Warhammer 40k’s machine-minded arch daemon Vashtorr the Arkifane has never looked as sinister as he does in this diorama, which is the work of Canadian model maker Sam Higgs. Wargamer spoke to Higgs about the piece, and its fine art inspiration: the gruesome ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya.
Higgs was inspired to create a conversion of this quality by two Golden Demon diorama entries: one was a forced perspective diorama with that used Aeronautica Imperialis scale aeroplane, and a Warhammer 40k scale Grot skydiver, to “give a sense of scale and movement”.
The other was Chris Clayton’s Slayer Sword-winning diorama of a gargant fighting a hydra. The two pieces convinced Higgs that “you could really use [model making] as an expression of artistic creativity”, and gave him the impetus “to do more and better work and to push myself out of my comfort zone”.
Although he doesn’t have formal training in traditional painting, Higgs says “I have always loved art history and the great works of the masters”. “The wall above my modelling station is covered, Paris Salon-style, in recreations of masterworks”.
And one day, as he was looking at a reproduction of the painting Saturn Devouring His Son, he thought “I bet Vashtorr would look sick like that”.
Goya was a prolific painter in the late 18th and early 19th century. He lived through the Napoleonic invasion of Spain during the Peninsula War, and as Higgs put it, his “paintings like ‘The Third of May’, and ‘The Disasters of War’ etchings, speak so loudly to the horrors and atrocities he had witnessed in his life”.
Goya made ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ late in his life, one of 14 ‘Black Paintings’ he painted as murals directly onto the walls of the house he lived in. It’s possible he didn’t want them to be viewed publicly, but they were removed and transferred to canvases by the house’s owner. Higgs says “the paintings have an almost ethereal, other-worldly quality, as if Goya dragged them from some other plane of existence and fastened them to his wall in some dark pact”.
Higgs calls ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ “a camera flash in a dream”, depicting as it does “a god of gods” who is now “a shade of whatever glory came before”. This Saturn is “cruel, hunched, manic, a god not to be worshipped or respected but a loathsome creature, acting on base instinct and desperation”, less a god and more “a thing, a great and terrible thing”. Higgs calls its “insanely grimdark” – we’re inclined to agree.
Higgs faced a steep learning curve for the project. He had made his “fair share of kitbashes” for the varied Warhammer 40k factions he collects, but he “had never really worked with clay compounds before”, and he needed to learn how to sculpt. “Doing an arm or head swap is a far cry from trying to mold skin folds in putty and have it look natural”, he says. You can find lots more work in progress photographs on his Reddit account TrygintoBnice.
He spent around 13 hours posing “the cut up pieces of Vashtorr exactly”. He explains: “I wanted to recreate as closely as I could the posture of the original artwork, as Saturn’s posture betrays his depravity.”
If you want to try your hand at diorama-making for the very first time, Higgs has some simple advice: “Take your time, apply yourself, and do the best you can”. He recommends YouTube tutorials as a great way to learn about the “tools, supplies, and processes” needed for sculpting.
He also says: “we all have some idea rolling around in our heads that is hard, or daunting, and it seems like too large a step out of your comfort zone” – but the only way to get the skills needed to achieve your vision is to “just do the thing”.
Several collectors have reached out with “serious offers” to buy Higg’s Vashtorr-Goya diorama, some even offering to commission Higgs to make “all Goya’s Black Paintings done as Warhammer sculpts”. Higgs says “my idea is to complete all 14 and then auction them for charity”, though he thinks “it may be a several year long process with how slow I work”.
We think the other Black Paintings would need a bit of creativity to bring across to the 40k universe, as they’re far less fantastical than ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ But we can imagine ‘Two Old Ones Eating Soup’ recreated with Genestealer Cultists, or ‘Fight With Cudgels’ depicted between Space Marines and traitor Astartes, being very entertaining. We can’t wait to see what Higgs makes next!
If you’re a fan of fine art and Warhammer, make sure you check out our interviews with Emma Svensson, who has turned Space Marines and even a Land Raider into canvases for fine art!
Source: Wargamer
