Painting a Daemon Prince

I'll present the techniques and colors used to paint my entry to our local painting competition: a model used as a Daemon Prince.

Introduction

First off, it's not an actual GW model; it's made by Hasslefree Miniatures: "Bugharoth". However, the paint scheme should work all the same; just don't stick power armor on your model!
I bought it in my very first batch of miniatures, assembled it, primed it with the graffiti spray, painted most of it in skin tone, and put it to use as a Daemon Prince. It's perfect size-wise, and it looks mean enough - an archetypical demon.

Originally, I intended a very simple paint scheme for it - skin tone, black wash, gunmetal weapons, black fur, white horns. Thankfully, I never got around to painting it like that. I instead did a bunch of basic models, improving my skills. Now, for this competition, I decided to have a go at this bad boy, and to try some advanced stuff on it.
Take a look at my practice paintjobs:

• How to paint a Nurgle Chaos Spawn (using wet blending)  
• How to paint a Slaaneshi spawn (using layering)

Planning phase

I actually did a thorough research and planning phase before reaching for my brush. I looked at a lot of painting tutorials (specifically the MWG Quick Tips) and planned my practice (the spawn above). Then, when I was sure of the techniques to be used and the look I wanted to achieve, I did a quick sketch on paper, detailing the paints/colors to be used on certain areas, as well as where I wanted to have highlights/shadows etc.

Don't judge my drawing skills here; the point was to create a detailed "task list".

Getting at it

 Step 1. The inside of the mouth

 I did this first because it's using strong and vibrant colors, and I didn't want that to accidentally spill out over already finished surfaces.

Add a little brown and/or black to the mix if it comes out too light.

Step 2. Basecoat

I've basecoated everything, as in the picture below.

These are the colors I've used:

Step 3. Skin

Normally, you'd do detailed skin areas using layering. Start from the darkest color, and layer on it ever lighter colors, leaving dark areas where you'd like shadows. I'll show you a rather quick-and-dirty alternate method: use a wash. Well, a wash-like mix. As I've previously said, I only have a black wash on hand; so I mixed up a reddish/brownish color and watered it down to a wash-like quality.

This is just to darken the skin. Let it flow freely across the surfaces and into the recesses; it will add some basic shadow effect.

Step 4. Some details

As per the design documentation:

• bracer, sword crossguard and pommel: bronze. As usual, I lay my bronze over a coat of silver/gunmetal. I then give it a black wash to pop out the details.
• sword grip: black basecoat, over which I layer some browns to achieve a leather-ish effect.
• fur: strong grey drybrush, black wash, light grey drybrush.
• hooves: dark grey highlight, black wash.
• fingernails: black basecoat, dark grey highlight.

Step 5. Horns

I guess this qualifies as a "detail", but I spent more time here, and I thought to give it its own section. I layered on a heavy brown basecoat, slowly mixing in bone white with the brown, leaving more brown at the base of the horns.

Step 6. Sword

I wanted to achieve a supernatural look here. I first thought of lightning running across the blade; however, it's not a flat surface, so it wouldn't look good. I went for a blue-violet (transition through wet blending) coloring, with added lighting effects below.

Alright, we've got the basic color scheme in place. Time for some highlighting.

Step 7. Highlights

I wanted to make it look like the light source was the weapon itself. So I applied drybrushing over most of the model. However, I used a light color on the areas that would be directly illuminated by the sword, and a darker color where there would be shadows. Like this:

Step 8. Glowing red eye

I tried following this tutorial: MWG Quick Tips: Glowing red eye
It goes like this: Paint the eye red. Highlight it with bright orange. Then thin down the red paint using medium (don't use water, you want to thin it out instead of flowing around) and paint the area below the eye. This will give the glowing effect; like the eye would illuminate the area below it.
Sadly, it didn't come out as awesome as in the tutorial; I think more contrast is needed. e.g. do the glowing red eye on a model painted in black.

Step 9. Gore

Another MWG tutorial: MWG Quick Tips: Red gore
By mixing red paint with glue, you can get a shiny, reddish, viscous substance that emulates gore quite well.

I don't have shiny red paint, so I mixed in some gloss varnish. These are the materials I used:

Unfortunately, my first color mix came out too dark. Also, the glue dried to quickly; instead of saliva-like strings, I mostly got solid pieces. I put them to good use on the sword, making it look like guts stuck there from the last kill.
So here's how it looked like at first:

As I said, too dark. So I added some highlights with bright red:

Now we're talking!
In this picture you can already see how I started basing the model. Let's get to that.

Step 10. Creating the base

As usual, I've mounted the model on a metallic washer instead of directly mounting it on a base. Of course, you can get away with putting some flock on a metallic circle with a hole in the middle if it's a smaller (infantry-sized) model; but it certainly does not look good on a large model. So I opted for filling in the gap.
Instead of using expensive green stuff for work that does not need to be precise, I used a home made putty (article about that coming soon...) to create a rough terrain effect.

Step 11. Flocking the base

First off, I've coated the base with brown. If the workmanship is good enough, none of that will be visible. If, however, I can't flock the entire area for some reason, a brown spot won't stand out as much as a white one.

Then I applied some flock. I used the following:

And this is how it looks like:

In front of him, the ground is brown and the grass is green. In his wake, doom and destruction follows; the grass dries out and the soil itself dies!

Step 12. Finished!

Well, there's one more thing to do here. I want to apply a coat of matte varnish, to preserve what I feel to be my best work so far!