02.19.07
Confrontation miniature
I recently was provided with a Confrontation miniature to paint for an auction supporting a tournament. It’s a limited edition figure made by Rackham as a giveaway for a convention. Don’t ask me what it’s supposed to be in game terms because I have no clue! Like all Rackham figures, this one has a lot of filigree, undercuts, and places that are just darned hard to paint! I used Reaper Masters Series paints on the model and I picked colors I have not used before as a challenge.
Originally I had in mind a scheme for the entire miniature that would look like the staff – dark colors fading up to light ones. Barf, was that a mistake! I tried again with a more limited pallette and used the ocean color triad. I think the results were much better.
The nice thing about fantasy miniatures is that there is no one correct way to paint them!
I left the staff the way it was, however, as the color shift was smooth and added character to the miniature. I painted the colors in first, then went back in and lined the filigree with brown and green liner so as to outline the gold filigree. The staff and hands came as a separate piece so I added them after I had painted the rest of the figure. I placed one end of the staff in a piece of blue-tac and painted and sealed the first part of it then just held on to the staff to finish painting it. The face was quite hard to paint as the details were tiny.
I washed the face with a black wash first, then used the Reaper light skin triad to highlight up to the lightest color. The right-most picture is not as good as I’d like it as there is a reflection that makes the horn look like the paint is not put on properly. Another new technique I tried here was shading metals in the same way as other colors. I outlined the ridges with brown liner mixed with a tad bit of black and then shaded from bronze to new gold (as the highlight). The figure was sealed with Reaper’s brush-on sealer.
Overall I am pleased with how it came out. We’ll see what the auction brings in!
