the Munich Manual of Demonic Magic...

recently on Channel 4, there was a thing on called Gods and Monsters that covered the mythology and folklore of England... the frankly embarrassing to watch bits with Tony Robinson aside, it had some interesting nuggets of information covering fairies, plague and possession and one such nugget was the Munich Manual... a 15th Century grimoire written in Latin that covered Necromancy and Demonology... of course, being written in Latin, it could only really be read and used by the learned of the age and none were more fluent in Latin than the Church...

I had thought of doing something similar with the Warlord's Archbishop Laud figure, dressed as he is in a scholarly fashion, so the Munich Manual fitted in perfectly. I'd actually done the cassocky thing a while back, but had got put off with yet another black and white figure for this and another nudge to get this chap done was when I stumbled across one painted with a purple cassock on the Warlord forums... I don't think I've ever painted anything purple, the 6th Doctor's waistcoat was about it, and it had the bonus of not being black, but still ecumenical or not depending on my mood...

the figure had a hefty integral base which I couldn't be bothered to file down, nor could I be bothered to cut the slotta and sink it down... as the devout trooper started me on the uneven moorland look, I thought that would work quite nicely here and I added a fallen gravestone to the base as something a bit different - disused or abused graveyard just perfect for ghoulish things... the book I painted using leathery flesh tones to give it a Necronomicon feel... oddly, the shading on the black lining looks a bit clumsy in the photos, but isn't in the lead...

annoyingly the grass doesn't seem to work, did everything the same as the others in this range, but it doesn't look right to me... very annoying...

of course, this wasn't anything I had otherwise been working on in December, the purple gown kind of prodded me on with this one... hey ho...