Warhammer 40k: The Emperor’s Children
A sight to shake even the strongest of constitutions; the rolling tide of garish color, ear splitting auditory assault, and hedonistic insanity beyond mortal comprehension spews forth from the accursed maw of The Warp.
Insane colors, mismatch materials, and utter depravity make the Emperor’s Children Legion a visual feast that can never be described as “too much”. Once among the proudest and most refined of the Emperor’s Legions, the phrase “the bigger they are, the harder they fall” doesn’t even begin to cover the tragedy of Fulgrim’s Legion. Ensnared early in the Heresy era, they were superseded by the Word Bearers alone in their fall to Chaos, beating even the Warmaster himself to the punch. And oh, how they did fall, so, so far, dragged into the depths of depravity by their own gene-father.
I looked at generations of miniatures going all the way back to the Rogue Trader era of the 1980’s as well as the interpretations of other artists before me. I ended up with something recognizable that also felt unique to my tastes and style. Initially I started with more subdued colors and materials but felt they missed the mark of the book descriptions, so I scrapped that and started throwing colors and hues at the canvas at random, letting chaos guide my hand. I drew Fulgrim as a slight redesign of his current look based on his original model from the earliest days of the IP. I also included my own take on a Daemonette in the foreground, inspired by several different sources and my own ideas.
I knew going into this one that I wanted to capture the utter debauchery and excess championed by Slaanesh, the god of excess. The unquenchable thirst to reach new heights of sensation and experience, the loss of anything close to lucidity, and the unsettling visuals only beautiful to their corrupted eyes. It was most certainly a challenge that left plenty of sketches and ideas on the cutting room floor, but It was also the most fun I’ve had in a long time as an artist.
