I need a shoulder.... To stick gory trophies on. Daemon Knight 10

So in my last post I showed the current state of the knight, now obviously this was quite a change from the previous post Daemon Knight 9 and too much to deal with all in one go.
As planned in that catchup post today I'm going to go over the pauldrons and share how they evolved and since a WIP shot of the first Pauldron has already been shared, instead of just showing the finished thing I though this would be a good time for a bit of a tutorial/discussion of how went about sculpting them.

Left Pauldron- Fist arm

First up was the basic design plan which evolved from playing with parts and greenstuff along with some of the inspiration research I'd carried out at the beginning and in particular this Knight

Knight By Troy shared via Frontline gaming

Now this was found before I even brought the Knight and part of the order was a box of wargames factory skeletons (possibly out of production now) because there are a lot of skulls in the kit, however not long after I made a start, Games workshop released the Chaos Dreadhold so with plans involving the heads from hold (which obviously didn't happen) and a long held ambition to make a chaos fortress I picked up an overlord bastion.

Part of the intention was to utilise the kit to provide details to add to this knight and future members of the black ruin. So after the application of a bowl of hot water and some instant mould I was ready to mix up some green stuff.

The next morning I eagerly peeled the hardened putty of the the moulds to see what I had and how well the details had been captured.

Overall it's not bad, the big skulls have gone into a baggy for a later project and I began to play with the mass of smaller skulls on the Knight's first shoulder, it wasn't long before I had something to show.

Now at this point it was clear I needed to fill the gaps and it wouldn't be as clean to do as Troy's Knight, i still had plans to use the bits of the warshrine but began thinking about my options. Also the front crown of horns had been worked on for the main body along with the spine section.
Wanting to continue that theme and having had success in the past with flayed skin I decided to look at the various hooks from the Stonehorn kit along with a bony ridge along the outer edges.

With the plastic bits glued in place the next stage was to begin fleshing out the areas over the gaps and trying to make it look like stretched flayed flesh with holes in, forming shapes that seem realistic based on the attachment points.

Now it took a number of green stuff batches to get to this point while I was working on the main torso and exhaust stacks, usually with the little bits of left over from other tasks. Having already played with torn flaps and some signs of stitching the progress continued with the addition of the bony ridge and further detail.
 

Not long after this I managed the last details, working with barely a mm think layers of greenstuff to tidy up and sharpen the edges, remove any imperfections and add a few creases etc.

Right Pauldron - Chainsaw Arm

During the final stages I had begun work on the right hand pauldron, both inspired and inspiring the story I was writing showing how the 7 Blessed received the Mark of Khorne starting down the 8 fold path.

Knowing I wanted trophy Knight heads and a proper Mark of Khorne I quickly fleshed out the basic design, adding a few more skulls for good measure.

During the writing process I quickly determined that the centre mask was from the Matriarch of the household that gets slaughtered in the story and needed chaosing up a bit. the various smooth areas of the pauldron where infilled and textured, bony ridges roughed out along transitions and finally the crown of horns idea was matched with the other side.

The beaten metal will be painted copper and will also be replicated on other areas of the knight and the final filling and tidy up was completed, I also trimmed out the top edge a bit to match the shape of the Mark.

Finished

Hopefully seeing the step by step process is useful for anyone considering expanding their greenstuff skills beyond just filling gaps. I'm by no means an expert and these two Pauldrons alone have taught me an awful lot. 

Both are now finished so I'm going to leave you today with three shots of each and if anyone has any questions please feel free to ask in the comments.

Until next time TTFN.

 Left Pauldron- Fist arm

Right Pauldron - Chainsaw Arm