle of polystyrene foam. The wood was stained with a dark walnut.

He then sculpted details in polystyrene foam with a utility knife and sanded off the roughest edges.

The main column was affixed by drilling a hole through the base, inserting a wooden dowel and then hot gluing the column into place through the foam base. Here the base has some rocks and grit glued on before painting.

Once dry, a dark brown base coat was painted...

and various coats of lighter colors were dry-brushed on.

Next was to form the antagonist in the diorama. The interior of the "pit" was painted with a fiery glow and arms were selected from an action figure, cut to the proper angles and primed black.

Details were painted onto the arms and they were hot-glued in place. Josh painted the under portion of the hands and columns to show the light source coming from the pit.

And there you have it! A prize winning diorama if we ever saw one. Keep an eye on this kid!

Have a Great Battle,
The Old Crow